Postwick

The day started bright, warm and sunny with a strong warm breeze from the South West.

I hadn't been to Postwick for a week and today's visit was less than a 100% successful. There is one colony there that is not in a brood box and on last weeks inspection didn't have laying queen so I took along a brood box for them. Still no laying queen so I brought it back.

The other hive that I couldn't confirm as queenright last week did have some grubs in the brood frames but not a good laying pattern. There wasn't much spare room with recently collected honey taking up brood space. I took off a super from one of the hives with a double brood box with plenty of space still in the top brood box. They hadn't started using the super frames yet so I put that super on the end hive. The queen in end hive is a grandaughter of Norman's nasty bees that I took on with the apiary. One of which today got into my wellington boot and stung me on the foot.

The hive that has my red queen in (the one taken from Postwick daughter of the Gentle Greek queen) had a super underneath two brood boxes so I moved that above the two brood boxes after finding the queen in the bottom brood box. She has been messed around all summer by being moved from one box to the next in order to create queen cells. Her last move was in the super of a hive set up as a brood and a half. It's good to get her settled back in the right place. I put a tray of Apiguard on that hive as well. Several of the Postwick hives have her daughters. The big test is to see if/how they survive the winter.

The ivy in the countryside is in bloom and the bees are storing ivy honey. I now need to feed them some more.