A perfect sunny day and the flow of Ivy honey continues.
I took the extractor back up to the allotment where it will stay in the shed for the winter. Any honey on the hives now will either stay there for the bees or be put in store for next year.
I checked all of the allotment hives (with the exception of those on the student plot) to ensure that they had laying queens and gave each hive a spoonful of thymol crystals on the end of the lugs of the center brood frames.
Some of the smaller hives still need feeding. In fact it would be a good plan for me to feed all of my hives again but I have used nearly 200 kilo of sugar so far this year and it seems as though I could easily get through the same amount again.
All of the alloment sites added together now have a total of thirteen laying queens.
Tina's plot -- one
Furgle's plot -- one
My plot -- eight
Permaculture students -- three
Out of my eight three or four are swarms collected this year. One is imported from Thorpe. One is a daughter of Tina's queen. One is the daughter of my old queen last year (that's in the WBC hive). One is in the box that the old queen was in originally. Her pedigree is now uncertain but I reckon she must be either from the original allotment queen or from Tina's queen.
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