WCF,
Why do you think that you have to go in and inspect them every week?
If you were a new beekeeper maybe but not when your hives are that big. I would not inspect them until after you pulled all of the honey and even then I would not inspect them until fall in preparation for winter. If they are bringing in pollen every day and there is a good flow of bees, they should bee fine.
I would not pu the queen on top.
Jim Altmiller
I know I don?t need to as I said earlier. I just like to mess with them. I only have 4 hives right now. Sometimes I look at 1 per week just so
I have a chance to get in them every week. This year I?ve almost completely ignored them and then have been struggling to keep queens in some of them.
One hive (left) has a queen that just started laying that I don?t really like.
Middle hive has no queen but I put some eggs in there a week or two ago.
Right hive has a swarm I caught a couple weeks ago combined with them. She was laying last week. You can see the rifle targets chewed up on the landing board from the combine. I didn?t have any newspaper, but I had just gotten back from shooting and had some targets.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk