Old Costessy

I paid a visit to Old Costessy today although there wasn't much to do there as the sun is still shining and the bees that don't have feed on are making honey and best left alone.

There was the colony that was queenless that had one of George's nucs to unite with to check out. The bees had torn a lot of the newspaper away so I put the two lots of bees together in the bottom brood box. I didn't see the queen.

That gave me a spare brood box so I put Norman's allotment queen into that. I now have just one lot of bees left in a nuc box that need to go into a brood box.

There is one small colony at the allotment that seem to be queenless all of sudden. I will need to unite those with another colony soon and that will free up another box.

The bees that were on the outside of their brood box have all moved inside and are taking the feed from the box feeder. I am going to leave them for a while before checking them for a laying queen.