GW moved to Postwick

GW's hive consisted of three brood boxes before I split it up today with GW in the bottom box under the queen excluder.

The top box has had three buckets of sugar syrup stored in frames (frames that had been left spare that needed cleaning up). Those frames of stores are now split up and in several other boxes that have small nucs with 2009 queens.

I put the middle box on a new floor and I will put the top box back on above it (with empty frames) with a sheet of newspaper between the two. Tomorrow I plan to put a small nuc of four frames with a new queen in it in that top box. My intention is to boost the number of bees looking after that queen and once they are united I will feed them up and maybe be able to do a similar split again for another small colony.

The original floor and bottom brood box with the swarm queen is now in Postwick and needs more feeding. This time last year they were still in comb amongst the twigs in the car park shrubbery. Back link

GW's bees are the only 'feral' bees I have collected living outside like that.

THIS TIME LAST YEAR

Feeding and uniting

I put a second bucket of feed on the German queen's hive today.

Those colonies that don't have a queen I'm uniting with a colonies that do have a queen.

I still have few nuc boxes with colonies in but I intend to move them all into regular brood boxes in the next couple of weeks

Feeding

The ivy is beginning to come into bloom here in Norwich and if the weather stays warm during September/October the bees will work hard at making honey out of it's nectar. I have spun out ivy honey in past years and have learned that timing is critical. A speedy extraction is required. The honey will even set on the inside of the extracter it sets so fast and once it is capped by the bees it almost too late to extract. It needs to be taken out of the hive just as the bees are in the process of capping it.

http://www.southamptonbeekeepers.co.uk/index_files/notes/october_supp.pdf
http://www.beesmith.co.uk/news.php?extend.69

There are other nectar sources that my bees are working at the moment including Golden Rod and Himalayan Balsam http://www.nookfarmhoney.co.uk/balsam_flower_honey.php I am holding on for a little while while yet before I take all of my supers off and extract what honey there is there.

I won't take the ivy honey and will leave that for the bees and I will feed them at the same time so that the ivy honey gets mixed with sugar.

GW

Furgle's bees (back link) didn't survive the last month. Maybe they couldn't cope with the wasp invasion although there weren't many dead bees in the brood box so that may not be the reason for their demise. I see that I noted that the queen was small.

GW's bees have made a good job cleaning the brood comb and stored a bucket of feed in them so far. I have isolated the queen in the bottom brood box so that I move her out and take her to Postwick in due course. In the meantime I have put another bucket of feed on. The queen is not good enough to keep on the allotment. The brood has too much chalk brood, the bees don't make honey and now they are not as nice to handle once the hive is opened as they were earlier in the year.

I also put a bucket of feed on the German queen and that got the bees very excited disturbing the balance in the hive next door. Norman's hive that had the queen in a nuc box on top of the hive that the bees decided to rob out. Once the bees start a robbing attack they go crazy.

I am still reducing hive entrances ever smaller.

Entrance blocks

I am limiting the amount of space the bees have defend at the entrance of their hives. I have reduced it on the strong hives as well the weaker ones although not by as much. It is good to see the wasps realizing it isn't worth even trying to sneak into the hives as they are so well defended.

The weather is beginning to change and there is not much summer left for this year now.

Postwick

It was another hot sunny day and I was able to check the smaller colonies of bees in Postwick without a veil or smoke.

Those nuc boxes that I gave an extra frame of brood to before leaving to go on holiday have generally done well with the exception of one that had all but faded out. I was able to transfer one colony from a nuc box to a regular brood and start feeding it. New entrance blocks were needed on several of the hives as there plenty of wasps around.

Last year's swarm is now the strongest hive on the site and again I stole one of it's frames of brood to give to one of the smaller colonies.

The Bowthorpe swarm has made no honey in contrast to the Laburnham swarm that was collected later in the year. The bees seem easy enough to work with and I'm sure if I feed them this autumn that they will make honey next year. But because of this year's performance they won't be bees that I breed from in the future.

I finally found (and marked) the queen that has been hiding from me all year and it's not supprising that she was so hard to find as she is dark, small and skinny. She is the kind of queen that beekeepers 'dispatch' and replace with another. Certainly the bees have taken all year to build up their numbers and fill a brood box and they have made no honey at all this year. I will keep her and feed the bees this autumn and wait for the worker bees to decide on when to replace her.

Honey Stripes, Old Costessy

I took one of the four supers off Honey Stripe's hive. The three left on do have some honey in them and today the bees were putting more in. Although it was a hot sunny day today the bees know that winter is approaching and the first three frames of the top brood box in Honey Stripes hive are now solid with stored honey and no longer contain brood and pollen as they did a month ago.

Willow2 (2009) was laying well and there is now a Willow3(2009) (daughter of Willow2(2009)) also doing well in what was the top brood box of Willow's hive last winter. (Honey Stripes is Willow2(2008)).

When this sunny spell is over and I have taken what honey there is off and the ivy comes into full bloom I need to put another new super and feeder on each of these hives.

Most of the hives at Old Costessy had laying queens although Norman's number three hive must have swarmed recently and was full of drones with more hatching out.