Warm enough to fly

The bees were out in force today.

I visited the bees at the Bluebell Road, Allotment 83 and Old Costessy apiaries and all the hives had flying bees.

Long Stratton Swarm

One of the hives with a box feeder on was the hive with the Long Sratton swarm in it - at least there were in it. As the sun came out this afternoon after recent days of rain I thought I would remove the empty feeder from the top of the brood box.Whilst unsticking the two the brood box moved and was strangely light. It didn't take much of an inspection to see that the bees have gone taking all stores with them. More likely any stores left behind have been cleaned out by bees from other colonies, whichever way, the result was that the box was empty of both bees and stores.

Bonus week, Tina

It's the end of a bonus week for the bees. The weather in the middle of the week was still and warm. Better than we often get on a summer's day. There wasn't much that I needed to do with the bees as they all have feed now. Although a few will soon have empty box feeders that I will remove and replace with a block of fondant. Some do still need mouse guards putting on.

GW's old brood box (now No6) seems to doing well with it's new queen. On watching the bees coming and going bringing in pollen and making the most of the fine weather I saw at least three drones fly into the entrance. Maybe they will keep a few through the winter or they just haven't thrown them out yet because of the warm Autumn weather.

I have moved Tina for the very last time to the end of the allotment.

Warm weather again

Today has been unusually warm for this time of year and the bees were out and about and bringing in pollen.

Postwick, Thorpe, Old Costessy

It was a very nice sunny day on Friday when I checked the hives a Postwick adding fondant thymol where required. All the hives there have fondant on now.

I gave each hive at Thorpe a sprinkle of ctystals and ablock of fondant.

Saturday it rained.

Today I made sure all the hives at Old Costessy have fondant on them. The strongest hive there is colony I have been describing as 'facing south' although it is now one of three hives facing south. It has two brood boxes and two supers on and a lot of bees in it.

Ringland Apiary, Old Costessy

There are four hives in the Ringland apiary. Laburnham, Midnight, Greengage83 (brood box 3), and a 2009 daughter of Tina and today I gave them all a treatment of thymol and put a mouse guard over the entrance to each hive. I put a block of fondant on both Midnight and Greengage's crown board. The other two hives had a block put on some weeks ago.

In Old Costessy I gave the hive on bricks a block of fondant.

Suffolk bees Autum

The last time I visited the three hives in Suffolk was in June

Today I gave them each a block of fondant, a mouse guard and a sprinkling of Thymol crystals.