A new colony for George. Sticky and Tina's girls.

George's hive died out over the winter for no real reason apart from maybe they had got themselves stuck in a corner of the hive without food in one of the cold spells we had at the start of the year. They had half eaten their fondant before dying and there was plenty of stores at the other end of the box and in the super above. It looked like they had eaten themsevles into a corner and only had areas of empty frame around them and had gotten themselves isolated from the stores in the hive. Or maybe it was just because the hive came from the Suffolk countryside and was suffering from insecticide spray. Anyway as part of his 'hire a hive' agreement I took George some new bees today. George has the queen from the hive at the centre of the allotment that have been making so much fuss about loosing her and stinging people. The bees were fine on normal inspections and not too cross.

I took Sticky out of her hive over a week so the hive was due an inspection for queen cells. Out of the frames in two brood boxes I made up three nucs. Perversely the best queen cells were on the frame of drone brood that was due for removal for mite control. I uncapped some of of it and there were one or two mites in what I uncapped. Anyway I put most of it back so I will breed quite a few more drones and some more mites. I will put a frame of drone brood in again when there is another laying queen in the brood box.

I made up two nuc boxes as well. Sticky's bees are nice gentle bees to work with so I hope I do get three new queens from her two brood boxes.

Tina's bees decided to put nearly all of their queen eggs on the one frame so I only made up one extra nuc with her bees.

Judging by the number of bees taking in pollen the hive on bricks and to one of the two nuc boxes I made with queen cells have two new laying queens. One nuc box was empty of bees and on inspection I could see that the queen cell had not hatched out. It was a very small nuc box and maybe too small for the early part of the year.

I must keep checking that the hives don't need supers putting on as a result of this run of fine weather we are having. I did put a super on Norman's bees in the allotment at the end of the day.