Allotment apiary

In the allotment apiary the sun was shining again today and everything was flowering at once and making up for lost time. The snowdrops, aconites and crocus were all open for business today.

I noticed at the end of the day that there were hungry bees about and any old stores that can be got at had bees going for it. My swarm hive in the allotment had some super frames exposed where I removed the super to put the fondant on top of the second brood box. Some of the frames haves stores in and the bees had found them. I have put the super back under the crown board now.

I don't know if they were my bees or not, but I am going to do some more feeding next week. There are some hives that I'm pretty sure are not starving as the bees are still not taking much notice of the fondant I gave them weeks ago. But those that have finished the fondant I am going to liquid feed just to be on the safe side. Those that had liquid feed on have all emptied their buckets recently.

Some of the hives that are a single brood only or have a brood and a half I am going to add another brood box to and feed the bees constantly until I can open them up in March.

Old Costessy, Postwick, Thorpe

My Old Costessy apiary hasn't had a visit for some time now. It was fairly early in January (Jan11th) when I made a trip out there to give them all a fist sized lump of fondant.

Today they were buzzing! The bees were really active with a traffic jam at the mouse guarded entrance to each hive. They were taking in pollen - a positive sign of a laying queen inside. Two of the four hives had completely finished the fondant. So should I start feeding these hives with syrup now?

The hives a Postwick were also pretty active with the exception of two of them. The two inactive hives had bees in there OK (I checked) but the bees did not want to fly.

All three hives at Thorpe had flying bees.

It was late by the time I got to check the Bluebell Road UEA bees. Too late to see them flying. The hive that was tipped over in the winter has used up a bucket of feed already this year.

I was introduced to a single frame traveling box for the first time today. I will have gotten used to using them later in the year once I have finished shaking bees into the ten of them. The ten boxes are now sitting in the allotment with my spare supers.

Winter losses

At last we have had a warm enough day for the bees to really get out and about. It gave me the chance to begin the grim process of assessing my winter losses. On the allotment site there was one hive that showed no activity and on inspection was found to have failed. At Poswick there was also a failure and in Suffolk one of the three there had also failed.

I checked 28 hives today and out of those I have definitely lost three colonies.