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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Herb Fister <fisterh AT gmail.com>, ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Lots of bees on outside of hive?
  • Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2016 18:06:59 -0400

Herb,

This is called "bearding" and it means two things:
1) you've got a lot of bees (hurray!)
2) it is summertime in North Carolina (hurray again!)
This is just like in Mayberry when Andy, Opie, Aunt Bee and Barney sit on the front porch, put their feet up and chill out. When the weather gets hot, the spare bees go out on the "front porch" so that their body heat doesn't overheat the brood nest. It does not mean anything at all with respect to swarming, the amount of stores, etc.

FYI, if you want to, you can make the bearding magically go away by using a slatted rack to give the excess bees a place to hang out underneath the brood nest. But there is no real reason that this is necessary.

Now, your other issue is lack of space for the queen to lay. I like to always have at least something like 3 or so deep frames worth of empty drawn comb for the queen to lay eggs. Otherwise the colony will be "honey bound" and the queen cannot lay up to her potential. This either will induce swarming or cause a diminution in the colony population. The solution is simple: remove a few frames that are packed full of honey and replace them with empty comb or foundation. Place the honey combs in the freezer for a few days, then store them for use later in the year when they are needed. Hopefully you have designated the equivalent of 2 ten-frame deeps for the colony's year-round brood chamber; when managed properly, that will provide plenty of space for the broodnest and summer/winter stores.

Randall

On 6/5/2016 5:04 PM, Herb Fister wrote:
CAAELgvyu55wYiQp5cpufRNDn2z+gkv+i0261M5Pxvvh78n0QWQ AT mail.gmail.com" type="cite">

What does it mean when there are lots of bees on the outside of the hive?  Is this a problem or is it normal?  There doesn't seem to be signs of a pending swarm.  The colony looks healthy.  The frames are rather full @80% honey, brood, pollen, capped brood etc.  There are only spots in a few frames for growth.

Herb Fister



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