Wednesday, 8 October 2008

Last checks before winter

I had hoped that today would have been the final check and feed before the bees were ready for winter, however on visiting a site with 10 hives there were three that had lost their roofs due to recent strong winds. The bees in each hive seemed OK but the stores in the top of the frames were depleted presumably due to robbing. As you will see below I replaced the roofs and placed enough weight on top, to keep them down until we move them.
I gave each colony a frame of food and will have to check again in a week to give more stores if needed.

One thing I did notice inside one of the hives was this queen bumble bee, she presumably got in the hive when the roof was off and the bees killed her before she could escape. She was wedged between two frames and the bees had pulled all the hairs from her back although there was no other sign of damage to limbs or wings. Why she couldn't just fly away I don't know as with no roof, the top of the hive was open.

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