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It was biling this afternoon in Dundee ..... now that suddenly puts me in mind of some Marra.......



.... anyway .... it was biling in Dundee so after work I checked out two colonies in Dundee (having been kept away by a chest infection). The one on the western edge of Dundee was most impressive. It has built up to fill its box and was near wall-to-wall brood or stores. It looks like it is mostly Himalayan balsam coming in, and ...

I got a call on Friday evening to say that there was a small swarm 20 foot up a tree at the end of a branch at our apidea mating site.
I devised a cunning plan which involved fishing line and a frame of drawn comb.
I was going to tie the line to a weight, throw it over the branch then pull up a comb to attract the bees which would then be lowered down safely.
It was raining on Saturday morning so I didn't get round until about 11am but luckily the apidea contents were still ...

Took my bees to the heather less than a week ago. Missing them dreadfully! Friends and family think I'm mad but when I told my bee mentor it felt as if my arm had been cut off he said he knew how I felt. Have been up to see them twice, tried to convince myself I was "just passing" (it must be a 30-40 mile round trip! Note to self: Don't take A/L at heather time.

We has Terry Clare as a visitor at our regular queen rearing group meeting tonight - fresh up from Gormanston last week.
I just heard this morning that he was in the neighbourhood.
It was nice to be able to show him our set up and we had about 25 beekeepers in attendance as well.

We had nothing special planned but about 8 mated queens were removed from apideas and new queen cells were put straight in.
Terry was able to cast his eye over a few fine looking queens ...

saw a classic supersedure situation today with a queen of mine in her 4th season.

This colony tried to supersede last August but I inadvertently captured the daughter in an apidea when she made a pit stop with her mating swarm on a fence post. This was apiary vicinity mating. At the time I could not work out where the stray queen had come from but I found an opened supersedure cell in this same colony the next day.
The old queen overwintered anyway but the colony started weak ...