I have been trying to rope in as many people as possible to rear queens using local native type bees. I have had a queenright queen rearing system set up for a month and a half and have hatched about 75 queens from my best two colonies with another 40 cells ready to hatch over the next week. I try and get the cells into Apideas about 24 hours before they are due to hatch. Interest has been growing and there are now about a dozen people involved, each with an Apidea or two usually ...
For once I get to blame the fairer half for forcing me to buy some shiny new stuff. I just invested in a 4 frame extractor and settling tank. My suspicion is that for something I just shelled out £300 on this is going to be a relatively short term investment as I'm intending to expand up to at least 10 colonies sooner rather than later. But, in the spirit of not counting my chickens, I think it should last me for at least the next couple of seasons. But I've 9 supers ...
I've never had to kipper Mull bees before. Usually a very light smoking at the entrance before I start and they ignore me as I take their home apart. On a bad day, maybe a little smoke every 3 frames or so. Today was a little different. The last inspections were 21 June, just before we went away, and since we got back it's been raining. Today was one of those 'will have to do the bees regardless' days. Two needed checking for mated queens, three for newly-mated queens still OK, and others ...
Great to meet Neil and Marie today at the apiary. After our three hours (three hours?!) rummaging in the hives, they seemed to still like the idea of keeping bees. Marie was a natural at spotting queens, and Neil had the relevant skills required to get my new queen marking pen to work. I hadn't. One of the duties for the afternoon posed a conundrum, and this was our solution, a completely new hive design. What were we up to? Does it make sense? Will it work?! ...
I always knew this week would be hectic as I have 42 grafted queen cells hatching between Tuesday and Saturday. I have several sidekicks loading apideas and we have 21 with virgins ready to take to an apiary with Galtee queens/Drones tomorrow. TT left 6 mating nucs with me on Sunday and loaded in the queen cells today. Some of them were hatching as he put them in. The close shave of the title refers to some early hatchers. I had about 10 on a frame due to hatch tomorrow ...
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