Colony progress

[Jon]

I have noticed huge growth in the past week. I checked most of mine on 6th April and again yesterday on the 14th. All were very noticibly bigger and had far more brood.
I put a second brood box of drawn comb under the two biggest which were on 8 frames of brood and I supered these two and another two as well.
Two tiddlers which I thought I might lose have doubled in size although still just 2-3 frames of bees. they will pull through now though.
I am giving the extra space early as I have a 6 acre field of oil seed rape just across the road and the first flowers are out already.

[Neils]

Bit early for me to say just yet. Should have a much better idea after the weekend though that will still be a first look fir one of my colonies but I'll be taking a super with me just in case.

More than a little concerned that one of my colonies went into very early supersedure, the new queens should emerge [by] this weekend so we'll see what happens with this.

The other's mid Bailey change onto a 14x12 box with the first of my foundationless frames so I'm eager to see how that's progressing

[Adam]

I've got a couple of colonies that had 8 frames of brood last weekend, so some have now got 2 supers on and some have got a second brood chamber under. It DOES seem like a good spring so far and I've started queen rearing (out of necessity as one colony went queenless). My weakest colony produced one supercedure queencell; the queen is due to emerge in a couple of days. A large field of OSR nearby has a yellow glow on one corner of it so I have supers aready! I ought to check my hive records and see how the colonies have progressed compared to last year - I suspect better despite a cold winter. I suspect that Norfolk is upto week ahead of Belfast. Bristol maybe a week ahead of Norfolk?

[Jon]

My best colonies are a couple of weeks ahead of this time last year.
I am planning to start grafting on the bank holiday weekend.
Mine have only just started to make drones although I have seen drones on the wing at other folks apiaries.
It's 3 years maybe 4 since I had a field of OSR beside me.
If in doubt, give more space is the rule of thumb.
We are not getting cold nights so chilled brood is unlikely to be a problem.

[Neils]

Bit tricky for me to judge at the moment. Last year my colony was on standard National frames, this year they're all on 14x12s. My perception is that I've certainly started inspecting a good few weeks earlier than last year and I certainly wasn't chucking supers on in March but I haven't checked my records from last year yet.

[edit] Just checked the DB. I didn't have drone brood until 17th April last year let alone drones, I had active drones in the colonies on the 8th April this year.

[Adam]

Had a look at my hive records for this year and last. For April 9th inspection or a day or two either side) brood frame numbers are 20% higher than last year. That's excluding nucs.

It includes the colony that tried to supercede (Post 3). The supercedure queencell has been destroyed by the bees and the old queen was discovered laying OK - not multiple eggs per cell as a couple of weeks ago. It's still a small colony with 3 frames of brood. Now in a 5 frame nuc. The queen will have to go though when one comes available.

[Neils]

1 in supersedure, 1 drone layer and 1 that looks like it swarmed the best part of a week ago (very little uncapped larvae but queen Cells still sealed) with brood across 9 14x12 frames and bulging with bees.

[Jimbo]

Hi Nellie,

Were there a lot of mature drones in your hives and what about your neighbours do they have drones? It is still early up here for swarming etc. From my records the week begining the 22nd of May is the usual period for swarming with us. It will be interesting to see if there are queen cell before that date as I think Spring is early this year

[Neils]

Lots of drones in the allotment hives that I've looked at in addition to my own. No idea what's about around the nature reserve, but plenty of drones in the colony itself and comparatively speaking they've gone mental: 9 14x12 frames full of brood, that's pretty good going even for this neck of the woods (and the bees themselves over the past couple of years) in general let alone for mid April. Soon as we opened them up I thought they'd almost certainly swarmed there were just too many bees for them not to have, have to keep reminding myself that it's only Mid April, early to mid May is when I've had to start thinking about swarming. Hearing people supering in March should have rung some warning bells but I was using the allotment bees as a barometer and until last week they merely seemed to be behaving as expected. Aaah hindsight, how wonderful thou art :D.

Bearing in mind I gave the ones on the nature reserve no stimulative feeding (or any winter feeding apart from about 2lbs of fondant in January) at all I'm still a little surprised to find them as busy as they are this early. I've given them a super of comb on saturday and I'm going to try and go up midweek and add another two of frames to make sure they've got plenty of room over the next couple of weeks and give them something to do.

I'll chalk this down to experience, cross my fingers that the one queen cell I left was a good one and try and look forward to what could be a bumper crop off this one, most of the stuff down there still isn't out yet! I'm not too happy with their temperament, but do take them being queenless into consideration, I'll see how the next generation behave and take it from there. They followed us for best part of 200 meters after we'd shut them up and although they did seem to settle down relatively quickly, I question whether that's behaviour I'll tolerate on the Nature Reserve but there's no question that I can't put up with that on the allotment.

[Jimbo]

Just checked one of my colonies today to mark my queen and found it bursting at the seams with bees. Will have to put on a super tomorrow to give them some more room. I found the queen but did the classic mistake. I placed the cage lightly over her and turned away to pick up the marker pen to find she had go out as the cage was not flat on the comb. I spent about another hour looking for her with no luck. There were a few drone cells but no drones so little chance of swarming yet but will need to start weekly inspections

[Trog]

I enjoyed a leisurely inspection today and found all the colonies progressing well. Looking back, they're about a week behind last year's efforts but I see from my notes I was helping them along with syrup this time last year as they had built up early but then the weather had turned miserable. One colony was so large I gave them an extra brood box. If they fill it I'll split them, or maybe just use it to make up some nucs. All the girls were in a good mood and the only use for the smoker was to get them out of the way when they were crowding round the tops of the frames. Saw all my (unmarked) queens and as ever complimented them on their good looks!

[Neils]

A mixed bag with mine at the moment.
One colony swarmed before I did a first inspection, but it's a massive colony and I'll know for next time we have a spring like this one :rolleyes: I'll leave them another week before I inspect again, but I will go down and add another super as they were chock full of stores anywhere there wasn't brood last week. I gave them a super of comb them and they'll get a super of frames this time around.

The supersedure colony I've not looked at this week. I know the queens were due to emerge last weekend so I'll give them another week before I disturb them. I'm hoping that with the weather as it is and the number of drones around that they'll get to it sooner rather than later.

The Drone layer I did have a quick peek at. They're in the balance at the moment but have a donor frame of brood from last week to hopefully keep them ticking over. They've not made queen cells on it, so I'm hoping that's a good sign for the Virgin queen I ran in last week.

The first of the two swarms has been hived and dosed with OA. We did notice that after 72 hours there's still no brood despite the nuc being full of drawn comb. We'll leave them for a week and see how they get on.

[Adam]

From my limited experience its 4 - 5 days for eggs to be laid - and I usually put swarms on foundation as they draw it so well. I wonder if the Oxalic Acid puts the queen off lay for a wee while.

[Hoomin_erra]

I have a colony covering 2 frames at the moment, and starting to get full, but they refuse to draw out the other frames to expand out.

Anyone got any tips on encouraging the bees to draw out foundation?

Oh, and they also refuse to go into the supers.

[Jimbo]

I would take off the super at the moment and replace with a contact feeder with a week sugar solution