Bee Vlog - October 12, 2013

Quilt boxes are a good way to help the bees retain heat while keeping the hive dry. In our wet and rainy winters that can be very beneficial. I've got a couple hives that are rather small and may have trouble keeping the hive warm enough to prevent condensation. I'm installing quilt boxes on their hives to make winter a little easier on them.

I made some modifications to the typical quilt box designs found around the internet. Instead of stapling the cloth onto the bottom of the box I figured out how to recess the cloth to maintain good bee space. This video shows my method of attaching a canvas bottom.


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Bee Vlog - October 5, 2013

Queen Beatrice's population has been dwindling. In the inspection last month I found some problems with the brood that I couldn't really document or inspect very well because of the yellow jackets. Now that the yellow jackets have died back some and the weather is nice I took the opportunity to do another inspection to see what's going on.

The population has really shrunk significantly. All beehives have mites, but in this case it looks like they got hit really hard and it's making it difficult to raise brood. I'm going to just reduce their hive size and see how they overwinter. Next week I'll put a quilt box on to help them keep things warm and dry, but other than that I'll do nothing.


Video Link