Mount Pleasant Swarm

The swarm in Mount Pleasant needed a bee brush to get the bees swept into the box. The are now under the second large apple tree. I stole a frame from Bill's Greengage bees to give them something eat and to induce them to stay.

The two swarms I collected last week have settled in and both have a laying queen.

George's bees

There were plenty of queen cells in George's hive to make a up a couple of nuc boxes. Those left over on the frames left in the hive were removed as we intended to unite a new queen with them. The queen marked green was put into a brood box on top of a sheet of newspaper on top of the box already there. Hope fully the bees will get through the newspaper and accept her as their own.

Hive on bricks

At Old Costessy the hive on bricks has again failed to re-queen.

Honey stripes, Willow

I took three supers of honey off Honey Stripe's hive today and put one new one. Stripe's hive is now four supers on top on two brood boxes. I didn't go through the bottom brood box as there was no signs of immediate swarming in the top box. If they continue to make honey for a week or two more I may take the top brood box off and replace with a new one with new frames and foundation and then feed the bees until all the new foundation is all drawn out before putting any supers back on.

The late Willow's hive is a bit of a mystery. Today there were plenty of eggs laid in the brood box and plenty of queen cells in the making. The queen that I have marked green was on the last frame on the far side of the box. I took out more frames with queen cells on. Maybe my taking frames out and putting empty ones back is confusing the bees. Or maybe they just don't like this queen and want a new one. Added to those in the brood box that I took off on my last visit I now have a lot of queen cells to deal with.

Suffolk bees

There are three queen right hives at Suffolk and so far none are making any honey.