Allotment hives given thymol

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.

Postwick apiary visit

Another sunny day. I have been leaving the bees alone to get on with making ivy honey in the sunny weather we have been having for the last few days but today I did visit my Postwick apiary.

The last time I visited Postwick was just over a week ago

Today I checked every hive except two for laying queens. The box that had not managed to breed a laying queen on my last visit still hadn't. So I put those bees into the hive next door.

All hives except two now have entrance blocks and mouseguards. And all except two had an application of Thymol crystals put along both end of the central frames.

All would like more feeding.

Grey again

A bright sunny day and the bees are making honey.

I put more food on the four hives at Old Costessy and have now used the last of my six 25kilo bags of sugar.

Thorpe hives fed again

Calm warm sunny start to the day.

By the middle of the day the bees were very busy taking bright yellow ivy pollen into the hive entrances.

Took of the last lot of 'wet' supers off Tina's hive and put some more on

Put on the first mouse-guard fitted entrance block into the hive at the end of the allotment.

Feb the three Thorpe hives with sugar syrup laced with thymol crystals.