Suffolk apiary

It's not raining this morning - but I fear there is more rain yet to come. And of course there was.

Welcome to Suffolk. The sign is just a couple of miles from my apiary just over the Norfolk/Suffolk border into Suffolk.

There are four hives at Suffolk. The furthest colony down the line of hives is the latest addition to my Suffolk apiary and was one of the two hives I bought from Bill at the start of the year. I unfortunately left them for too long with honey on and they got tight for space and swarmed fairly early in the season so colony number four has requeened it'self in Suffolk. I will call them Bill's (Suffolk) Bees.

Number three are Suffolk Bees that have been there for some years. Three has a yellow (2007) queen. That queen refuses to lay enough eggs and the colony has remained small all year. They are very docile easy to handle bees - but seemingly useless.

At the start of the year colony number two were Suffolk bees (the queen was the 2006 mother of number three). That hive was queenless on my last visit and I put in a frame of eggs from number four hive into the broodbox. Number two successfully requeened and was queenright today. So number two is now a daughter of Bills (Suffolk) Bees in number four.

Colony number one was taken to Suffolk last year and still has the same queen. I'm not sure how old the queen is. They are Bluebell Allotment Bees that sulked at the start of the year and missed out on the rape. They have built up a bit better since. There were quite a few bees in the hive today and if the summer weather had been good then they may have made a couple of supers of honey. But that wasn't the case.

Tonight I removed the supers from all of the hives taking each hive down to the brood box and put a box feeder on each. I had taken out around 18 pints of sugar syrup that I then split equally between each hive. I will have to take at least the same amount out again in a couple of weeks time. Ben and I took off a very small amount of honey from hive one and two.

It has been a bad year for honey production in my Suffolk apiary. This year Bill's Bees saved the day by making honey from the Oilseed Rape. My bees were useless at that time.

On the plus side each colony was queenright tonight and given that I fill as much space in each hive as I can with sugar before the winter arrives they stand a good chance of getting through the winter OK.

It seems the bees there needed a bit of hybrid vigor. Bills bees were not as laid back as my Suffolk bees they were taken to join. Maybe if the remaining yellow Suffolk queen makes it through the winter I will remove her at the end of April and see if a daughter of hers can take on a bit of Bills Bee's spirit. I will have to ensure that hive four produces plenty of drones.

I put Apiguard on number four hive as I saw some deformation in the bees on my last visit and that is a certain sign that they have a severe mite infestation.