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.. and found 8 more queens laying.
these ones are all owned by members of the queen rearing group so it is great to see participants get a result.
I have quite a few more still to check so I reckon there will be more to come.
That's about 25 mated so far.

I put 8 cells into apideas this evening and gave two to one of the members who has a couple of queenless colonies.

I grafted 50 cells on Sunday evening and 32 were started, due to hatch next Friday ...

After peeling and chopping a mountain of potatoes my wife dismissed me from kitchen duties so I could grab a mid-morning coffee. I can’t really remember the time it was at the moment of sipping that coffee because it became lost in the whirl that became swarm Sunday.

I was casually staring out the window across the garden at the two hives, only one of which has a laying queen at the moment. This hive has the queen we have now named Grelder. I am not a fan of naming animals that ...

Two leaps forward at the association apiary today. I had need of a queen for one of the failed polynucs so fetched one from an Apidea and introduced it in a Butler cage. The Apidea had comb at all angles so I took that to bits in the process of finding the queen. The feeder unit was a convenient place for a spare slab of sealed brood. Anyway, job done and another protected queen cell took her place.

The second milestone? A media interview at the apiary. Was anyone watching Scottish ...

Just in from a real bollox tonight.

I left a nuc with one of my best queens at our new apiary site about 5 weeks ago.
It was a daughter of one of mine mated with Galtee drones.



I have been checking it regularly for stores as the weather has been so bad.
For various reasons, the last time I checked was Saturday week ago ie 12 days ago.
I took the lid off tonight and first thing I heard was piping.
...

Stage two of the artificial swarm was to split the hive in two and feed the ‘swarmed’ half of the bees. The weather prophets predicted heavy rain which I was glad of to ensure that the bees would take themselves off on a wee trip. The rain never came and the day was a glorious one that I observed from the confines of my classroom. However, I still believe that there are loads of bees still ...