O.P.H. Part II

I took a stroll over to visit the Droogies during my lunch hour today and was astonished to see how the activity at the entrance of my hive compared to the hives around it. As you might recall, I've been jealous of the amount of bees going in and out of the neighbor's hives, but I don't have to be jealous anymore. It is a bit of the "Tortoises and the Hares." His hives were gangbusters earlier this summer, having started with 4 lb packages of Italians, whereas I started a few weeks later with 3 lb packages of Russians. However, my hives now have much more activity and many more bees than those around them. Why might this be? I can think of a couple possibilities:

• Feeding: I fed my bees longer after installing them in the hive. This might have encouraged the queen to lay more, but I doubt that this is the reason.

• Swarms: I think he might have had some swarming. His packages were installed in a deep hive body, and still only have one deep and one medium on them, which makes me think that they would be very crowded by now. His hive that overwintered almost definitely swarmed. There were soooo many bees in that hive at the beginning of spring, and now it looks like his other hives.

• Disease: I hate to say it, but I think his hives might be suffering from mites. I don't think he uses screen boards or any other form of pest management, including treatment for the hive that overwintered. His bees are also Italians, which may be more susceptible to mites than my Russians.


The commercial beekeeper who has many hives in the yard next to ours has harvested his honey recently. His hives, which were six or seven supers tall, are now just a deep and a medium. I wonder if he'll start medicating his hives in preparation for winter, and if this will affect the honey that I'm planning to take from my hives in a couple weeks. I sure hope not.

O.P.H.

I had an opportunity yesterday to go to the bee yard with the scientist who allows me to keep my bees next to his. It is always fun to peek at other people's hives. Every time I visit my bees, I am amazed at how many bees are at the entrance of his hives and was excited to be able to see inside.

This hive is 6 boxes tall and is one that survived last winter in great condition. The top two supers are full of capped honey, which he's planning to harvest next week.*



This frame is full of capped honey. I thought that the honey was dark but he said that it looks that way because the frame had previously been used for brood.



His other hives were started from packages a few weeks before I started mine and have much more capped honey. The late start for my bees probably meant that they weren't ready to take advantage of the early nectar flow. Hopefully the droogies will be ready for next year and will be able to keep up with the Joneses' bees.


*I didn't actually go back in time to take those photos- just didn't know how to work the time-stamp feature on a borrowed camera.