My legs as target practice
Yes we inspected two of our largest colonies today - 1 and 5 in the garden.
We started with hive 5 - on a double brood so David went through the top brood box which we had set aside whilst I went through the bottom one in situ. There were a lot of bees! Not sure quite why but I managed to get 11 stings in my legs in quick succession. Maybe I was just in their flight path or perhaps one got caught up in my trousers but they all shot their darts into my knees and upper legs. I had to retreat for a while and leave David to it. On reflection, there were just a lot of bees I think (I try not to take it personally!) and I guess as they come home and look for the upper boxes, they get somewhat confused. Good news is that they are filling up the two supers well and David added a third. The queen is laying in 13 frames across the two brood boxes. Nice strong colony (and yes, somewhat protective!).
Hive 1 has 15 frames of brood across two brood boxes (we are on WBCs remember) and is also starting to fill up the super so we added a second one. There were a few queen cups but they were only play cups and we left a few in place in the lower brood box (pins mark the frames).
Posted by Sally on Thursday 18 June 2009 - 16:31:18 |
The bees at the Rectory ... doing nicely
Well that colony we had from Devon, late in the season last year, is doing very nicely. They are filling the supers and now capping so we added a fourth super today - we might even get some honey!
And the swarm we collected end of May is doing well too. All the frames in the brood box have been drawn - not fully yet and generally towards the front of the nest but this is really good. All of the frames were starter strips with no full frames of foundation at all. They have even drawn and begun to put stores in four frames in the super.
We have a new technique - as we have the luxury of being able to work a hive together, we are inspecting one side the comb and handing it to the other so that we limit the movement of the frame and comb when using starter stips - just in case they are not secured to the edges of the frames. It's working well so far and when we do forget we haven't had any disasters - yet.
Time for a varroa check so we've added trays to count next time.
Posted by Sally on Wednesday 17 June 2009 - 18:55:09 |
Varroa counts in the Garden Apiary
All five checked and mostly doing well. Two are high and we are now placing drone traps in the hives that need it.
Hive 1 had a 15% investation when we checked the culled drone brood taken on the 9th June and it had a drop of less than 3 a day.
Hive 2 had a drop of less than 8 a day so we'll add a drone trap in there.
Hive 3 is less than 2 a day and four less than one a day so a good results from early shook swarms there.
Hive 5 had a 17% investation when we checked culled drone from 9th June and it now has a drop of less than 8 a day so we'll continue with the drone trap for now.
Good results all round though. We just need to make sure our strong colonies are kept in check.
Posted by Sally on Wednesday 17 June 2009 - 16:00:00 |
Three mating flights?
Even before 10 this morning hive three exploded into action with what looked like a swarm. We could hear the thrum of bees filling the air above the garden apiary from 40m away. Unlike the mating swarm we witnessed earlier on in the year the bees did not fly off to some nearby branch before returning: they just circled around for 10 or 15 minutes, gradually subsiding and returning to the hive. We guessed that it was a newly hatched queen (hopefully just one) was out for her wedding flight.
Twice more today we witnessed the same behaviour from that colony. As everything was getting back to normal on the second exodus of the day I was lucky enough to see the queen return. She was quite dark like her mother. She landed a bit clumsily on the alighting board, took off again, returned to sight once more and fell into the grass in front of the hive. I guess she got back safely.
Posted by David on Tuesday 16 June 2009 - 23:20:23 |
Building up the Apiary at Little Piece
Last night we moved the nuc box that we had placed at Green Lane over to Little Piece and today hived it in a national hive over there.
That was the queen from one of our colonies in the Garden together with her retinue, plenty of bees and brood in all stages plus stores. The queen was raised locally (in our garden) from the New Forest stock so will add to the genetic diversity over there.
Posted by Sally on Monday 15 June 2009 - 18:47:04 |
Swarming instinct
Well we did expect them to swarm!
Yes, our bees at Green Lane had been prolific with queen cells and we had worried that we had left far too many queen cells in place. That was why we set up the bait hive in the hopes that we wouldn't lose a swarm.
After getting home from checking our hives at the new apiary, we got a phone call from Green Lane to say that our bees had swarmed.
[ Read the rest ... ]
Posted by Sally on Friday 12 June 2009 - 23:23:24 |
Little Piece Apiary check
Our two colonies at Little Piece are doing very nicely in their new home and seem to have settled in OK. Lots of white clover is out on the hillside and they're near to woodland too and seem to be collecting from there. It feels like a really promising place.
Posted by Sally on Friday 12 June 2009 - 23:00:27 |
Drone trap varroa count
Yesterday we took the sealed brood from one of the drone traps in hive 5 in the garden. We'd put it in the freezer overnight and have just taken it out to do a varroa count. David's getting quite good at this and seems to have found the knack for knocking out most of the lavae whilst still frozen.
According to Defra's advice in their pamphlet "Managing Varroa", we needed to check 100 lavae in order to get a percentage infestation. At this time of year, over 7% calls for effective control and is seen as a severe risk and our count recorded a high investation of 17%! That hive is the one that raised a new queen after we performed a Pagden artificial swarm and we had only managed to find one suitable bait frame from the queen mother's hive to trap varroa before the new queen started laying. Could that have made a difference? We're hoping this high investation is the varroa mites' desperation for survival after a lean period so we'll do a drop count in about a week and assess it again.
We've got more drone brood in the freezer from hive 1 so we'll review that in the same way.
Incidentally, the discarded grubs are in the fridge and will be supper for Paul's chickens.
Posted by Sally on Tuesday 09 June 2009 - 17:47:06 |
Thankfully we didn't give up on them ...
Yes, our hive 1 in the garden contains the colony from the late, small swarm taken in Uplyme last year and the one we seriously considered uniting with another colony. In fact it was only our lack of action and procrastination that meant we never "got round to it". We were delighted to get them through the winter. Now they seem to be about our second best colony.
Today's inspection shows they are on 14 frames of brood. They're on a WBC double brood right now. They also have 4 full brood frames of stores to the edge of the nest. So now we somehow need to get them to store in the super, which they have largely left alone to be sure they have enough room. This lady is certainly prolific. We have removed the sealed brood from the drone trap in the top brood. There's one in the bottom brood box too but they've only just started on that. We'll leave a drone trap top and bottom though until we are sure we have the varroa in check.
This hive has lots of bees and the queen shows a good laying pattern. We just need a bit more activity up in the super.
Posted by Sally on Tuesday 09 June 2009 - 17:33:21 |
We might even get some honey ...
Hive 5 in our garden, the one with the new queen, is doing really well. We were well overdue with our inspection but they've been good as gold and we found only a couple of play cups today rather than any queen cells for us to worry about and there are 12 frames with brood. They're on a double brood and four brood frames are stacked with stores. And that's in addition to the supers they are working on. We've swapped a few old combs out in one of the supers and are hopeful they will make good use of the new foundation.
And we're pleased to report our colony on the Hill seems to have finally got going after the shook swarm. She's now laying on 5 frames so will hopefully build up nicely now. That hive is somewhat exposed though so we will have to monitor it closely.
Posted by Sally on Monday 08 June 2009 - 23:44:00 |