Allotment apiary and Postwick

I opened up the last three hives in the allotment and checked they had laying queens. The swarm hive near the path has a good looking leather brown queen marked red and she seems to be laying well. The hive at the end by the Russet apple tree is on brood and a half and looks OK and the hive that was from Thorpe that re-queened in the allotment also has a laying queen

At Postwick I took out the two frames that I had put into the hive that had the old queen that had stopped laying and put them int a nuc box with a frame of stores. One of the frames has a couple of small queen cells on so we will see what will happen in a few weeks time.

I stole a second frame from the double brood box hive at the front (and saw a marked red queen) and put that frame into the brood box of the old non laying queen and reduced the hive to just one brood box. I don't think I should steel anymore more frames from that same hive from now on.

The next job to do in Postwick is to give all the colonies a tray of Apiguard each. I bought two more packs today.

Honey Stripes

Even though the weather wasn't perfect for opening up bee hives I didn't like leaving Honey Stripes with missing frames in her brood box.

And it turns out the bees didn't like it either and had already started making their own comb hanging down from the crown board to fill the spaces. I gave them a bucket with feed to encourage them to draw the three frames of foundation I put in today and those I put in on my last visit a couple of days ago.

The next stage will be to re-site the brood box on a new hive stand and take out the old broken frames and put a super on. I don't want do that until the weather looks set for a fine spell. Hopefully they will have finished the feed by then.

They will need checking again on Sunday 29th Easter Sunday to see if the bees decided to make queen cells in the middle brood box.

Honey Stripes

I am still opening up hives for the first time this year in some of my apiaries. I have been fairly confident that the three hives in the garden at Thorpe would be fine. Not so. The third hive had a double brood box full of stores and no bees at all. The middle hive had a small patch of brood and eggs but it was barely the size of my hand. It was only the old queen that was OK. Her yellow dot has nearly worn away but she was there and laying in the top brood box.

The two hives at the UEA site were in a much better condition. The hive that was knocked over in the winter has a very good looking new queen that I marked today and surprise, surprise they seem to be much better tempered bees than the ones they bred from which are in the hive next to them.

The new queen is large and striped and I'm going to call her Honey Stripes (super cell) . She is now in the top brood box in a stack of three with a queen excluder under that box. The frames need sorting out a little as there were a couple that were full of stores but were coming apart. I put several new undrawn frames in and it needs a couple more. It's possible that the brood that is in the box below will have queen cells made in it if the bees think the queen is too far away. They were eating fondant and still have a little left but I think I may put a bucket of feed on to help them draw out new wax.

I gave all the hives a Postwick a quick look. The hive that had the old queen that had stopped laying had two small queen cells in on the frame that introduced on my last visit. I put in another frame of eggs to keep them going. I may take the frame with the queen cells out and see if they can't make some better looking ones in their place. The other hives all had laying queens.