DN4 Frames

DN4 Frames made up with new foundation are the order of the day. I picked up another small swarm this evening that was hanging under the seat of a swing in Bracon Ash. I have housed it on the allotment to the left of the path towards the end.

The laburnum swarm is doing well but has no laying queen at the moment. I put a frame of eggs in from the Blowthorpe compost bin swarm, that has started laying in the new ND4 frames in the brood box above the old super they were originally put in, to see if they are without a queen and make a queen cell.

I had a quick look into Honey Stripes hive and she is laying well. There were two full supers of honey on the hive so I gave it two more supers. Willow is also still laying well and eluding capture. When opened in the middle of a sunny day Willows bees are not so bad and quite easy to work with but if they are left until the evening or opened in bad weather the protest and sting.

Nuc Boxes, Furgle's swarm

I just can't make them fast enough.

It's beginning to go a little crazy in my apiaries at the moment with bees, swarms and drones going in all directions making honey and mating. At the end of the process hopefully it will all settle down and we should have some sound new laying queens. So far I have only marked half a dozen queen bees green (this year's colour) and half of those have been swarms.

There was a very nice large swarm of bees on the handle of Furgle's rusty old wheelbarrow. My bee from Furgle's hive? A fair bet I would say. Now they are on allotment 83 by the small pear tree in a WBC brood box. If there is a laying queen I think she can be called Rusty.

Luke's bees, Allotment swarm, Lost queen

Late last night I brought back a couple of nucs from Luke in Essex. The one in my allotment has one of his German Carnelian queens. The one in Old Cosstessy is his general stock pre German queens.

With the number of beekeepers and their colonies increasing on the allotment site one would expect the occasional swarm to crop up. Today's was an easy one to collect and is now housed in a brood box near to the small apple tree and the aconites.

I have lost another good queen (or did sometime last week) and had a hive full of queen cells to deal with as a result. This time it was the Thorpe allotment hive. A strong hive of nice bees is now split up and in half a dozen nuc boxes.

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.