It's just a perfect day. The sky is blue without a cloud to be seen. There is no wind and hardly even a breeze coming from anywhere.

The day has started bright and sunny a perfect early Autumn day. And the forecast is for more to come.

I gave the old queen on the students allotment a new base, brood box and roof and put the old brood box on top of the new one so that is another double brood hive put together. I saw the queen and she still has some of her yellow mark on. If they are going to fill the top brood box they will need feeding. I put on a mouseguard and put in some thymol crystals.

I checked the other hive (a daughter of this swarm queen) and saw eggs and again put on another brood box and mouseguard and gave them crystals.

I did the same with Furgal's hive and put on another brood box . There was a super on and that is getting very nearly full of honey. Now the second brood box (brand new with new frames and undrawn foundation) is sandwiched between the original brood box (a very old one) and the super which is now on the top. If I can get the bees to eat up the ivy honey and make wax in order to draw out the foundation that suits me fine. I'm sure that I will need to feed them as well if I want the new box full of stores.

Yesterday I made a visit to Postwick to check the two hives that I didn't have time to go through on my last visit.

The end hive tucked away in the bushes was, as I feared, queenless but the hive next door did have a queen. I had introduced a queen cell to that hive some months back from bees I brought in from Costessy. That queen was a daughter of Rosemary's 2006 (gentle) Greek queen. I saw her she is still unmarked quite small and dark. I put the two brood boxes together and gave the top box a dose of thymol crystals. The queenless hive did have a tray of Apiguard on allready. I put in an entrance block so that hive just needs a mouseguard now to be ready for the winter.

I did a quick check of the hive that I put frames of bees into on my last visit and saw a marked brown queen that was laying well.

There are now five hives there on double brood and five on single brood.

Grey damp drizzel

Ferral bees

Picked up a colony of bees that had made their home in the shrubbery of an office car park. They were found by the groundsmen strimming the shrubs.

It's the first time that I have found honey comb in the open.

The comb is now in a two suppers with it's twigs sticking in it and through it and with two or three brood frames on either side. I gave them one of my brood frames from my store that had honey in but even so I think it may take some time to entice the queen from their comb onto my frames and I may well have to leave these bees like this until next spring before I can get them set up in a regular brood box.

I have only just about sorted out the bees from Thorpe that set up home under the floor of the National hive there.

The car park was in Thorpe so I also paid a visit to the three WBC hives there. The large white hive hasn't taken all of the last bucket of syrup I gave them on my last visit so I gave to it to hive at the other end of the row that had been short changed with less than a full bucket last time. I put in a entrance block (provided by Norman who I also visited) and a mouseguard on that hive.

Allotment hives given thymol

A perfect sunny day and the flow of Ivy honey continues.

I took the extractor back up to the allotment where it will stay in the shed for the winter. Any honey on the hives now will either stay there for the bees or be put in store for next year.

I checked all of the allotment hives (with the exception of those on the student plot) to ensure that they had laying queens and gave each hive a spoonful of thymol crystals on the end of the lugs of the center brood frames.

Some of the smaller hives still need feeding. In fact it would be a good plan for me to feed all of my hives again but I have used nearly 200 kilo of sugar so far this year and it seems as though I could easily get through the same amount again.

All of the alloment sites added together now have a total of thirteen laying queens.

Tina's plot -- one
Furgle's plot -- one
My plot -- eight
Permaculture students -- three

Out of my eight three or four are swarms collected this year. One is imported from Thorpe. One is a daughter of Tina's queen. One is the daughter of my old queen last year (that's in the WBC hive). One is in the box that the old queen was in originally. Her pedigree is now uncertain but I reckon she must be either from the original allotment queen or from Tina's queen.

Postwick apiary visit

Another sunny day. I have been leaving the bees alone to get on with making ivy honey in the sunny weather we have been having for the last few days but today I did visit my Postwick apiary.

The last time I visited Postwick was just over a week ago

Today I checked every hive except two for laying queens. The box that had not managed to breed a laying queen on my last visit still hadn't. So I put those bees into the hive next door.

All hives except two now have entrance blocks and mouseguards. And all except two had an application of Thymol crystals put along both end of the central frames.

All would like more feeding.

Grey again