What did you do in your Apiary/Bee yard today?

[Bill Murray]

I plan to assassinate the mean hive's queen, then systematically eliminate her offspring.  Eventually support for her government will die out, and I will then install a young puppet ruler of my choosing, who will be accepted by the remaining populace without resistance in their desperation for a stable society.  Hopefully the new queen will govern the colony more to my liking

Haha I like that.

[The15thMember]

The revolution has begun!    They actually weren't as bad to work today as they were last fall.  Still bumping my head and occasionally chewing at my wrist, but not the cloud of angry bees following my hands around like before.  The hive wasn't overly full, so I easily found the queen and sent her to her early grave.  I'll remove their queen cells next week, and give them a frame of eggs from my nicest hive. 

Also everyone's sugar rolls came back either 0 or 1 mite, so my winter OAV treatments clearly worked.   

[Bill Murray]

Not to change the subject but why am I seeing double locations??

[BeeMaster2]

Good question. I will check it out.
Jim Altmiller

[The15thMember]

It was a nice, breezy, low-humidity day here today, so I painted all my new polystyrene equipment, along with the pallet I'm going to use as a stand.  I've never used pallet stands before, only cinder blocks, but the manufacturer recommended having the bottom board supported on all sides, and we had our freezer dryer come on this 1/2 size pallet, so it seemed like the perfect thing to use.  I may put the pallet on cinder blocks if I find the hive is too low to work comfortably.  I've never used any 10 frame equipment before either, so it's all new with this thing! 
 

[BeeMaster2]

Bill,
Not to change the subject but why am I seeing double locations??

Robo corrected it. It was just an error in the code.
Jim Altmiller

[G3farms]

finished pulling the feeder shims on hives and added queen excluders and honey super to the hives that are boiling over.

Some hives were just starting to build comb in the feeder shims, so a little bonus was some tasty honey, some was just starting to be capped, it is time.

note..........dogwoods are blooming, first ones I saw were saturday........hint hint

[cao]

Yesterday was warm and the bees were flying.  Cleaned up 2 more dead hives.  Saw lots of drones flying for the first time, so i guess I need to go through my hives for the first time and plan on pulling a few queens to simulate a swarm for making splits.  Today I prepositioned a bunch of 5 frame boxes for the splits to come later.

[BeeMaster2]

I made up 8 boxes of 11 for Ames fitting in a 10 frame box. We have the talked about this at BeeFest for the last two years and finally got around to it. Used an old small table saw. Cut one side first on 88 frames and then adjusted the setting and cut the other her side.
I also cleaned up another 6 boxes of frames and removed all wax and plastic foundation.
Jim Altmiller

[Occam]

Couple days late but unfortunately cleaned out the log hive, dead out. I think I'm going to convert it into a swarm trap on my property and just move any bees that move in to a Lang hive. I had a lot of fun building it but unfortunately it was rather difficult to manage given that not one thing on it is standard size. So I'm going to put in a couple cross bars and set some Lang frames in for them to start on if they move in. Seems like a better use for it and it's a pretty ideal volume for a swarm trap, basically 1.5 deeps equivalent volume.

[The15thMember]

Couple days late but unfortunately cleaned out the log hive, dead out. I think I'm going to convert it into a swarm trap on my property and just move any bees that move in to a Lang hive. I had a lot of fun building it but unfortunately it was rather difficult to manage given that not one thing on it is standard size. So I'm going to put in a couple cross bars and set some Lang frames in for them to start on if they move in. Seems like a better use for it and it's a pretty ideal volume for a swarm trap, basically 1.5 deeps equivalent volume.

Well, it was an interesting experiment anyway.  I bet it'll make a great swarm trap. 

[Occam]

Couple days late but unfortunately cleaned out the log hive, dead out. I think I'm going to convert it into a swarm trap on my property and just move any bees that move in to a Lang hive. I had a lot of fun building it but unfortunately it was rather difficult to manage given that not one thing on it is standard size. So I'm going to put in a couple cross bars and set some Lang frames in for them to start on if they move in. Seems like a better use for it and it's a pretty ideal volume for a swarm trap, basically 1.5 deeps equivalent volume.

Well, it was an interesting experiment anyway.  I bet it'll make a great swarm trap. 

Right. Live and learn. It's a part of nature, at once both beautiful and brutal

[BeeMaster2]

Occam,
Bee sure to put it next to a tree trunk. I find that bees goto swarm traps that are strapped to a tree much more often than the ones out in the sun.
Jim Altmiller

[Ben Framed]

"much more often than the ones out in the sun."

I'll second that. I even once had a swarm enter a stored empty hive, inside a closed 'dark' garage.

Phillip

[Occam]

Good call, thanks for the advice!

[Michael Bush]

Nice yesterday and I got into a few hives after work, mostly looking for the dead ones.  63 F this morning.  They say it will be 34 F this time tomorrow...  If you don't like the weather, just wait few minutes.

[Bob Wilson]

Today...
1. Paper combined a swarm into the Layen's hive, which was queenless.
2. Started pulling capped brood frames from nucs into production hives.
3. Three days ago I marked a queen, and for the first time she flew away instead of heading back inside the colony. But checking today, I found she returned, with the pretty red dot on her back. I started marking queens whenever I run across them. Most of them are marked, some this year, some yellow from last year.

[Bill Murray]

Bob, thats funny Thursday I had a laying queen, I caught her, marked her, and when I set her back in she took off. Today marley and I went back out there, and there she was,back in the box. 2 Hives later we had a huge queen already marked. She just took off, and hit the ground about 3 ft away. I picked her up and put her back in, she took off again, almost crashed and then the second stage afterburners kicked in to who knows where. Marley said how did that happen? She was mated, I replied no one will ever believe you if you tell them.

[Occam]

Beautiful warm day here, reached a nice 68. Didn't do anything but observe the bees flying, noticed 2 drones wandering around the entrance.

[The15thMember]

It was one of the windiest days I've ever seen around here yesterday.  It was forecast to be worse in the afternoon, so in the morning I did queen cell reduction in my splits and gave the mean hive their frame of eggs.  Hopefully I got all their queen cells.  As I was finishing up, I was thinking I'd better get out from under the trees before a branch clonks me on the head.  I gathered up my stuff and went down to the garage, thinking about my bees, and I pressed the garage door button 4 times and was like "Why isn't this garage door working?!", and then I realized the lights weren't working either.  Apparently the power had gone out while I was in the apiary, and it wasn't restored until after 11 PM last night.