Allotment bees

The allotment bees were flying today. After several cold weeks the weather has suddenly warmed up and the bees took the opportunity to fly. Every hive on the allotment sites had lives bees in them.

I checked

Tina's hive
Furgle's hive
The UEA Permaculture Student's three hives
and nine hives on my plot

They were all showing sign of life and in the case of some of the hives on my plot death as well.

The bees were carrying dead bees out of the entrance. I removed the mouse guards from two hives (that really have small enough entrances anyway) and watched as dead bee after dead bee was carried out to join many more on the ground in front of the hives.

Neither of those hives have open mesh floors and judging by the effort it takes for a live bee to drag a dead bee out of the hive they both have too large an area for landing on I will have to cut them down next year.

The UEA Students Permaculture Society allotment

The UEA Students Permaculture Society allotment has three hives in the corner of the plot. The original hive there at the start of 2008 had a 2007 swarm in it and that swarm queen is still there in a 'kind of' WBC hive. The other two hives have 2008 daughters of the swarm queen. The feeder buckets were empty on two of the hives - the one with the old queen in and the colony in the new single brood box. The other colony is on a double brood system and still has some sugar in it. I removed the two empty buckets and covered the feeder holes with glass. There were live bees at the entrance of the double brood box hive.

http://patricklaslett.blogspot.com/2008/11/student-allotment-apiary-tinas-hive.html

There were empty buckets to remove on Tina's hive (live bees) and Furgles hive.