Friday evening was our monthly bee club meeting where I got some tips on winter hive management. Making sure the bees have enough food is important and one way to monitor this is to weigh the hives so I gave it a try yesterday. I took a luggage scale out to the backyard and tipped the hives (after trying it out on Toby in a box first!) and they're both pretty heavy. Cam's hive was 125lbs and Toby's was 116lbs. I wish I'd have checked them on the fall to see what the peak weights were... I wonder how much honey they go through in a month? I think I'll start checking them every week or so and tracking their weights. It'll give me something to do until it's warm enough to actually take a look inside.
I can listen to them though! I took a listen with my stethoscope and heard a faint hum in both hives. Kind of like hearing traffic in the distance. What a great sound. It also gave me an idea of where the cluster is in the hives. It sounds like Cam's hive is still in the bottom deep and Toby's is a little higher.
Hi Sarah! I've been consulting with our lab tech -- he's spent more time at sea than Cameron has on Earth! -- and he had some interesting ideas. One possible place to consider looking for birthday gift ideas pre-harvest would be at omega dot com... e.g. check this out: http://www.omega.com/pptst/HCTB-3000_RCTB-3000.html
ReplyDelete... but they have many, many kinds of heaters you could use for honey! Better than heating the room to 100 degrees or more, I'd think...