Bees Under the Floor – Pesky things!
We’ve been busy this weekend building our new hives. Morgan has been helping and then today all three of us were at it and we’ve gradually turned the pallet of wood that arrived last week into two new beehives. There’s another two to build yet though. First we have to seal all of the cut edges with PVA glue, then we construct them and finally paint them with a wood preservative.
Constructed Beehive
Painted Beehive Components
It was a gorgeous day today though, a light breeze and warm in the sun, and although the temperature only got to 11.9°C the bees were really busy. The bees from the hive we recently re-located to our garden was fairly active which was a good sign, and Clettwr and Leri were also really busy, with the entire front of Clettwr covered in bees enjoying the sunshine. Pat, our next-door neighbour commented on the fact that her wallflowers were covered in honey bees too, so hopefully they are finding something to forage on.
I opened both the newly relocated hive and Leri quickly as well. Whilst feeding them over the winter I removed a frame from the supers and inserted some fondant. I now wanted to replace the frames. The bees in the smaller hive were fine, there were quite a few in there but they were really docile. It wasn’t quite the same in Leri, as soon as I took of the crown board the bees were in full attack mode and bubbled out of the top of the hive in their thousands. I managed to replace the frame and close them back up though and they soon settled back down.
However, the bees in the hive that I didn’t touch are up to something odd – There always seems to be something odd going on in our apiary. We’ve noticed hundreds of dead bees below this hive recently. So, this evening, as the temperature started to drop, I had a look under the hive, only to find thousands of bees clustered under the hive. They are all hanging onto the mesh floor outside of the hive. I have no idea why they are doing this, but they probably end up getting chilled if they stay like that overnight and then die which may explain the large number of dead bees under the hive.
Bees under the Floor
As well as having no idea why they are doing it, I also have no idea how to stop them from doing it either. Maybe I’ll put a varroa board on tomorrow as that might stop them. Pesky bees!!
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Hi
yesterday I changed floor and next day saw similar with lots of bees on ground and I found cluster under OMFloor. I checked that the queen was inside after the floor was changed. I used a carton to scoop up bees and put them in an open super I used as an eke above the crown board which had feed holes open. Most bees went down the holes but there is still a smaller cluster remaining outside. Did you get any more info.
No more info I’m afraid, but after placing our cluster back into the hive (and seeing the queen inside the hive), we left them to it and then they started clustering under the floor again.
We put them back in again and put the varroa board on to try to stop them going under there. We’ve left the board there for now and we’ll see what they do. I’m not sure what the attraction under the floor is though.
Al.