Don't buy Duragilt

Inspected the South hive today. Weather was Sunny and 64 degrees. Frames 1 and 2 were empty. Three, 4 and 5 are fully drawn and they have started on 6. There is capped worker brood on 4.

Duragilt sucks. The bees have more or less ignored it, building comb down from the top bars in some cases and attaching it to the foundation in parts. Either way, the foundation is a failure. I pulled five frames and replaced them with wired foundationless frames. If they take to it, I will go that direction. If not, I will order new plastic and try again with that.

Pics:

Nice larvae and eggs on Frame 4

Frame 5

Some capped brood on Frame 5

First inspection of North hive

On Wednesday I inspected the North hive at Essie's house. The weather was in the mid 60s and sunny. This was the first inspection of that hive since it was installed a week earlier, on April 18th. Overall this hive has been drinking more syrup than the South hive - about a half gallon in a week. That's still not much compared to what some other people's hives are drinking.

On with the inspection...

Here's the hive as it stands at the edge of the woods. Essie added a brick to the top the other day when it was windy and apparently the top cover blew off!

Here's the view under the inner cover. It doesn't look like a lot is going on but...

It's pretty busy in there! The been let their queen out and are building comb. Unfortunately, they are not building it on the foundation, which is Duragilt and is apparently trash. Instead, they are building comb down from the top bars and sort of attaching it to the foundation in places. This is bound to become a mess, so I may end up ripping out foundation on the remaining undrawn frames and either putting in beeswax foundation or leaving it completely out. I'm going to order some wax foundation and go from there.

Overall, frames 3 and 4 are drawn and they have started on frames 5 and 6 a little.

Here's a look at one of the blobs of comb they have built over the foundation. They know what they are doing; there are fresh eggs in the cells.

The queen cage is all empied out. I removed it from the frame and took off the rubber band.

Cold weather

Tonight it's getting down into the low 30s with snow predicted. I put a piece of coroplast in the slot for the sticky board under the screened bottom board. I also was looking at the hole where my syrup jar sits and figured out why the bees aren't drinking it - they can't! The holes on the jar lid are about 1/8" over the screen, and their little bee tongues can't reach the syrup unless it's dripping down. I moved the jar over the open hole with no screen. We'll see if that makes a difference. I figure with the cold rainy weather they'll appreciate the extra food. We'll see.

First Hive Inspection and First Newbee Mistake

When I got home from work I decided it was time to open up the beehive and see if the queen has been released from her cage. I fired up the smoker, put on my suit and opened things up. I found that the queen cage had all its candy eaten away and the queen was not inside! Excellent. The bad news was, apparently the bees don't like to Duragilt foundation very much. It bows to one side of the frame, and the bees built some wonky comb on the concave side. I decided to take out that comb. That was a mistake.

Here's a picture of the comb I pulled out:

Beautiful yellow wax, apparently not from the sugar syrup, because that was almost untouched. This piece of comb had nectar stored in it, and upon further inspection - eggs. Crap. The good news is that the queen was released. The bad news is that I pulled out a big piece of comb with new eggs on it. I figure it's too late to put it back in and have the eggs be viable. At this point, I know I have a laying queen so I'm going to leave the hive closed for two weeks and see what I find then.

Another pretty picture:

Stopped at Essie's at lunch again. Syrup is down another pint and there's more activity at the swarm trap. The bees are very orange colored like the ones in our hives, so it might not be swarm scouting behavior, rather, it could just bee new local bees checking it out.

Lunchtime bee check!

Cloudy and 62 degrees.

I stopped over to Essie's at lunch today and checked the bees. The sugar syrup on the hive installed yesterday is down about one pint. Tomorrow I will bring a half gallon jar in to have her swap out over the weekend once they get low on syrup. The bees were flying strong.

The swarm trap I put on one of her trees had scout activity. I counted about 10 bees that entered the box in five minutes. It would be really awesome if the bee tree in the back swarmed to this box. I couldn't really tell where the bees were coming from.

A couple cell phone pictures:

Both hives are started

Yesterday I started the 10-frame medium beehive at my house. It went pretty well for a first-timer. Corissa, Milo, Owen and Essie all supervised from about 20 feet away.

Today I went over to Essie's and installed her bees too. It went very quick and easy. They flew a lot more than mine yesterday. 

When I got home I checked the syrup level in my hive. They haven't used much since last night. The bees were going in and out of the hive a lot, so maybe they're ignoring the syrup and gathering nectar from flowers...