Playing Blog Catch-Up

With the semester beginning and me having for "preps", it's been difficult to keep up with the blog like I's like. I have a few minutes this morning, so here are a few highlights of Beelandia the last week or so.

• Last week, I found the queen in Metpropolis. Either the hive swarmed or there was a supercedure because there seems to be a gap in the "brood cycle". This is fine as long as the colony can produce enough bees to survive the winter. In fact, it may be positive, if it has disrupted the mites' lifecycle as well.
• Yesterday, I worked on Plan Bee... and Bee Glad... I moved frames (or bars) around so that the eventual winter cluster will be able to move up more easy. I am a bit concerned with the relative lack of stored honey, so I started to feed both hives with medicated (Fumigillin-B) 2:1 sugar syrup. I would rather not medicate at all but wintering bees in my area is hard without it.
• I took a mite count last week and, even with the large population of bees in the hives, few mites dropped onto the sticky sheet. I dusted the hives with powdered sugar yesterday.
• I had a number of visitors drop by to see Beelandia this week. Beelandia is turning into a short stop on the "eco-tourism" bus tour.
• Today I will manipulate the rest of the hive. I need to return to the supermarket and get some more sugar however.