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Went out to feed hives yesterday and had a very nasty surprise with a lifeless hive. The bees were spread all over the frames, lots of bottoms sticking out with not a drop of food in the frames. Found the queen also appeared lifeless, fortunately after I had picked her up I put her back on the frame.
This was the strongest colony I had, being a split with a new queen in July. I have seen no wasp activity at all in this area so there was no robbing.I had not removed any honey from this hive ...

We had a beautiful day today, maybe the best for about a month and a half.
The bees were flying like in midsummer and bringing in masses of pollen.

I took the opportunity to do a lot of checking and rearranging.
I made a little table in my notebook and recorded colony number, queenright or not, strength and level of stores.
It is funny how they all seem to be better on a sunny day as I was worrying a lot in the dank weather a fortnight ago.
At my main site ...

This summer we focussed on increasing the stocks at the apiary, so have ended up with 13 stocks, one of them a drone layer. Of those 13 I loaded 11 into the car and picked up another two at my own apiary. One of these is a strong-ish colony of my own - to show an attempt at cut comb production at the meeting we're having there on Saturday - and another is a cast of mine which went into an association box and is being donated to the club. There is also an empty Swienty hive in the car as one of ...

Big week ahead for the apideas.
I have 30 cells with queen due to emerge on Tuesday, 45 for Thursday and 12 on Friday.
Might struggle to find a home for all of them.
I have about 20 queenless apideas at the moment and I have a friend looking virgin queens for II.

I have been away for 3 weeks and got home in the early hours last night.
I have 16 full colonies, 10 nucs and 32 apideas to check.

The big worry is possible swarm loss but all the queens in the full colonies are clipped.

I just checked 3 nucs and 4 apideas I have in the garden and saw the queens.

Two of these nucs has new queens taken from apideas introduced via a cage just a day or two before I left. Both had good brood patterns and one had brood ...