Weekly Inspection July 15th

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Weather: Temperatures have dropped- 18°C – 22°C, some quite prolonged showers; foraging activity noticeably quieter.

Forage: Rosebay Willowherb, Veronica, Ragwort, Buddleia and Golden Rod starting to show.

  • Wanted to check on Emerald as they had been very active & clustering on front of the hive earlier in the week and hadn’t inspected them the previous week

Managed to paint some of the brood boxes as well as repair and paint one of the gabled roofs – given they are 20 years old they are in good condition but the plywood roof liners were rotten and were the only parts that needed replacing.

Apidea – queen has hatched out and nice size. No eggs yet – after inspecting looks like I may need a queen for Honeydew as it looks to be queenless.

Weekly Inspection 9th July

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Weather: slightly cooler than previous week – temperatures 20°C – 24°C. Some heavy rain showers.

Forage: Rosebay Willowherb, sweet Chesnut, St John’s Wort and golden rod just starting. Plenty of activity with the bees., bringing in lots of pollen.

Need to start to look at which colonies need strengthening for Winter and if I want to try and over-winter a couple of nucs as insurance.

Mixed results so far with queen rearing, Apidea has got one sealed QC rather than a queen.

Will also start to sort out equipment- painting some boxes, repairing the gabled roofs as well as making up dummy boards.

Managed to use the repaired boiling tank to clean up 60 frames and a few queen excluders. They really do come up well but does take a couple of days to clean and rinse them.

Weekly Inspection 3rd July

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Weather: continues to be good with temperatures mid 20s. Couple of spells of rain with some heavy showers. Stop forecast is similar temperatures but more changeable weather.

continues to be good with temperatures mid 20s. Couple of spells of rain with some heavy showers. Stop forecast is similar temperatures but more changeable weather.

Forage: rosebay, willow herb, Buddleia , St John’s wort, sweet chestnut,. Bees have been very active, so plenty of pollen and nectar being brought in.

Looks like all  the Queen cells have hatched out. However, too early to tell if they are viable as no eggs detected and  only saw one queen in the Apidea and even then couldn’t spot her when I looked again. Consolidated the 2 Apideas with the virgin queen left and put the queen from Green back with the Nuc after finding 8 sealed QCs.

Added 2 supers, so still plenty of honey being produced.

Weekly Inspection 25th June

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Weather has continued to be very hot – temps around 24°C – 28°C. Cooler temperatures and more changeable conditions are forecast.

Forage: cow parsley and bramble seem to be main flowering crops. Plenty of activity and see no evidence of the June gap. Had to go through Emerald to stock Apideas and was surprised the 3rd super is over half full.

Queen rearing – started on 17th June with Cloake board and grafted larvae from Emerald and put into Denim.

19th June – removed Cloake board – bit concerned that the number of bees flying from Denim dropped off over the next few days.

24th – stocked 2 Apideas with bees from Emerald.

26th June – started to use the queen cells, only to discover swarm cells in 2 colonies I wasn’t expecting to – Flax & Honeydew. So used the queen cells in these colonies.

Split Emerald – left new colony on old site with queen cell. Moved old queen to new spot in apiary.

 

Will need to check all colonies in 4 days to see if queens have emerged as there was a lot of brace comb on the grafted frame, so not sure if the queens are viable and able to emerge.

Coming and going

Weekly Inspection June 15th

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Weather: has been a mini heatwave with temperatures between 24°C – 28°C. No rain and forecast is for more of the same.

Forage: Pyracantha, geranium and cow parsley – elderflower is finishing. Bees very active and bringing in lots of pollen.

Decided to raise some queens using a Cloake board – started in 17th June.

17th – added 5th frame to Green as it was surplus to the queen rearing activity

Need to make up some more supers.

Looks like Indigo may be looking to produce a supersedure queen.

Queen - marked & clipped

Weekly Inspection 8th June

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Having a mini heatwave with temperatures 20°C – 24°C. Still quite a lot of forage: elderflower, globe buddleia and hawthorn.

4th June – picked another swarm, looks like a prime. Will need to check later in the week. For now, it’s in a 14 x12 nuc box with a frame feeder. Bees came out front next morning, so transferred to 14×12 brood box. Not sure if they will stay as the owner of the garden where they were collected from says they are a lot of bees still in the bush – maybe the queen was left behind?

Not had chance to inspect Indigo to check on unite