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It's been a tougher year this year.
Yesterday I went down to check hives and add a honey super to one of the hives. The hive that contained the cutout seen above had died and two full boxes of comb were gross and overrun with what I think are hive beetle larvae. I'd babied them, a new queen had hatched and was laying....and then I go on vacation for a week and get busy a few days and they're all dead. Pisses me off because I essentially wasted 8hrs on it with no return.
While I was there, my best hive was really active...they were agitated. I opened it up to do my inspection to see if i needed to add a box and they got pretty fired up. I closed it back up and noticed a flurry of activity I'd not seen. I'm pretty certain another group of wild bees had shown up to rob them. There was a big bee fight happening at the entrance with hundreds of bees, there was a group at the top opening, bees were dropping in a ball of 3-4 onto the ground....dead bees were being dragged away. I've heard of robbing, but I'd never seen it in one of my hives. Hopefully they were strong enough to hold them off. I have another hive that has a lot of honey but way less activity and I'm not sure that hive would be able to hold them off like this one did.
This year we've only had a handful of calls for swarms and I didn't get any of them. Helped with a few cutouts that have had mixed results....some are strong for the guys and 2 of them absconded the next day.
The hives I do have strong all have 3 boxes of honey and one I added a 4th. I was hoping to add several hives but now I'm still down.
I didn't get my traps built this year, but a guy I do bees with did put some out and has been very successful. I'll definitely have some traps ready to go next spring and catch some swarms that way. The trick seems to be lemon grass oil and ventilation in the boxes.
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