First full inspections

The weather was warm enough (at last!) for me to start open up and inspect the bees.

What a mixed bag. From booming to nearly bust.

The hive on bricks at Old Costessy was booming and had brood on five frames in the brood box and had started laying in the super. It's the only hive so far that i've found to be on brood and a half. It's no longer on bricks as I've moved it a couple of feet sideways to station one where Holly's hive was.

Nearly bust was a hive in the allotment with an area of brood not much bigger than a fifty pence piece. The queen was there and marked green but what a sad little colony. They won't survive.

Tina, was still in her box and still marked yellow - but sadly there was no brood there and the few bees that are still there with her must be old and on on their last legs.

Most of the hives I inspected had old solid bases and most needed a clean up. I plan to replace them with new stainless steel open mesh floors in the next few weeks.

I gave a tray of Apiguard anti Varroa treatment to the hive at station three at Old Costessy and to the double brood box hive at the top of the row in Ringland. I didn't open up the other three hives at Ringland but they all had bees eating fondant.

All of the hives need treating with Apiguard now

Holly was dead in the middle of a cluster of bees in the brood box. I'm not sure why but fear it was the second spell of cold weather that finished them off. There was plenty of frames with stores in the brood box and a super with stores in above it and a block fondant that I did see them eating at one point. There wasn't much food around the cluster and fear that a large cluster had contracted to a smaller one in space where the stores had been eaten and they had to stay there too long. I don't know. There were certainly hives with thriving bees that seemed to have much less to eat than Holly's bees. Maybe she was already an old queen or the strain was just not hardy enough for the cold weather. I don't know.

Whatever, I still feel responsible for here demise as I do for all of the other colonies that didn't make it through the winter. I think I will try to build up bigger colonies and leave them with more of their own honey this year. Although a large colony can soon eat a lot of honey and will still need feeding. Those colonies that are on double brood boxes and were fed buckets of food early in the season seem to have done well. But even those are not as strong as the hive on bricks. It seems that some queens are just better than others.