NZBF: Next steps

[Daveaky]

Kia ora koutou. I inspected my bees recently and things are looking great.
- good brood
- new eggs
- 2-3 frames of honey
- 1 spare frame for laying.
- lots of bees and activity

I am wondering what my next steps should be this month
- treatment?
- feeding?
- adding a new box?

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Trevor Gillbanks]

Treatments.
Feed if needed
New box if needed.
It is pretty hard to estimate when you will need an extra box without seeing inside the hive.
However. 1 frame of brood will expand to 2 frames of bees when they emerge. I hope that helps.

 

[Mummzie]

am wondering what my next steps should be this month
- treatment?
- feeding?
- adding a new box?

Treatment - yes
Feeding -depends on the population and your local nectar sources.
New box. Maybe.


What is the makeup of your hive currently. FD or 3/4? How many frames of brood and how many of eggs.

Awww...Snap Trevor! who said beekeepers never agree?

 

[tommy dave]

sounding really good - i'll just echo the others on adding varroa treatment if you haven't already, one of the standard synthetic strips.

In relation to adding a new box, it's hard to tell but sounds like a yes (are you seeing bees on the top-bars of all of the frames when you open the hive up? or seeing any white-wax?) - if you are using a box the same size then you can move up a frame or two of capped or nearly capped brood to get the bees to start working on the second box.

Doesn't sound as though there is any reason to feed them

 

[John B]

Whether you give a hive another box or not to some extent depends on when you will next have time to check the hive. It still quite early in the spring and I'm not a fan of putting another box on unless the bees are covering pretty much everything in the box. On the other hand they are expanding flat out at this time of year and if it's going to be a while before you can get back then you need to take that into account. As a rough rule of thumb you can expect a healthy hive with plenty of stores to double its strength every month at this time of year.
If you haven't treated for varoa then you should do so urgently. There is nothing more important for hive health these days than effective and timely varoa control and especially with new beekeepers varoa kills way more hives than anything else.