I hit a new low in beekeeping today. Not morally or being a bad steward or anything like that. It's a new low in lack of preparedness.
Tomorrow we go on vacation for two weeks. Along with dozens of last minute things that need to be done, I checked my hives in the back yard one last time. The other hives I inspected last week. All my hives have exceeded my expectations ( we should all be so lucky). With honey supers and hive bodies in place, for those colonies that are ready, I had one back up super ready to go on the next lucky recipient.
Honey flow is still on and usually ends about the 4th of July here. I am betting that due to an unusually cool spring and the recent rainfalls the honey flow will last a little longer. The Golden Rain Trees here have just started blooming a couple of days ago.
Today I put my remaining super on a split that I did this spring. To my surprise,they have built the comb out on 9 frames in the top hive body, so they were the lucky recipient. The colony that really brought in the honey last year, have run out of room in the supers I had on there. I always feel like that at least some drawn comb produced is money in the bank.
So this is where I cut corners and hang my head in shame. I quickly got an unassembled super, glued the corners, but only had a handful of nails. Each corner got at least 3 nails. Left it unpainted and for foundation used some old frames with undrawn foundation that had been given to me. The frames had set outside and were horribly dirty. I popped in new foundation and set this super on top.
In my defense, I unexpectedly more than doubled my colonies this spring and they have done very well this year. Anyone stooped to such lows?
