Old Costessy, Postwick, Willow

I marked my first new green queen today. She is the daughter of the lost queen from the hive on bricks. I'm going to name her 'Maria'. Maria is on shallow frames (that are now in a bit of a state) that I have moved in with some new deep frames. I'm hoping that I will soon find her laying on the new frames..

I inspected the brood box on bricks that I thought also had a laying queen. I could see no eggs and have put a frame of brood in from the double brood box.

I made up a nuc with the bees in the double brood box - she was the last queen to get established in Old Costessy last year. I put in a tray of Apiguard although all the Old Costessy hives were treated earlier in the year.

There are two boxes to move out of Old Costessy now.

In Postwick I still had a hive full of queen cells to sort out. It is the other hive that had to be moved from the allotment. I think both of those hives must have had last year's swarms in.

I made up a nuc from the bees in the hive at the back of the Postwick apiary. This hive, that was under the budlia bushes before I cut them down, was Norman's big angry hive when I bought it last year. I used a frame of eggs from one of Rosemary's greek queen's daughters to produce 'Misty'. I like Misty's bees that are uniformly dark with three thin bands of light honey grey. They are calm and easy to work with.

I took another look into Willow's hive as I would really like to find her and get her out into a nuc box but I think she has been taken down into the bottom brood box as there were very few eggs in the top one. I must remember to do an inspection one sunny lunchtime next week as Willow's bees just do not like their hive being opened if the conditions are not perfect. I took out a couple of old frames of stores and put in two new frames of foundation in their place and put on another super.