I relocated nine beehives last week, and checked up on them this weekend, in preparation for the upcoming spring weather.
For some reason, almost half the hives had a lot of dead bees in front of it. I also took a weakened, queenless starving hive up there with me, with the intention of merging it with another weak hive, but they all died on the way. Does transportig bees stresss them and cause them to die? It seems like the hives with the most bees, and least space, had the most loses. Is there anything I can reduce loses next time?
I didn't see any queen cells, which surprises me. I figure the warm spring weather will arrive in ten or so days, so I expected to see some. I may have simply missed them. Only one hive had a heavy amount of drones. I wasn't sure what to do with them, as my mentor advised me to kill them but people on these forums have said otherwise; I ended up squishing most of them.
I gave most hives an extra super. Two of the hives proved to be a challenge, as last year, I needed to move my deep nucs into a bigger sized super, but I only had medium sized brood chambers available to me, so I put the deep frames into two medium supers. They of course built a lot of comb underneath, I discarded most and strapped the brood to frames with rubber bands. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my deep nucs anymore; I'm transitioning to all mediums. I guess I'll try to fill them with bees and sell them.
I wasn't sure if one of the hives should have had the extra super on top. They have a fair amount of space, there's a few frames that haven't been used and a few frames were somewhat low on honey, but spring is approaching and I'm not sure what the flow will be like soon.
I set up two trap hives. The hives are on stands, with feet sitting in a container with a little bit of vegetable oil in it. I've read that such can be used to stop ants, but I'm unsure how effective it'll be. I used to use sump oil for this purpose, but am concerned about the environmental impact of such as it'll spill when it rains, and I figure it'd be disrespectful to the farmer who I have the hives at, to even suggest using such. I guess I'll need to top up the containers when using vegetable oil; I didn't have to with sump oil. I used only a very little amount covering the bottoms, I'm not sure if I even used enough and it cost me a bit of money to do, about $12 in oil (which is the cheapest homebrand oil that I could find and was on half price, I wouldn't consistently bee able to purchase it for this price). I did wonder if maybe I could exchange honey for used vegetable oil from a local fish and chips shop, as I figure used vegetable oil would be just as good. I'm not exactly sure how I'd approach them for such or if it's even a good idea. I also read that mineral oil can perform the same function as vegetable oil, and that it's supposed to be very cheap, but it was enormously expensive when looking for prices online; I haven't checked local hardware stores for it, it may be cheap there.
A few of the hives had a bit of moisture on the top of them. I've very concerned about this, simply because I've had this issue in the past and I haven't ever really been able to work out how to effectively deal with it. The hives that had the most moisture, had the most buckled lid; I'm not sure if water got in there, causing it to buckle with time, or if the water came in from elsewhere.
I'm not sure when I should check the hives again, but I figure in about a months's time would be good.
I took a couple photos:
https://imgur.com/a/kRlhx
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