Half way point tomorrow

From tomorrow onwards the queen bees will gradually begin to lay less eggs each day as we go past mid point in the year. In Norwich we still have some busy weeks ahead of us (the lime trees have begun to flower and after those the sweet chestnut will come into bloom) but we only have one more month now before we have to start thinking about next winter and feeding our bees sugar syrup for their winter stores.

So far this year queen rearing has been quite good with a fair percentage hatching out and getting mated. If a queen doesn't hatch out I see that as personal failure. But if she hatches out but fails to get back to the box she left then that is just bad luck. It can of course be bad weather but this year we have had good mating days evenly spaced every week or ten days or so apart.

Some of the queens I have seen have been extremely small and again I think that is down to the beekeeper as I'm sure that left to their own devices the bees would have prevented them from surviving. I have two nuc boxes where the bees have a very small patch of brood with a new queen cell in the middle of it. The bees definitely don't think those queens are up to the mark and are taking steps to replace them.

Allotment swarm, Little Lauren

The swarm in the box near the aconites did decide to make some queen cells on the frame with the WBC eggs that I introduced. I removed three queen cells and left them one.

Little Lauren has been laying well and building up nicely so I thought some of her bees could bring up one of the WBC queen cells from the aconite swarm. I moved LL to the middle hive in thorpe where she can stay now.

There were a couple of nuc boxes that I thought hadn't produced a laying queen but it turns out that they are just a little late in getting mated.

Georges bees, Thorpe, Laburnum

Georges bees are doing well but have just laid their first egg in a queen cup. If we are to get honey out of that hive now they will need a regular weekly inspection to make sure that they don't make queen cells and swarm.

The three hives at Thorpe couldn't be more different this year from last. The swarm that I added to hive number three is OK but could really do with feeding. The bees in number two are very low in numbers have no queen and need a nuc adding. Hive number one that did have a laying queen at the start of the year had an open queen cell but no laying queen. The number of bees is still quite high so they need a frame of eggs or a queen cell added.

I took a frame of eggs out of Laburnum's hive and put it in Misty's old hive as that hive didn't re-queen. There are still quite a few bees there so hopefully that frame will have some good queen cells on in weeks time.

My inspection at Postwick was cut short by thunder and lightening and by the time I got back to the city it was raining hard.

Allotment swarm

Furgle spotted a swarm on his way out of the allotment site. Thank's Furgle that swarm is now in Postwick.

Tina, Honey Stripes, Willow

Some of my bees are getting very swarmy now the weather is getting hot again and a swarm was seen over the allotments coming from the direction of my plot. I couldn't find it though.

Tina has was once more been taken to Old Costessy. She did really well in the new brood box she was put in and had completely filled it with brood and made a good start on a second. But today there was a queen cell and that wasn't the first that her bees had tried to make so she was removed. The queen cell is in it's own box and in a weeks time I'm sure there will be several (if not many) more emergency queen cells in the brood box she was removed from.

Honey stripes is laying well and as we have had a considerable amount of rain and the blackberry has started into flower. A hot spell now should see more supers start to fill with honey.

Willow is still impossible to find. I spent some considerable time today going through both brood boxes. She is still laying well but her bees are getting ready to swarm. I removed two rather scraggy queen cells on this visit. I would very much like to remove her -- but no luck. I may just split the two brood boxes on Monday if I still can't find her.

Furgle's bees, Allotment 83, Permaculture Society allotment

Furgle's hive has successfully requeened and one of the two nuc boxes produced a laying queen.

There are three swarms on my allotment. Two (Little Lauren and the North Walsham bees) have laying queens. The allotment swarm near the aconites was still queenless and has now a frame of eggs from the WBC hive to make queen cells with.

Both the Greengage hives have requeened - that's Bill's Greengage and my Greengage 83. I gave Greengage 83 a treatment of thymol.

Out of the three hives on the students Permaculture Society allotment two of the three have new laying queens.

Four swarms at Postwick

All the four swarms that I have taken to Postwick this year have laying queens.