Acorn marked and moved

This year's queens. I opened the two nuc boxes and the brood box of the queen I took out on the 15th May. One had a laying queen as I could see there were eggs but I could not find her to mark. I think they should all have been left for a further week before inspection

I took queens out of the two hives under greengage tree in the middle of my allotment a week ago. As I had taken the swarm queen(Acorn) away I put a queen cell in brood box she taken from. There are still plenty of bees there that can look after a queen cell.

Acorn was collected as a swarm in an oak tree some days ago on Swarden Common having first ascertained that she is egg laying I have marked her green and taken her out of the hive on the allotment and transported her to Thorpe where she is now in residence in the grey WBC hive under the hazelnut tree.

Misty is OK in her new hive on the 83 allotment plot

Furgle's hive

Furgle's queen went south to a new home some days ago now and I was overdue for making up nucs with her queen cells. I opened up the hive this evening when no one was around in the allotments and as I did it started to rain.

I made four nucs three in boxes that I've made in the last few days and one in brood box.

Permaculture UEA swarm 2007 queen

I moved the Permaculture UEA 2007 swarm queen (Zigga) out to the country on the 2nd and today went into her hive to make up nucs from her many queen cells. The bees did not like that at all (maybe the fact that it was very windy didn't help) and stung John and some of the other altment holders. I think all of Zigga's bees need to moved out of the allotment site and replaced now.

The swarm from the Laburnham tree is still in it's brood box.

Misty, Swarm in weeping Laburnum

One of Zigga's 2008 offspring (single brood box) went to Banbury today.

I put Misty's queen cells into one nuc, the original brood box, and a new brood box split into three compartments.

The swarm I picked up today was in a in weeping Laburnum at about chest height. It was not easy to shake out and had itself well established amongst the branches that grew out at the top of the trunk of the tree. But given a good first shake into a box and then another into a smaller box two hours later I did manage to pick up nearly all the bees that were there. They are now in Postwick.