Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Jacobs will be doing his first tree cut out Wednesday morning. All are welcome to come and watch, help, and learn.

What time does it begin?

You'll have to ask Jacobs. It's his ballgame.

Jacobs,
What time does it begin?

My best estimate is get there at noon and begin shortly thereafter. Wally said the temperature should be 60 or above when we do it and from the National Weather Service hourly graphs, it looks like that will happen just after noon and will be above 60 for about 5 hours. It will probably take me that long to gnaw through the log.

The log is at Wally's place for those who did not know.

Good luck with your tree cut out. I hate to miss all the fun. Let us know how things work out.
Norma

Hope to see some photo's of the cut out. Hate I could not stay and participate.

Jacobs got help. Here's what it looked like..........

http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j226/ ... 20Removal/

Wally led a group of the inexperienced through the tear down of the tree and placing of comb in the frame and hives without the loss of any fingers or toes. We all learned a lot and had a great time. I'm sorry you missed Wally spotting the queen among tens of thousands of bees and gently herding her across the landing board and into the hive. It was impressive to actually see large numbers of bees parading into the hive in response to her presence.

Wally, thanks for a great day in the bees and for thousands and thousands of new friends.

Jacobs said it well:We all learned a lot and had a great time.

Jacobs, thanks for sharing the experience.

Wally, thanks for another adventure.

Nice photo's. I would like to have stayed, but that is the way it goes. How is the hive doing now? Did they stay in the new hive?

As of 11:30 p.m. Saturday night, they are still here. I brought a deep to the cutout, which was not enough to hold the bees. I bought another deep and frames from Wally while I was there. When I got home I gave them a pollen patty, a medium super with a few frames of honey, a few drawn frames and some barely drawn frames. I then gave them 1:1 in a hive top feeder. So far they are staying and I am seeing some foragers bringing in pollen. I left a lot of the foragers at Wally's and we put mostly brood comb in the hive, and that is why I put in the pollen patty and 1:1 sugar water. Each morning there is more wood debris on the landing board that the girls have removed from the hive.

I still have Wally's hinged frames in my deep and an upcoming challenge will be how and when to remove and replace them.

Last Sunday I began the process of removing the sandwich frames from the bee tree hive. Marc helped me search for and locate the queen. She is a fat golden beautiful brood pattern producer. In addition to laying in the deep, she was laying in two mediums and has begun laying in a third. We found her in the first medium above the deep and inserted a queen excluder above the deep. In a little over 24 days from last Sunday all brood in the deep should have emerged. I'll replace the sandwich frames with 7 deep frames, and if any stores have been put into the sandwich frames, I will put those frames in an empty deep above the inner cover to allow the bees to clean them out. Hopefully the queen will not decide to go where they usually don't and continue using the frames. And, yes, the queen excluder will come out with the sandwich frames unless I foul up and forget.

On July 4th the queen excluder and sandwich frames came out of the deep on this hive. The excluder did its job and there was no brood in the deep. The bees had stored a significant amount of pollen in the deep, but almost no nectar or honey. The sandwich frames were replaced with 3 frames of drawn comb and 3 undrawn frames with plastic foundation. I am trying what Kurt suggested and I used my saved bees wax to heavily coat the undrawn plastic foundation. I will be curious to see if the bees take to it better. (I have never had trouble getting them to draw the medium plastic.) The hive was very strong and I gave them a pollen patty to replace the frames of pollen I now have in the freezer.

Wally's trees make good bees!