Four new hives of Russian bees arrived for the PGs on June 30th. So far we haven’t done much with them, other than feed them store-brand grape soda spiked with extra sugar. When hives are getting established, it helps to feed them since they haven’t found all the best pollen sources yet. According to our bee supplier, Buck, they like this grape soda, smashed bananas, fondant, and cherry lozengers. He was very specific about the flavors too.
I’m looking forward to taking stewardship of these new hives. However, I do feel some loyalty to the old hive that on the other side of the shed. It’s still struggling since it swarmed and split. I plan on feeding it some grape soda too to see if that increases activity. Tomorrow we have a class on bee keeping and I hope to learn more about what to do with all these bees then.
This was a very good post, and timely with hive collapse! Most of the bees I see now in my Honolulu area are very young and not very healthy. I can remember killing them as a youngster because I didn’t want to get stung; now I cherish the ones I come across.