Today Wayne was kind enough to fix the inner cover for me to prevent robbing. Basically, the war between the bees and the yellow jackets has continued leaving a feeling of panicked activity all around. I pulled off the top cover once and found yellow jackets just hanging out in the top of the hive helping themselves to syrup and generally enjoying the day. As a solution for now, we bought bug screen and Wayne cut a piece and covered the hole in the inner cover. This way the yellow jackets can get inside the top cover, but can’t manage to reach the syrup. Hopefully this will deter them.
We fed the bees after opening the hive – a 2:1 sugar/water mixture and I added a new product I bought through Brushy Mountain Bee Farm called Honey B Healthy. It’s an herbal supplement that’s supposed to encourage the bees to feed. I’m hoping this will push them to continue storing honey so they have ample stores for the winter. We’re heading out of town for a week, so we filled the feeder completely, added the screen inner cover, and closed the hive.
Lesson learned? Yellow Jackets are nasty suckers and given the opportunity, they will invade and wreck havoc on a happy hive. They must be kept out at all costs.
Filed under: learning | Tagged: beekeeping
