"Hope My Bees Will Find Their Way Out..."

There has been lots of things going since my last post about getting my bee hives.  A few days later, My application to the CVSU Bee Program got accepted so I am now a "professional" beekeeper.    I now have some money to spend for my graduate school expenses.  Graduate school started last November, also the same time the CVSU bees arrived.   So I have my hands full!  Plus, the 6 hours commute back and forth is really tiring me out.  Ok, enough of my excuses for not blogging.

I am suppose to go to Amadeo today to see how the bees are doing.  I was there last night to close the entrance of 2 of the old hives.  I am currently experimenting on a hive conversion technique which I found on the internet.  If you will look at the photos of my hives, these are just single layer supers with closed bottom. The bees really have no room to expand.  This is not a problem to the previous owner because he harvest honey combs monthly.  The bees were always busy rebuilding combs.  But not with me.  I will only be harvesting honey during the honey flow season.  The previous owner warned me about this.  He said I should check for wax moths because they love old combs.  In fact, one of my hive had already succumbed to wax moth!  So, I decided to push through with my initial plan to house the bees in a traditional Japanese beehives. Hopefully, the bees will like the simple log type hive  and the extra room below for them to expand and grow strong.  Once a frame is empty of all the brood cells, I remove it from the hive.  The bees will run out of frames above and will be forced to expand and build combs below the Japanese hive. Well, at least that is the theory.

I setup the conversion hive during the day and retain the original hive entrance so the bees can return without a hitch.  Come night fall, I closed off the original entrance of the original hive and open the entrance below.  I hope the bees will work their way to the new chambers below and find their way out so they can forage.  If not, the bees will be in deep trouble and so will I for not visiting them today as I am suppose to.

Please excuse the low res photos.  I don't have a good camera right now.

I am also suppose to set up the third hive today, but decided no to as the old hive I used for the conversion hive has too many cracks and it will just give me a lot of trouble later on.  The glue gun I used previously did not do a good job sealing off the cracks.  I really should use some good wood putty to patch up the cracks.