🐝💗Our Backyard Beekeeping Journey!💗🐝

[Apis mellifera]

I know we don't have 8 frames of drawn comb to put in it, but would it be worth putting it on, for them to "get started on?" Or would be be just giving them a bunch of empty space that will be dead cold air?

Would a medium be any better? Again, I don't know how much drawn comb we'd have to put in it.

You could try a medium. Just take it off early enough to feed them so they have time to fill the top deep with stores. They may ignore the medium and fill the top box anyway.

 

[drstratton]

Honeybees love sweet clover. It comes up the first year and blooms heavily the second year and then dies. Great for adding nitrogen to the soil.

It is used here as a cover crop along the right of ways by the highway department to get the regular grasses started. Eventually heavy grass will crowd it out.

Sweet clover is the taller variety correct? Good to know that heavier grass will choke it out, thank you. We might plant that in my old horse paddock. The only thing growing in there right now is cheatgrass. I'm also thinking about planting mountain mint, it's a clumping variety, so shouldn't run rampant. We're going to plant Dutch white clover in front of the Apiary.

 

[drstratton]

You could try a medium. Just take it off early enough to feed them so they have time to fill the top deep with stores. They may ignore the medium and fill the top box anyway.

Thank you, this is what I was going to respond with. Glad I had the right idea.

 

[drstratton]

Have a nice window of 4 days below 85F next wk. Time for the Formic Pro 2 wk treatment. Chk brood pattern and how their stores look before the fall flow.

We're still in the 90's. So we'll be treating with OAV. We'll start next week, as soon as we get our vaporizer.