Overwintered Burdell Bees

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Overwintered Burdell Bees

Postby matrout76 » Mon Apr 06, 2015 10:55 am

I bought a single 10 frame Burdell hive last spring, split it twice, lost one of the splits, and went into winter with 2 strong hives (2 deeps and one super) and one smaller hive (one deep one super).

All three survived the winter.

I've been putting off doing an inspection, and decided to do one on Sunday morning (4-5-15). I was not expecting what i found:

Small hive: 4 frames of eggs, larva, and capped brood in the super, none in the deep, but there were lots of bees. This hive should start taking off soon.

Big hive one: As soon as i opened the hive, i found some comb that had been build in the candy board. This made me think they were getting nectar from somewhere. I looked in the super and found 3 full frames of newly capped honey :shock: along with a couple frames of eggs, larva, and brood. The deep below it had 8 frames of eggs, larva, and brood, and one frame of honey next to a frame feeder. This is the first time i have seen brood against the side wall of the hive. The center frames of the bottom deep looked like they had been cleaned, but no eggs yet. I decided to rotate the bottom deep up and put the upper deep on the bottom, added a super, and moved 2 of the full honey frames up to the new super with a frame of undrawn foundation in between them.

Big hive 2: Lots of bees, lots of eggs, larva, and brood, and 2 frames of new honey. This hive is slightly behind the other big hive. I rotated the bottom deep up and put the upper deep on the bottom, added a super and moved 1 of the full honey frames up to center.

So, if you have Burdell's from last year that overwintered, and haven't checked them...might want to do so soon. I now need to finish getting equipment ready so that i can continue to add supers and hopefully prevent swarming!!!
matrout76
 
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Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2014 3:31 pm
Location: Acton - SE Side of Indy

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