I had this brand made up and I am putting it on all my boxes now. A clear black and white of it is here: http://bushfarms.com/images/brand.jpg
I use it for hives and mating nucs. Push pins are used to mark the status of the colony. When doing routine inspections of hives, the date represents the day of the inspection. The exception to this is if it's queenless and has some kind of cell in which case the date is the date I expect a queen to be laying. The other positions are Egg=eggs, Opn=open brood, Cpd=capped brood, Fsg=festooing bees, Mkd=marked queen, Gnt=gentle, Def=defensive, XQ=queenless, VQ=virgin queen, LQ=laying queen, Gft=grafted cell, Swm=swarm cell, Spr=supersedure cell, Emg=emergency cell, Dx=disease, ^=increasing, v=decreasing, and Flp=followup, meaning they need something, e.g. more room, food, more bees, a queen cell etc.
I saw this frenzy going on and turned the cover over to block the entrance. They were doing this same thing before I blocked it. They would pile up until they would fall in clumps. I slowed it down to try to see it better.
I consider propolizing a good trait for bees (maybe not for the beekeeper). Here is a mating nuc I found this year. The drilled hole is about 5/8". The reduced hole is about 5/16".
It wasn't working right and then it would and then it wouldn't. This is what I found. It couldn't get out, so I left it and used another smoker. It was finally out after two days.
We needed to feed because of a dearth and we still needed to finish building up the 8 frame nucs for winter. We bought 50 six gallon buckets and bought 3,450 pounds of sugar in 25 lb bags. We worked out the maximum strength we could do with hot water from my tap (140 F) and not have it crystallize out. We put one 25 pound bag in each bucket with a heaping tablespoon of ascorbic acid, then 18 pints of water and stir it with a five gallon paint stirrer. After 10 to 30 minutes we stir it again.
