So Close!

Hello again, from the Flow Hive Team! Yesterday's check was a rousing success, but we are still one check away from a honey harvest.

We found the queen and tons of brood as well as tons of bees in all three of our deep brood chamber boxes. There were also lots of bees in the Flow Hive and they were well on their way to filling it with honey! There was also plenty of pollen for the bees to feed to all that brood and the brood were all plump, white, and floating in copious amounts of royal jelly.

We decided against doing a mite check today due to the hot weather predicted over the next few days which would mean that we wouldn't be able to treat with FormicPro if the mite count was above threshold (3%). So, we're going to wait until the weather is more cooperative before our next mite check. One positive, though not at all scientific sign with regards to the mites, was that some drone comb at the bottoms of the frames got ripped open while we were inspecting and those larvae didn't have any mites on them.

One task we did preform was a reverse of the bottom deep with the middle deep brood box and placing the queen in the bottom deep. There was more room for her to lay in the bottom deep, so we wanted to place that on top of her so she could find it more easily.

The next Flow Hive Check will be a honey harvest on Saturday, July 2nd, 2022 at 10am in the A2B2 Teaching Apiary at Matthaei Botanical Gardens. Hope you can bee there!

If you would like to join the A2B2 Flow Hive Team or would like to know more about the Flow Hive in general, please contact Jen Haeger at [email protected].