Wow, Girls Going Great Guns!!

[Dazzabee]

No its not a headline from The Sun!

Inspected three of my hives yesterday and discovered that all 3 were jam packed full of bees and they were close to running out of space. Situation was as follows;

Hive A;
Over wintered on National Brood & ½ and now has 8 x BB frames of brood at approx 90% coverage on each frame + 1 frame just beginning to be laid up. The other three frames are stores. In the ½ section there are 3 x frames of Brood and 6 of stores with the last frame now also being drawn. All 22 frames are completely covered in bees!

Hive B:
Over wintered on 14 x 12 and now has 8 x brood frames at approx 90% coverage + 4 frames of Stores, again all 12 frames were jam packed full of bees.

Both these hives have queens raised by me last August in emergency action taken after my friends bee’s swarmed. A long explanation is available in the original post so won’t elaborate here!
Anyway they have now been placed at a site very close to OSR (thanks to a generous offer from another local Beek) which is now budding and looks like it will open soon!

Hive C:
This hive is sited in my back garden and was over wintered on National Brood & 1/2 . It now has 8 frames of brood in the BB and 8 frames of brood in the ½ section too both at around 80% coverage. All other frames are of stores. This hive had even more bees than the other two and there were also 3 x empty play cups present.

Action taken:
I bruised some of the stores frames in the BB’s to encourage them to move them up and I added a QX and super to each hive to give them extra space. There was congestion at the entrances to the hives too so I also removed the entrance blocks. Oh and all three are on OMF.

I think this year’s fun and games with swarm control etc begins now for me (or at least very, very, very soon).
Also considering moving the other hives over to 14 x 12’s this year too.

Would be interested to know how others in the south compare? Is this normal for now or are my girls a bit more advanced than most?

Ps- I've tried to remember to mention everything but I bet I still forgot to mention something!!

 

[Teemore]

Sounds like your colonies are getting a good start!

Make sure they have some fresh foundation to draw out - it will keep some of the house bees occupied and I understand that this will in part reduce the urge to swarm. I recently attended a lecture where an over-abundance of idle and listless 'teenage' house-bees was cited as a reason for colonies developing the urge to swarm and as much of an influence as simple overcrowding.

Keep an eye on the space they have in the hive and give them wax to draw; the rest is up to the bees!!

 

[Hombre]

The other benefit of giving them foundation to draw is that it will free up drawn comb, and some winter stores perhaps, for making up nucs or splits later.

 

[Dazzabee]

Thanks for the advice on adding foundation, I'll keep that in mind for the future.

Luckily the supers I added were all foundation as all my spare equipment is new at the moment! Let's call that beginners luck!

Hmm ....can you still be classed as beginner going into your 2nd full season! ;0)

 

[Dishmop]

The queen in my obs hive has gone into overdrive...

Can only of course see what is happening on the outside of the frames but she has filled 80%-90% of the lower frames and in the last few of days has filled about a third of the upper frames and about a small palm size area of those are now capped..........
At the moment the outside temperature is about 8 but its suprising how much more heat is being generated inside the hive because of all thier rushing about, than a few weeks ago with the same outside temperature.