Author Topic: Spring approaching, neglected apiary  (Read 1878 times)

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Offline TheFuzz

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Spring approaching, neglected apiary
« on: July 27, 2021, 08:06:02 pm »
Hello,

I live in Australia and spring time will be here in one month.

I have 14 hives and they've all been largely neglected for the last two years. I've barely opened them or done much of anything with them during that time.

They're all quite full of honey. 1 of them is a single deep, 3 of them are two deeps, the rest are three or four deep. They're all quite difficult to open and pick up frames, as they're all stuck down with propolis and beeswax. I've snapped hive tools and damaged my supers trying to lift frames from them before.

Last year, I had a number of bees swarm from my hives. I figure it will happen again.

I'm a bit unsure how to generally proceed and would appreciate advice. I figure I need to open up each hive, and I need to free up space for the brood chamber. I probably need to do a honey extraction to free up space.

I've never done a split before, and I don't really have the space for more hives I'm over capacity as is, but I could try to sell some splits/hives or find somewhere else to move some hives. I just realise that my hives are going to probably swarm and I'm wondering if I should try to split my hives because of so. Should I go looking at my hives to find queen cells and if I do, then attempt to do a split? I've never tried to find a queen cell before and I'm nervous to look all over the hive due to not wanting to kill bees and cause issues from tearing apart frames, its all very stuck, but if its what I need to do let me know.

I have a honey extractor. When I open up hives, should I have the honey extractor set up and ready to process? Then, as soon as I find some large honey frames that are taking up too much space, I could take them to the extractor and spin it straight away? I'm not sure if I should heat the frames a little first, and also not sure if taking out frames for a few hours and leaving the hive empty of some frames is a bad idea. If it is, I could replace the frames I take with empty frames, and then when the honey extraction is done, I could then switch out the empty frames I added with the sticky frames from the extractor?

Offline iddee

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Re: Spring approaching, neglected apiary
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2021, 05:20:40 am »
First, what care are they going to get for the next 2 years? If constant care, then yes, open them and clean them up. If the same as the last two years, just add supers now and harvest as they fill. If you aren't going to go in them bi-weekly to monthly, then don't upset the arrangement they have now. Yes, they will swarm. That's what bees do. One entry per year will only cause harm. Either care for them often, or let them do their thing and you only collect honey from the supers.       
“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein