Well today was B-Day.
Things are booming. They are getting honey off the bloodwood all right! Hive 2, the strongest, had fully drawn and filled a honey super I added 2 weeks ago. Worried about crammed up broodbox, we added a 4th super, as a 2nd brood super. It is going to take super-man to lift that top storey off the high hive stands we have. But there are still no fully capped frames. Some I think were being drawn out more. Some are 80% capped but in the wet season I don't want to risk extracting it. I wore my full bee suit for the first time in a couple of years. This hive gave me 20 stings last time. A friend was a few metres away watching. I think he should have been in a wheelchair race at the speed he left at when he got 4 stings up his shirt.
Hive 1 was a double. A strong hive of the breed we have that breeds brood up quickly. But I had kept it with just one honey super hoping they would cap what they had. Needless to say they hadn't finished capping anything, but had built up on top of the frames. We use migratory lids. So we went to town and bought aluminium flyscreen and put it right across under the lid. I was reluctant to put a solid mat on top because they would lose the ventilation in this hot weather. I think the gauze is loose enough they will still be able to walk on top of the frames. We added another brood box on this hive as well.
The other breed of bee is a bit slower at building up so we left things alone except for putting gauze under the lid of the one which also was building on the frames and not capping what they have. These two hives were from a split sometime after christmas, so are a bit behind.
All the new frames we've added have been undrawn plastic foundation, a good time to have it drawn now they are on a flow. There is now whitening on nearly all the hives and obviously bringing in honey.
I think this will answer your question, Oz. Actually this has been the best year anyone remembers here. There has been no dearth since before November and in fact I had to make that split. I have never before been able to have more than a 2 storey hive and I won't add supers unless necessary, but now there are 2 doubles, 2 triples and the quadruple. I still am using excluders, though I was thinking about taking it off the strong one. I just have a problem queen-spotting at the best of times. I haven't fully inspected the brood today, though 2 weeks ago it was pretty much wall to wall in the 2 strongest hives. I moved brood upstairs then to make room.
And bloodwood is beautiful honey!!
Lone