Tag Archive for: weekly inspection

Weather: Temperatures 17ºC -22ºC but with lots of rain and heavy showers most days. Set to improve.

Forage: Ragwort, Buddleia, Rosebay Willowherb, Himalayan Balsam, and Golden Rod just starting.

Not sure what’s happening with thew Flax colony. There were sealed QCs, torn down QCs and 1 charged cell. But there also appears to be eggs and larvae. The sealed QCs don’t look to be viable – candled one and it has small undeveloped larva. However, decided to make up and Apidea with the other one. Left bees in for 2 days, but most have left and probably returned back to Flax. So perhaps the Buckfast queen is still present but took time to come into lay?

Supers being worked and starting to get filled up.

Weather: temperatures have been between 20°C – 22°C. Bees very busy, but the forecast is for much more changeable weather with quite a few showers. Temperatures set to go down into the late teens.

Forage: Buddleia, Privet just starting, Ragwort, RoseBay Willowherb, bramble looks to be finishing.

Most of the colonies seem to be bringing in plenty of stores . New Buckfast queens arrived on 2nd July and so some of the colonies were manipulated to potentially accommodate being re-queened. I couldn’t find a queen in the Indigo colony and so decided to leave alone. This meant that I changed plan and removed the queen from Flax and banked her before introducing one of the new Buckfast queens. If indigo doesn’t have a queen I’ll put the old queen (now banked) back.

Bees at home are very aggressive at the moment and starting to come at me even when not close to the hives. Hopefully this behaviour settles down otherwise I’ll remove colonies to the river Mole apiary.