UEA Bees

Nice sunny day.

A chance to take the last colony on the allotments site (UEA students) that is still in temporary box and put them into a regular brood box and give them some food. I've run out of used brood boxes and are making new ones now.

The UEA student's allotment now has three colonies there. The original swarm queen that I had collected last year from the Univerity and two of her daughters. So these can, I think, be called UEA Bluebell Allotment bees.

I removed the used supers off Tina's hive and put more wet ones to replace them.

I took a few frames of honey and the old box feeder off the hive at the end of the allotment. This hive housed the first swarm that I collected at the start of the season and was re-queened with a queen cell from Tina's queen.

I'm still trying to sort out the swarm that was housed in haste on a pair of supers and today I isolated the queen (marked red) in the brood box that I had put on a few weeks ago. I put that brood box between two queen excluders so now the bottom set of super frames will not get eggs laid in them. One frame had a slab of drone brood along the bottom so I removed that. This hive has had it's two recommended doses of Apiguard in the last month so I thought I would check this drone brood for mites with my uncapping fork. There were still plenty of mites in evidence and they were alive and living on the drone grubs. It looks like this hive will need more than two trays of Apiguard to get the mites down to an exceptable level. At least removing that chunk of drone brood will help a bit.

As it got dark I visited the hive on the UEA Bluebell Road site and took off a super of honey and put more frames into the top brood box. The bees didn't like that at all and I got stung through my gloves and through my trowsers. I put a full bucket of feed on the hive as the bees have lots of work to do now in drawing out the new foundation in the new frames in the top brood box. I need to go back and pick up the spare super frames that were in the top brood box that are now outside the hive.

The day started wet

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.

UEA Bluebell Road Apiary

Sunshine! And it lasted for much of a warm day.

There are two hives at my Bluebell road apiary. One hive I took there earlier in the year from the Old Costessy apiary. I moved them because the bees were less easy to handle than the other bees in Old Costessy. Originally these bees were a swarm collected last year. On inspection at the start of August the bees were beginning a swarm procedure and had made one large queen cell. I moved the queen into another hive and left the queen cell and most of the bees in the original hive. Today was the first inspection since then and now there is a new laying queen.

The colony with the old queen I have fed recently.

The colony with the new queen has a super just about full of honey to take off. It has two brood boxes but on inspection today I find the top box is short of deep frames. I must fill that box with more frames, take the super of honey off and then feed and treat the bees. The hive could also do with an open mesh floor.

As usual the day started with grey skys and it has rained on and off for most of the day. I stayed in and extracted the honey that I took from Tina's hive untill the evening when I put bucket of feed on both of the hives that I had put into new brood boxes on the allotment yesterday.

Tina's hive

The day started with grey skys although it was still warm and sun came out occasionally in the afternoon.

I took down the tower that I call Tina's hive (it's on her allotment) and removed three supers with honey in. I put back on the supers that I had extracted honey from last week for the bees to clean up. I will leave those for a few days before taking the hive down to the two brood boxes and putting some food on. They need treatment with Apiguard too.

I opened and checked for queens the last two hives in my allotment and found that both fortunately had laying queens. The total of colonies with laying queens my allotment is now eight. Three are swarms that I collected this year. One colony was imported from Thorpe although the queen was reared on the allotment.

I moved one of the swarms on the allotment from a homemade box into a nice new brood box on an open mesh floor.

No beekeeping today - went to the Suffolk Greenpeace fair.