Friday brought about enough of a break in the weather to get my 4th hive inspection done. I was a little bit more laid back about finding the queen and getting her marked , being more interested in what they were up to. After the realisation that I had stupidly installed a random mix of drone and worker foundation in my brood box and that it was probably this school girl error that had halted the progress of the drawing out, I was relieved to find on today's inspection that swapping the drone foundation frame with a new worker frame had encouraged the poor little confused gals to start drawing it out and hopefully my fickle queen may deign to lay in this. Having seen that this tactic worked, I swapped out the other end too, am really hoping they get the idea and forgive me for my stupid error but if not I am resigned to not getting any honey this year and just ensuring I get them strong enough to successfully over winter.
The following is a very heavily edited vid of the inspection, the unedited version is 26 minutes long. At 9 minutes it is still interminably dull but I would appreciate the more experienced amongst you (i.e. everyone) to criticise anything you see that I'm doing drastically wrong.
Great vid Lois, and a nice tidy job of doing the inspection!
ReplyDeleteI can't see anything wrong with how you are doing it, but there are 2 suggestions I'd like to make, if I may?
You dont seem to have you're hive on a stand, it may be easier for you to do the inspection if it was higher up, it would certainly save all the bending (and possible bad back later), it doesnt need to be anything special, even an upturned metal bin will do the job, just make sure its at a comfortable height for you and is sturdy n stable!
The only other thing I would say to try, is keeping the comb vertical at all times, when you are inspecting the frames you seem to be twisting them towards yourself by making the side you want to view horizontal, this can result in a couple of problems in our admittedly small experience. Firstly if the queen falls from the underside, you wouldnt know about it, and secondly if the bees remove the wax from the bottom of the frame (as happened to us recently), then the foundation can sag out and break off (which we were lucky it didnt!) Its much better to lift the frame horizontally, then to bring one end above the other making the top bar now vertical, and then to (gently) spin it round the (now) vertical top bar axis so you can view the other side, then reverse the process to put the frame back into the hive. Its really down to personal preference, but thats one of the things we've picked up that seems to help make life easier!
Once again thank you so much for comments. I do actually have a couple of stands but in their delicate state I didn't want to disturb them any more than I had to so am waiting until they seem a little more settled before moving them any more. Maureen suggested the same with the spinning the frame issue. It one of those things I know I should be doing but don't for some reason. She also suggested, as I have the frames the "warm way" I should conduct the inspection from the side of the hive rather than the back, that way I would be face onto the frame and it'd make it easier to manipulate the frames as you suggest, will try that this week. Thanks again.
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