July Hive Inspection

While waiting for the freight company to come and take some transmission cores to the transmission shop in Anchorage, I took the opportunity to inspect the beehives. I admit to being a little lazy on my bee-related blog updates this year, so let's do a bit of a season recap, first.

I received ten packages of four-pounds each this year and hived them in late April. I populated six Warre-type hives and four Langstroth type. The Warres were started with small sections of old comb rubber-banded to the top bars and each Langstroth received four frames of fully drawn comb and four frames of partially drawn comb.

By mid-May, each hive had comsumed three baggie-feeders of 1:1 syrup and had at least made a healthy start into the 1/2-pound protein patties they were given. By the end of May, I had lost one of the Warres due, apparently, to queen-failure, also another Warre was underperforming and so I chose to combine it with another. Two of the Langstroth hives were underperforming and I chose to combine them with the two stronger Langstroth colonies also. This brings me to four Warres and two Langstroth hives at this time.

The weather, this year, has been warm and mostly dry. The bees have been using it to their advantage. All but one of the hives have a strong population. One oddity, though... I saw exactly zero drones until the second week of June. They require 24 days to develop from egg to adult. Six weeks from hiving seems a very, very long time. Oh well, bees are bees and I have to trust that they know what they need when they need it.

Today's inspection showed me all six hives with some capped honey. This is good considering both fireweed and white-clover have been in bloom for nearly two weeks. Unfortunately, they all also showed a remarkable lack of built up comb. None of them occupied significantly more than one box though all had three boxes to work with. I tried to encourage the framed hives to move down into the lower boxes by moving some of the filled frames down and replacing them with the undrawn frames whose places they took. Unfortunately, I could do no such thing with the Warres as they are not framed hives and all such manipulations required moving entire boxes. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to peek in on them again.

With our winter dearth of August through May, I imagine the Warres will need close to 50 pounds of stored honey (nearly two full boxes) and the Langstroths will probably need 60 to 70 pounds (again, nearly two full boxes) in order to come through winter healthy enough to give me honey next year. I estimate that the rate of progress - honey stores and comb construction - will probably be insufficient to see them through the winter. I'll check again as the fireweed finishes its bloom in a couple weeks. Still, I'm going to start building feeders right away. I think if each hive can put up 20-30 pounds of 2:1 syrup plus a protein patty, they should all be fine if they have a good population level.

These are italians, though, and so are likely to continue rearing brood right into September, gobbling valuable stores and try to enter winter with their customarily enormous cluster sizes. I could wish they were the more frugal carniolan or russian strain, but I have what I have and other Alaskan and Canadian beekeepers have had success wintering italians so my hopes are high, as of now.

To be continued when the fireweed bloom ends...

update: upon review of my records, these are carniolans, so there is some hope they'll cut back brood rearing as the nectar flow slows/stops. Yay!!!