Georges Bees, Old Costessy, Bluebell

Georges Bees have died.

It hard to know why some bees don't make through the winter. Georges bees were one of the hives in Suffolk at the start of 2008. They were moved to his garden last autumn and fed in October and were the first to have fondant on in December. On inspection today it was clear that they had eaten half the fondant before they died. I will take George some more bees in April.

The bees in the four hives at Old Costessy were working hard. I gave them all more fondant removing any of the old fondant left (on two hives) .

I gave more fondant to the hive that was knocked over at the UEA Bluebell road apiary in the winter and removed the now empty feed bucket. I also gave the hive next to it fondant ( the original swarm queen).

I checked all the hives on the Bluebell allotment site and gave fondant to any hive without feed and removed several empty feed buckets.

Allotment apiary

In the allotment apiary the sun was shining again today and everything was flowering at once and making up for lost time. The snowdrops, aconites and crocus were all open for business today.

I noticed at the end of the day that there were hungry bees about and any old stores that can be got at had bees going for it. My swarm hive in the allotment had some super frames exposed where I removed the super to put the fondant on top of the second brood box. Some of the frames haves stores in and the bees had found them. I have put the super back under the crown board now.

I don't know if they were my bees or not, but I am going to do some more feeding next week. There are some hives that I'm pretty sure are not starving as the bees are still not taking much notice of the fondant I gave them weeks ago. But those that have finished the fondant I am going to liquid feed just to be on the safe side. Those that had liquid feed on have all emptied their buckets recently.

Some of the hives that are a single brood only or have a brood and a half I am going to add another brood box to and feed the bees constantly until I can open them up in March.

Old Costessy, Postwick, Thorpe

My Old Costessy apiary hasn't had a visit for some time now. It was fairly early in January (Jan11th) when I made a trip out there to give them all a fist sized lump of fondant.

Today they were buzzing! The bees were really active with a traffic jam at the mouse guarded entrance to each hive. They were taking in pollen - a positive sign of a laying queen inside. Two of the four hives had completely finished the fondant. So should I start feeding these hives with syrup now?

The hives a Postwick were also pretty active with the exception of two of them. The two inactive hives had bees in there OK (I checked) but the bees did not want to fly.

All three hives at Thorpe had flying bees.

It was late by the time I got to check the Bluebell Road UEA bees. Too late to see them flying. The hive that was tipped over in the winter has used up a bucket of feed already this year.

I was introduced to a single frame traveling box for the first time today. I will have gotten used to using them later in the year once I have finished shaking bees into the ten of them. The ten boxes are now sitting in the allotment with my spare supers.

Winter losses

At last we have had a warm enough day for the bees to really get out and about. It gave me the chance to begin the grim process of assessing my winter losses. On the allotment site there was one hive that showed no activity and on inspection was found to have failed. At Poswick there was also a failure and in Suffolk one of the three there had also failed.

I checked 28 hives today and out of those I have definitely lost three colonies.

Postwick bees

The Postwick bees that I gave fondant to before Christmas are eating it well. The bees in the hive that had trouble with a damaged crown board have eaten over half the block that I gave them.

I could see the bees eating the fondant inside the polythene bags of three of the hives.

The bees in the swarm hive haven't been eating the fondant and I was concerned that they couldn't get at it but on lifting the bag there was at least one live bee on the frame and sticky fondant oozing into the feeder hole so I dropped the bag back over the hole and left them to get on with it.

The hives with buckets on still had food in them.

UEA Bluebell Road Apiary visit

UEA Bluebell Road apiary visit

After one of the hives was knocked over the over day I wanted to visit the apiary again to check that the trouble hadn't happened again. The hive was still upright and the bees were still near the top of the top brood box and taking the sugar syrup too. I needed a some smoke to get them down and to reposition the frames and in fact I took out an empty shallow frame at the edge.

It was good to see that the bees were taking the food. Maybe it will be time to start feeding them all sugar syrup again soon.

UEA Bluebell Apiary vandalised

UEA Bluebell Apiary vandalised. I can't visit every hive every day even in the summer let alone the winter. I have however, been dropping into the UEA apiary on a fairly regular basis just to check that the hives were still upright.

Today one wasn't.

The top brood box was on the ground on it's side. I was able to pick it up and place it back in position on top of the bottom box but I was getting stung so much that I had to retire and go back for my beekeeping suit in order to get the frames back into position. Even so there is still one sticking up proud. I will have to visit the hive again in a day or two with a smoker and sort it out properly.

These bees do not like being messed around with on the best of days and in the best of conditions - today's circumstances were neither.

The good note I can draw from it was that I could see (as you can in the photo) that there were plenty of bees in the hive.

The second hive was left alone. Hopefully the young vandals were also getting stung for their trouble and had decided to retreat from the scene of the crime.

http://patricklaslett.blogspot.com/2008/10/another-bright-sunny-day.html