All Blog Entries

I checked through that big colony I moved to my allotment site yesterday and found and removed several more queen cells.
It has brood in a deep and a shallow and from the age of the youngest larvae I reckon it lost its queen on Wednesday 27th April.
On the very last frame I checked I found a queen cell with a little flap hanging which looked like a virgin had emerged. It had cocoon debris inside as well.
Having been on the point of closing up, I now had to sieve all the bees ...

I spent three hours this afternoon helping a friend from my bka sort out his bees.
He found queen cells last week and removed them but subsequently reckoned they had swarmed anyway.
I checked his colony today and could not find a queen. There were no eggs and the youngest larvae were around 1 day old which would put the swarm date last Thursday.
I removed all queen cells I could find bar a single open one.
They are on brood and a half and the box is still completely bunged ...

Four happy hours at the apiary yesterday with Bill and Sean, watching them become beekeepers. It was a cracking day and the sun was streaming down. The bees were happy, apart from one that came to greet us when we approached - not quite sure why that one was so annoyed. There was a scuffle with a bumble bee at one hive, so maybe it thought that we were giant bumble bees. Honeybees can be like that sometimes, a little dim at least when the red mist comes down. Apart from that it was one of those ...

Just back in from another entertaining evening with Tiny Tim.
We had to move two colonies of Tim’s from a site of his to our new mating apiary at Minnowburn.
Tim picked me up at 7.30 and after a half hour drive we were at the site.
The colonies were blocked up and ratchet straps put on.
I commented that one colony had a lot of dopey looking bees hanging out the entrance which can indicate a surfeit of bees and impending swarm preparations.
TT had checked this one ...

I have a colony to which I gave a second brood box a fortnight ago which now has 14 frames of brood. I set it up yesterday as a cell raiser with the queen in the bottom box,topped by a queen excluder a super,then the top box with most of the brood. I gave the top box a frame with ten grafts and on checking today two had been started. The first set of grafts offered often has poor acceptance but I am up and running now 5 weeks earlier than I started last year.
I regrafted the 8 larvae which ...