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On Saturday I spent a fascinating afternoon at the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects at the University of West Sussex Just outside Brighton.

As the traffic was a lot better than the weather I managed to get there early and had plenty of time to have a mosey around the labs and meet some of the great and the good of UK apicultural research.

Once things kicked off, we were given a tour of the labs by Professor Ratnieks followed by a presentation giving an overview ...

Today was my first father’s day, and it was not a weekend without an events. The weekend started on Saturday morning with father and son bonding by both of us being very sick. With the copious vomiting between the two of us Mother was kept very busy looking after her two wee boys. This morning we both felt much better and were both a lot happier. The little man is not allowed to return to nursery tomorrow as he needs 48 hours of non vomiting to ensure he does not contaminate the other children. ...

Well I might get a pot or two of honey yet.

The Swarm is expanding nicely having generously given up two frames of brood to help the other two colonies out and is now starting to fill up a super nicely. It's now covering 6 frames of brood and drawing out the foundationless frames nicely.

The queenright colony in the nuc seems to have given up trying to supersede her and they're now nicely covering 3 frames of brood and look to be about a few days away from starting ...

This is going to be the trickiest logistical exercise to date.

Apart form our queen rearing group, there is a group of about 15-20 beginners who have signed up to get a queen in an Apidea. We are meeting next Tuesday evening and the agenda is to show them how to assemble and manage an Apidea.

The problem is that I have over 30 cells due to hatch on Wednesday and I suspect some of them will hatch early on Tuesday.

If they hatch on Tuesday, it is feasible ...

Phase 1 is over - the Awards for All grant (bless 'em!) is spent, we have bees and equipment, and now we need to settle in and start using the site as hoped. We will have a meeting at the site in 9 days, and so there is quite a bit to do. Probably have an official opening a little later in the summer when we will make a splash in the media.

A high point today was a visit to another site several miles from the association apiary near Dundee where we have some splits and Apideas coming ...