🔎 Inspection & Consolidation

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Saturday's weather was pretty solid, plenty warm enough, 70° and sunny, Greensboro, NC Weather History. Still working towards (4) production hives, moving Hive 23 slowly over to replace Hive 25, which we expect problems from. That will be tomorrow's fun... We've scheduled the Mentees from this year’s Bee School to come over to help and gain some experience and saved inspections from Hive 23, 25 & the Nuc. 

We will also start a new ranking system, placing aggressiveness high, and start selecting from queens that behave the way we want and are not so chippy. With a ranking system, we hope we can promote bees that are gentle, calm, have a low tendency to swarm, and are good honey producers. 

Benny & Kathy (from the Bee Club) met us this afternoon to take a look at a couple of hives. As suspected Hive 25 (Old 23) was booming and shot up the rankings to Number 1... Description: Super Chill & Super Huge, just what you want. In fact, this Hive was so good, B is considering grafting from it. For a later post. Also as expected Old Hive 25 was queenless and is no more. It was "shook out" on Old 23's doorstep and consolidated. 

So then there were 6. Well on our way to 4. B put the word out that we are looking to get rid of a couple of hives, just replace what you take. If no love we'll combine a couple and then dispatch the queen making a super-sized starter and try and get 8 cells into mating nucs.


11

13

15

21

22

23

25

3/5/2022

Q: Eggs

Brood: 6+

Stores: Light

Temp: 5

Calm: 5

A bit on the aggressive side. Next on dispatch list.

3/5/2022

Q: Eggs

Brood: 8+

Stores: Light

Temp: 3

Calm: 3

Another solid Hive, a bit running, some young bees dripping off the comb. Plenty of brood, ready to split next week. Hive 13 move to position 11.

3/5/2022

Q: Spotted

Brood: 8+

Stores: Light

Temp: 2

Calm: 2

Second best hive so far. Hard to get a read on temperament we dropped a drone frame, so they were a little unhappy with that. Plenty of brood, ready to split next week.

3/5/2022

Q: Eggs

Brood: 6+

Stores: Light

Temp: 4

Calm: 4

This hive is off to a bit of a slower start, received the brunt of the storm damage, and lost the most bees. She has some slabs of brood, so it's just a matter of time before they catch up. She already has enough brood to split.

3/5/2022

Not Inspectected moved into 5F Nuc onto pallet for disposition.

3/6/2022

Q: Spotted

Brood: 7+

Stores: Light

Temp:1

Calm: 1

Best hive so far. Super chill and super populated. By far the best hive this round of inspections. Shook Old Hive 25 at landing board, and placed extra deep, (running triple Now)

3/6/2022

Queenless, shook out in front of 23 and combined with 23.


Location: Colfax, NC, USA

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