Beehaus Up & Buzzing

In May 2018, with 3 weeks of great sunny weather, I set-up my Beehaus (external link to Beehaus), dragged it up the farmer’s field and installed bees.  Exciting times.

Before The Beehaus

Two 14×12 colonies, back to back, lots of bees.

After

Installing Bees Into Beehaus

Key points:

• Turned  the two 14×12 wooden hives 90 degrees and moved them 1m away (see photo above)
• Allowed flying bees to enter the Beehaus
• Unable to find the Queens in my busy 14×12 wooden hives, I made two simple splits, making sure eggs in all 4 colonies (2 colonies in the Beehaus)
• Both 14×12 hives had brought in loads of nectar

Result

No idea where the Queens are but all should be OK.

One Week Later

• Left wooden hive – Found Queen (and eggs, brood, stores), marked her and walked her in to the left side of Beehaus
• Right wooden hive – Found 7 Queen cells (but no eggs) and removed 5.  I left 2 queen cells right next to each other, so hopefully first Queen out will kill the other rather than creating additional swarms (both queen cells looked a bit on small side, so I wasn’t confident to kill them both)
• Beehaus – No eggs and no queen cells (and hence walked in the Queen from left wooden hive). Put newspaper between 2 sides of the Beehaus in order to combine
• I added supers to all hives as they had continued to pile in the stores despite a cold start to the Spring

Further One Week Later

• Beehaus – The bees in Beehaus had accepted the Queen and combined
• Beehaus – I saw Queen in left side of Beehaus, moved any frames with brood into left side of Beehaus and added QE so that Queen stays in left. In 30 days I will close right entrance and put blocker between left and right so that I have spare hive for a swarm
• I added the Beehaus entrance narrowers – “wasp” setting – as the number of flying bees is decreasing as they die off
• Left wooden hive – Found 5 Queen cells and removed 4 leaving 1 large Queen cell
• The left wooden hive had drawn most frames in super and filled half (uncapped) – so I added additional super
• I did not disturb the right wooden hive as it may have virgin Queen now
• None of the colonies bringing in much pollen

Lessons Learnt

• Add supers by end April – even if think it has been cold
• Queen from split hive can be walked back into her old colony one week later and accepted

Plan

• Not expecting swarms for next few weeks
• It’s 17C and rainy for the next week … so just as I want good weather for queen mating the weather is not conducive
• All colonies – I will leave for 2-3 weeks to inspect for eggs
• Beehaus – in 4 weeks, seal and close right hand side so that this is a spare hive for swarms

Read More

• Detailed notes in My Apiary
• My Beehaus Review
• Beehaus (external link to their website to read about all features)