Warm Winter Day – Hive Sneak-n-Peek
For those warmer winter days when the bees are flying but the flowers aren’t yet blooming, here is a video clip on how you can do a sneak-n-peek on the hive to check their health and candy board reserves with minimal disruption to the colony.
Simply put, all I am doing is taking off the lid and looking at the candy board. Have the bees eaten a hole through the sugar brick? How much candy is left for them to consume? In this video, they have eaten a hole through to the top, but there is still plenty of candy left to go, so I wasn’t worried about getting them setup for a refill.
Then I carefully lift up the candy board, trying not to bump them around too much as I am not using any smoke or water mist to calm them down. Looking at the tops of the frames, I’m just getting an idea of what the bees are doing. There is a good group on top, likely traversing to and from the candy board, and there are at least 5 frames of bees that can bee seen by looking down between the frame tops. As tempting it is, DO NOT PULL ANY FRAMES! This video was done on February 2nd and there is still plenty of winter left to go. If I roll or injure the queen now, it’s game over for this hive as they will not be able to requeen or recover.
Then, gently replace the candy board and lid. All of this took less than 60 seconds, minimizing the amount of time they are exposed to the open.
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