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I have read quite a few posts in the last day or two from beekeepers who found low levels of stores in their colonies after the past two weeks of cool weather.
I checked 9 of mine earlier today and they are all fine. They range in size from 4 frames of bees up to 9 or 10 covered. On average they have a couple of frames of capped stores available.
None of mine have supers on yet although I have a couple of bigger colonies at the bottom of the garden which will need supers very soon. ...

Had a look today as it slightly warmed up at lunchtime and I was wondering how they were after near enough a fortnight of cool weather. Not bad. They still had stores - although a couple at the association apiary needed a little bit of something to keep them going. My apiary is blessed with greater shelter and with lots of pear trees in flower now. So they were bringing in oilseed rape (nearest field just over 1 km away) and pear plus a little dandelion. As usual the colonies differed. A couple ...

Originally Posted by HJBee

Hi

I am setting up a Hive in a newly acquired space in Quarriers Village, Renfrewhsire. Any other NewBees interested in setting up and are struggling to place their hive can contact me to discuss sharing the space and helping each other during the learning curve. Site approved by Ian Craig!

It was supposed to be only 10-12 here today so I arranged for some help to try and get through the mountain of stuff that needs sorting out.

As it turned out weather was lovely and I could/should have checked out the one hive I haven't looked at yet, but I think we did ok:



4 brood boxes worth of frames, 3 supers assembled, painted and stuffed with frames, plus 4 hive stands finished ...

Used the warm weather to check my eight colonies. two were alright, brood area was small but then there isn't a lot of forage here at this time of year. 5 had very heavy chalkbrood mummies on the OMF and the last was classic foul brood (AFB0 stringy mess and the lot. confirmed by microscope slide.
Oh well off to the pit tonight.