Association Open Day
Great to see such a big turn-out at the Open Day. Chairman Colin makes a good warm-up act.
I was really pleased that there were a goodly number who were clearly interested in the bees rather than what the bees could do for them. It is so warming to hear people talk about what they can do to make a difference rather than being in it for greed and gain. Unfortunately not all beekeepers seem to be of the same mind but in this day and age they are at least likely to be challenged rather than followed.
Posted by Sally on Sunday 27 June 2010 - 23:26:00 |
United
Brood box from G3 in position, plus sheet of newspaper, then brood box from G8, newspaper and QX, then supers from G3. A few holes in the paper to help then along and now they can get on with it!
Job done! Over to you girls (and boys) ...
Posted by Sally on Sunday 27 June 2010 - 21:11:39 |
Saturday checks
Over to the Rectory and the May swarm in hive 1 is doing great - 9 frames of brood. They really need more space though and we replaced a frame of stores with one with foundation. Later we returned and added a brood box below (including their frame of stores) and some frames we removed from R4.
A queen seems to have hatched - possibly 2 - from R2. And R3 has 2 sealed queen cells on one marked frame. (We removed one other.)
Disappointing R4 ... that was the one we united with our trouble-shooter queen moved on from R3. We saw an unmarked queen and some legacy brood but no eggs. We wonder, was there a queen that we hadn't seen when we united with the queen-right colony? We will check again in a week but in the meantime we reduced down to a single brood (that's how we were able to give additional space to R1).
On to Green Lane and we added varroa boards where we can. (We have some colonies on solid floors over there so really have to take a measure of how things are based on the readings we are able to do.)
We've added a super to colony 2 and checked colony 3 too but that seems OK with the 3 it has but we moved in some of the outer frames on the second super to encourage the bees to finish them off properly.
Colony 3a has a queen, although we didn't catch sight of her, and she is laying on 9 frames in the upper brood. Nothing yet in the lower although they seem to be shining up the cells. This is the colony that had high varroa last week so we will need to keep an eye on it and have added the board again to count next time. It does have a little sac brood too. We've made a note to plan to add a super and QX next time.
Posted by Sally on Saturday 26 June 2010 - 23:56:02 |
Curio ponder ...
Why would the mesh floors be removed or partly removed from the hives? That's how we found two of the WBC hives with removable mesh trays over at Green Lane this morning. What animal might pull at a metal ring? Or is there some mischief afoot?
Posted by Sally on Saturday 26 June 2010 - 23:22:58 |
Shook up and Sugared
Yesterday evening we hived colony 8 in the garden (the nuc from LP2) in a WBC and added 5 frames of foundation to provide a full brood box. That is still sited beside colony 3, ready to unite. We also found the drone-laying queen in colony 3 and killed her. Then we did a shook swarm without the queen into a new brood box with fresh foundation, sacrificing all the brood. Some brood remained in the 2 supers which we put back on the colony. We had cleared 2 supers so removed those but added another - giving them a total of 3 - to make sure they had sufficient space, especially as we had reduced them down from a double brood box. We then left them, queenless and this morning returned and removed the brood in the supers - that will also be culled - and we thoroghly sugared the bees. Colonies 3 and 8 are now ready to unite.
We also took a look at colony 5 yesterday evening. We saw the queen and she is laying on 3+ frames. Colony 7 is doing well - she's long and dark and laying on 4 frames in a lovely pattern.
A quick look in colony 1 today and we saw the newly emerged queen. We'll leave her to it and check on her in a few weeks' time.
In colony 2 we expected to see evidence of a more advanced queen but saw eggs only on a couple of frames. There are a lot of stores in the nest so we replaced a frame with fresh foundation in the top brood box to create a little more room to lay. So, jury is still out on that one.
Posted by Sally on Saturday 26 June 2010 - 19:44:00 |
Swarm on the Hill
"Well, that'll be a mating swarm", said David confidently when he saw the email to say our bees had swarmed. But no, they had been seen issuing from the hive and heading down the hill. So, over he went, and practiced as he is, captured the swarm and left it at the foot of the hill until we could return.
So, later that evening we both went over. As we all know, bees have a collective mind of their own and David carefully carried a very light skep up the hill - yes, it was empty. So, bye bye bees. I hope you found a good home.
We decided to take a look at what was left in the hive and not suprisingly found a recently hatched queen cell. There were more to follow and this colony was on a double brood so we decided to make use of the second hive we had brought over to hive the swarm and put a brood box in each. We wanted to make some reduction in queen cells to reduce the risk of losing yet more bees so attempted to remove two sealed queen cells, leaving some nice ones in situ in each of the brood boxes. Well, it's happened before and I guess it will again, two queens emerged. So, we put them one into each of the brood boxes and have left the bees to decide if they will make it or if they will chose an alternative.
So, now there are two colonies on the hill ...
Posted by Sally on Thursday 24 June 2010 - 22:02:30 |
New queens seen at Green Lane
This time it's from a hotel room in Mancehester that I hear of David's exploits with the bees.
Over at Green Lane today he checked on colony 1 and they seem to have accepted the queen cells we added on the 12th and are tending the brood we introduced so fingers crossed they will raise a good queen.
Now colony 2 revealed a new queen who has started to lay and what happened? We remembered to put a QX below the brood during the pagden but didn't put one above the brood box so, bless her, the queen has gone up into the super and laid on four frames up there. Well, David found her and put her in the brood box and put the QX above. He had a quick peek into 2a - the other half of the pagden - and all seems OK with their raising a queen although they have created more swarm cells. And he moved the hive to the other side of 2 as part of the pagden process. We won't need to check in there until around second week of July when hopefully we will find a worthy queen.
In hive 3 David saw a new queen - fairly small, pale with a darker tail and she has just started to lay. The bottom two supers are getting close to capped so we may be able to clear those soon. But oh dear - varroa is high in colony 3a. It's raising a queen so hopefully the varroa will get knocked back but we may need to take some drastic action.
Then finally, colony 4 - he saw the young queen, quite small and stripey - laying on 5 frames but there is a concern that this one could be stores bound and they haven't gone up into the new super we added.
Once again, thanks David ...
Posted by Sally on Monday 21 June 2010 - 23:34:59 |
Great - we can free up a nuc box at Little Piece
We had a spare National floor, brood box, crown board and roof so took them with us to Little Piece. Once there we inspected the nuc on hive position 5 and transfered the colony to the national hive using the stand that was already there. We saw the new, dark queen and she is laying on at least one frame. We added 3 additional frames including some stores so she now has 7 frames to expand her nest. Must remember to number that hive next time. In the meantime we have chalked a number 5 on the side.
Then a check on our new queen in hive 4 - we hived that colony in a national last week and already she is laying in 6 frames. A bit buzzy these bees though but generally OK.
We had a quick look to make sure there was enough space in the other hives and all looked OK and decided to take an early look to see if we had a queen in hive 3. We do. She's quite small and we're not sure if she's laying yet as it was too dark to see clearly but we'll check on her in a week.
Then, back home with the nuc box we were able to hive the bees we had left in the travel box. A good number remained and we saw the queen as we transferred her across so hopefully all has turned out OK there ... phew!
Posted by Sally on Sunday 20 June 2010 - 23:55:27 |
So much to do ...
Well there were a few things to sort in the garden and after many ponders, and seeking advice from Ken and Jill too, we decided to set about resolving some of our immediate concerns.
The nuc in the garden in position 6 (queen raised in the nuc from queen cells taken form GL1 in May) shows no sign of a queen and just has the remains of brood on 3 frames which is not really being looked after. So, not a good situation and a bit of a waste of a good nuc box.
We took a look in colony 4, first removing two cleared supers and adding to the growing pile in our kitchen.
A swarm had issued from hive 4 on Wednesday (which we got) and we felt sure more queens would emerge. Our plan was to take a frame with a queen cell and introduce it to queenless colony 1 to encourage them to raise a queen. Well, it was all go in there ...
[ Read the rest ... ]
Posted by Sally on Sunday 20 June 2010 - 23:20:20 |
Saturday inspections at the Rectory
Hive 4 had caused us concern on our last visit so we wanted to check again for a queen. Well, there isn't any sign of one and the bees certainly felt queenless. We will plan to unite this colony with an established queen.
Our May-time swarm housed in hive 1 at the Rectory is doing great. We saw her and she's now on 8 frames of brood in a WBC. So, we wonder, how late do you put a colony on a double brood? Do we want to do that as we get towards the end of June? This one has a lovely arch of stores at the top of the frames so would probably take a brood box below the current nest but we'll see. There is a super on there now so they do have some work to do.
We took a look in hive 2 - that was the one where we added a frame from colony 3 last week containing queen cells, eggs and brood. It is definitely attempting to raise a queen and there are 3 sealed queen cells but we did remove one duff-looking one. We also took away 2 cleared supers.
Then colony 3, she is laying well although not using the lower brood box as well as we'd hoped. She has 10 frames of brood but 7 in the top brood box. We also have a 3rd brood but that is largely full of stores and is in effect their first mega-super. To resolve our problem in colony 1, when we found the queen, we decided to move her in the top brood box and unite with colony 4 which we did by placing newxpaper between the boxes. This is a much-travelled queen. We brought her to the Rectory to sort out our queenless colony 3 which she has done nicely and now she's continuing her trouble-shotting role by taking on colony 4. We have left 4 or 5 good-looking queen cells in hive 3 to raise a queen and we also added a clearer board to clear 2 supers (plus added an empty one to give them a little more space).
Posted by Sally on Saturday 19 June 2010 - 22:32:02 |