Learning Beekeeping

At my friends farm, I put up 2 swarm traps on the treeline last week. I have 4 at my house, 3 at the outyard, and 2 down by the creek. So I should be set to catch ~3-4 swarms this year.

Inventory count of unused gear:
Deeps- 8 at home – 6 at outyard
Mediums- 14 at home – 6? at outyard
Lids – 8 at home – 6? at outyard
Honey centrifuge – 1 at home – Vevor 4/8 frame

With 10 hives now, 6 may need 2 mediums, 4 1 medium. I should be good for the honeyflow. If I double my hive count, then I may have an issue. Or use deeps as honey supers which is fine.

Of the 4 hives in the home yard, all of them needed splitting. I didn’t have much time, so I split 2 of them. The Blue hive has a non-standard Illinois super. It is my last one I haven’t cut down to a medium. I was just going to sell it. But it is on a deep and medium. However, the bees moved up into it over winter, so it is fully occupied. The deep became the honey super. So I rotated the Illinois to the bottom, medium then deep. I saw white wax and lots of reserves.

I split the other hives to give them more room and make 2 new hives. One in a full deep, the other in a deep nuc. I like the laying pattern I see.
The far left hive I didn’t have time to split, but I was able to add in some empty frames, and move the full frames to the top in a new deep. So I can split later.

So last September, the hives were too weak from drought to split. Not enough numbers or brood.
After Pennsic I took too long to get back to them and the July splits in the outyard died during the drought. The last swarm died as well from predator pressure, as I was left under the trap. Skunk most likely dwindled its numbers down. I’ll come back in 3 weeks.

I equalized the remaining 4 hives at the outyard yesterday. Fed 3 of them 2 gal of 1:1. One of them, a Corey queen, was really strong, 8 frames, I went ahead and split that. Used only 3 frames. I saw the queen on one of the frames, but never saw her again. The queenless hive retained the majority of the bees and the position. I also noted 6 extra deeps and tops and bottoms are available. I think I have 20 mediums for honeyflow this summer.

Home hives were all fed. All 4. The fifth looked week in November and was merged with a hive to retain the drawn comb and improve the odds. I used up the majority of my free wood to make 7 deeps, 1 medium, 7 lids, and 1 nuc box.