Postwick

It was another hot sunny day and I was able to check the smaller colonies of bees in Postwick without a veil or smoke.

Those nuc boxes that I gave an extra frame of brood to before leaving to go on holiday have generally done well with the exception of one that had all but faded out. I was able to transfer one colony from a nuc box to a regular brood and start feeding it. New entrance blocks were needed on several of the hives as there plenty of wasps around.

Last year's swarm is now the strongest hive on the site and again I stole one of it's frames of brood to give to one of the smaller colonies.

The Bowthorpe swarm has made no honey in contrast to the Laburnham swarm that was collected later in the year. The bees seem easy enough to work with and I'm sure if I feed them this autumn that they will make honey next year. But because of this year's performance they won't be bees that I breed from in the future.

I finally found (and marked) the queen that has been hiding from me all year and it's not supprising that she was so hard to find as she is dark, small and skinny. She is the kind of queen that beekeepers 'dispatch' and replace with another. Certainly the bees have taken all year to build up their numbers and fill a brood box and they have made no honey at all this year. I will keep her and feed the bees this autumn and wait for the worker bees to decide on when to replace her.