Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Wizard
Do you still have your horizontal hive. Hopefully the wind will die enough that I can check bees, it's been awful this spring, even for western Kansas. I need to get some traps set out.
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I do still have the horizontal. My bees have done very well in there, but i haven't really used it for honey production. There are a TON of bees in it, and while I saw the queen yesterday when I was robbing a couple of frames of bees for a split, there isn't a ton of brood. I saw quite a few queen cups, so I'm thinking that queen needs to go. This was the hive that was mean sunday, which goes against what they're supposed to be. I'm assuming it's a queen issue that has them grouchy.
I wish my design was a little different. I think I'd much prefer if I had the room to just use inside covers(normal Lang style) and had taken the time to hinge the lid.
Other than that, I like it and plan to use it for resources.
There is a lady that has bred a great line of local bee in the Des Moines area and she's selling queen cups. I'm thinking about picking up 3-4 of them to bring those genetics to my yard, and then splitting the bees in the horizontal into 2 splits and re-queening what's left.
I don't know if I'm going to do it this year, but I've been thinking about making a hive in one of those large, clear water cooler jugs, and putting that inside my honey shed with a PVC exit tube so I can have an observation hive. I think that would be fun.