Home Hive!
Aug. 2nd, 2012 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wordwitchI don't know if I mentioned that I had paid for a fourth and last set of bees; the man who was to get them to me had forgotten that I needed them in one of two specific containers, and also forgot that I had already paid for them.
Yesterday, finally, he delivered them, after nearly a month.
It is a wild-caught swarm, meaning that they swarmed from an established hive, and their young queen had decided that the hollow foundation of a flag pole was a lovely place to establish them. This summer being what it has been, I can only find her reasoning correct.
At any rate, this was the year that the owners of the flagpole had chosen to replace it. Imagine their surprise!
So what the Beeman decided to do was to cut out the comb that had been built in the hollow and to rubber-band it into Langstroth frames to encourage the gals to come up into the box he put the frames into. That box he put over top of the hole-hive.
All well and good for the ladies, who followed their nursery upstairs and began working on it. But the Queen, whom I am naming Dido, disliked having her decisions set aside, and kept returning underground after she would lay in the existing and new comb. Meaning the Beeman could not bring the hive to me: useless without Dido.
But she finally decided to move. So yesterday the Beeman brought me ...
Three (3) supers worth of bees in drawn-out frames.
Rather than one (1) box or three (3) frames of bees.
What I am saying here? Is that Carthage has basically been built in a day.
I have them outside the barn in the corner of it; they get sun from 2 hours after daybreak to two hours after noon, and shade the remainder of the day. Since the lid to the hive is covered in a thin metal sheet, I have chosen to layer it with some branches to slow the boiling process a tad little bit. those branches have wilted; I shall have to do more work on this.
But I can sit here at the table and watch them through the back door. Vanderfull!
:D
Yesterday, finally, he delivered them, after nearly a month.
It is a wild-caught swarm, meaning that they swarmed from an established hive, and their young queen had decided that the hollow foundation of a flag pole was a lovely place to establish them. This summer being what it has been, I can only find her reasoning correct.
At any rate, this was the year that the owners of the flagpole had chosen to replace it. Imagine their surprise!
So what the Beeman decided to do was to cut out the comb that had been built in the hollow and to rubber-band it into Langstroth frames to encourage the gals to come up into the box he put the frames into. That box he put over top of the hole-hive.
All well and good for the ladies, who followed their nursery upstairs and began working on it. But the Queen, whom I am naming Dido, disliked having her decisions set aside, and kept returning underground after she would lay in the existing and new comb. Meaning the Beeman could not bring the hive to me: useless without Dido.
But she finally decided to move. So yesterday the Beeman brought me ...
Three (3) supers worth of bees in drawn-out frames.
Rather than one (1) box or three (3) frames of bees.
What I am saying here? Is that Carthage has basically been built in a day.
I have them outside the barn in the corner of it; they get sun from 2 hours after daybreak to two hours after noon, and shade the remainder of the day. Since the lid to the hive is covered in a thin metal sheet, I have chosen to layer it with some branches to slow the boiling process a tad little bit. those branches have wilted; I shall have to do more work on this.
But I can sit here at the table and watch them through the back door. Vanderfull!
:D
