Allotment Apiary, Tina's hive, Furgle's hive

Allotment Apiary visit.

As it was a sunny day I opened three of the swarm hives on the allotment to check that the brood was on the frames in the center of the brood box and adjusted two of them. Both of those two need more feeding. I put mouseguards on all of the hives in the row with the WBC hive at the end (the WBC had a mouseguard on already ). I like the look of the third hive in the row. The swarm bees have got well established covering all of the frames bar one in the brood box. The bees came out of the hive as I pinned the mouseguard on to see what was going on and were all over my fingers. They seemed quite un-phased and didn't sting me. I put an empty super on that hive and will watch with interest how it builds up next year. They may be the kind of good tempered hard working bees that I want on the allotment site.

I had a look at the 'feral' colony and cut away a few more twigs and put in some short frames to fill the space above the original brood wax with the twigs running through it. The bees have moved to the frames quite well but I fear it will take them until well into next year before the move up into the brand new empty space of the brood box above them and start to draw out those new frames. I put a full bucket of feed on.

The bucket of feed on Tina's hive was nearly finished I took that one off put and empty super on above the two brood boxes and a full bucket of feed back on top of that.

I put more feed on Furgle's hive.

I took off an empty bucket from the National double brood box hive on the student plot and put an empty super on that hive too. It still needs a lot of feed to fill the second brood box.

I have used one of the three 25 kilo bags of sugar I bought the yesterday.