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I do not like Langstroth hives. They are difficult, expensive and cause angrier bees. I went into the hive to check if they were eating the syrup or not. The syrup was not in the hive, it was outside of the follower board. And the bees got so mad at me, the starting buzzing and bumping into me. A bee stung my thumb. I quickly glance at the syrup baggie and saw no bees drinking then tried to quickly close up without getting more bees mad. A bee got even madder and stung me right above my lip. It's still swollen as I write this.. and it sure is not a pretty sight. I was doing this without a veil, a stupid thing of me to do. Lesson learned... twice. ALWAYS WEAR A VEIL, EVEN IF YOU ARE JUST PEEKING IN TO SEE IF THEY ARE EATING SYRUP OR NOT! The bees in the Long hive have become noticeably aggressive. The weather has been pretty bad today and yesterday... perhaps they were just cranky? At least it's going to be much warmer tomorrow... 90 degrees F!
And for the bees in the OB hive, they were going CRAZY yesterday! The bees were flying and running around, a ton of them were on the bottom, many bearding outside of the hive. It was not the normal behavior I've been watching in 3 days. All the ventilation holes on the top were open, and the bees were PRESSED against the screen. They wanted out... and bad! Some theories I came up with are... overheating, lack of air so they were suffocating, swarming, absconding or robbing. I decided that it was overheating and the lack of air. Not wanting the bees to suffer any longer, I decided to put them in the TBH. There were 5 frames, and I put them on the top bars. So while the top bars looked vertical, from the side, the frames were horizontal hanging off the top bars. I covered the big gap with an empty plastic bag that once contained grass seed. It allowed air to pass through. Then I told the BioBees Forum (Please Join this wonderful forum is you are interested in TBHs!) what I did, and one fellow suggested me to cut the comb and tie it on top of the top bars. At first I was not comfortable at causing a destructive disturbance to them, and I wondered if they would be able to recover quickly enough or not. Then the fellow assured me that they will be fine, and that it was just like a cut out. He also said that they will recover quickly, he knows so for he did this previously too. So tomorrow, on a very warm day, I'm going to cut the comb to fit in the TBH, and tie it on! Then I will finally have a TBH! I will try to remember to take pics!
I'm not quite sure about what to do with the Long hive. They are just so slow on comb building and I have a feeling that they are going to stay in the top deep for a long time. Hope they just will build enough to overwinter well. For now I will let them be, and feed them a little too, WITH A VEIL! I may put them in a TBH, still not sure.
Some (better) names for the hives I have are... Roman goddess Mellona she was the patroness of bees and beekeeping. Her name comes from mel, meaning honey. And I'm not sure what to name the other hive... any more ideas for me?
Have a nice day!
Kris