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Had a visit from a Scottish Government inspector and an inspectress yesterday. As a result I have an insert in the floor of one hive to take out next Wednesday and send to the lab, one hive now short of 60-100 flying bees, and I was able to sit and watch while the brood frames of all of my main hives were shaken free of bees and given a thorough going-over. All in the name of science, and performed professionally. I'm all in favour of that.

Nothing much to report from the visual ...

Finally I have my first Warré hive, complete with 4 boxes (best to be optimistic).In the end I decided to go with top bars rather than frames, but that can be changed over later.It was made for me by Frank down the road who is very skilled with wood and only charged 2 rabbits. I've been rubbing it all over the inside with wax and propolis and the entrance with a lemon smelling plant- verveine citronnelle. I think it's too late to catch a decent swarm this year, but my wife says that it looks nice, ...

Altogether a strange year for me so far..
I lost 2 colonies over the winter (absconded), and from the 19 that survived I kept 7, the rest I sold on or traded for wild boar.
Everything was looking great for a super spring crop and then April went cold and wet, with may bringing more of the same. no honey, lots of lost queens on their maiting flights, not much joy at all.
With far more TLC than should be needed I have got myself back up to 20 colonies, the Linde and clover is ...

Got another 24 cells into apideas tonight at the queen rearing group.
Someone turned up late with 3 charged apideas and there was only one cell left.
We have a few more apideas loaded and there are 18 more cells ready to go in tomorrow.

I hope we get some better weather for mating flights as this is a lot of work with an uncertain outcome.

I just checked 9 apideas I have at home.

One had absconded, one was missing a queen, 4 had eggs or larvae and 3 still had a queen but no eggs yet.
Just got finished checking in the nick of time as we have torrential rain again.

3 weeks later than last year but bodes well for the 50+ apideas in the queen rearing group which are just over a mile away from these ones. This batch of queens mostly emerged 3 weeks ago.

Edit.
Checked another 9 ...