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Getting ready to treat for varroa

There are a few beekeepers around here who already have their thymol varroa treatment on and I envy them. The ambient temperature needs to be above 15C for it to work properly, so since you can never guarantee the weather I want to get on with it. My back is sore from moving about brood boxes and supers and trying to get the colonies down to one brood box ready to treat. My son and third daughter came with me to inspect. They are getting quite good at spotting queens now. I feel they have learned faster than I did because I don't mark all the queens. They look for a queen, whereas I always used to look for the mark on her. Yesterday I ended up plunging my head in the stinking water butt again because I was getting stung on the...
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Wed 10th Aug.

Did not look at the brood today. Put a CB under both supers. No honey coming in. Will take the supers off at the weekend, treat for vorroa and feed. Right Hive. 6 frames of brood Top super Full. Put C/B on. 2nd super 1/3. Left Hive. 12 frames of brood Top super. Full. Put C/B on. 2nd super. 1/2.
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Thu 5th Aug.

Both Top supers are full. Going to leave it a few more days then put a CB on. I should get another full super by swapping frames around on the bottom 2 supers. Right Hive. 6 frames of brood Top super Full. 2nd super 1/3. Left Hive. 12 frames of brood Top super. Full 2nd super. 1/2.
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More bad luck with the fancy queens

At the wasteground apiary in the 2 colonies that had the fancy queens introduced, the one that survived introduction isn't right. One supersedure cell. Just one, so I left it. There are a lot of bees in the box so I wasn't surprised I didn't see her, but there were hardly any eggs. I wonder if she is damaged. I wonder whether she might have nosema as it was damp weather a lot of the time she was in the mating nuc. Annoyingly they have put nectar in the supers I had put above the crownboard to clean. With only a tiny entrance for them to crawl through to get to supers above the crownboard I thought they wouldn't do that. They don't usually at this time of year. Some of the other supers are fully capped and a lot partly capped...
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Progress On Swarm 1 + Swarm 2

Well im still reading books like a eager beaver as much as i can until my attention span finally dies :P ( Haven't read much books for a while, kind of hard building up my attention span again :D ). Apiguard is now on order and i may order a set of super frames and wax sheets in the next coming weeks just as precaution, dont want to chance one of the swarms not having enough room. Was away for 10 days just got back today so i popped in to see how my little champs are doing, and i have to say its starting to look better now. Hive 1 is the swarm i lured using pure lemongrass oils and when it arrived i had around 4-5 frames covered in bees, i was originally using all old comb and frames passed down from my grandad but i decided to...
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Laying Workers

I had prepared a couple of nucs for re-queening. Expecting the queens by post on 29th July, I broke down all queen-cells in the 2 nucs on the morning of the 28th. The new queens have not arrived, and may not for another week. Does anybody know how long it will be before these two queenless colonies, under stress and with no eggs (though some sealed brood) will start laying workers, and how long that process takes? I need to decide whether to give them a frame of eggs, or leave them for a week on the assumption that they'll welcome a new laying queen with open arms (it's never straightforward, requeening, is it?).
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Now I look like a Charolais bull

Saturday we set up the LBKA stall at Brockwell Park at the crack of dawn, then I went off to collect honey jars and then came back to the allotment apiary to meet the students. I had collected 4 laying queens the night before from by buddies who have the fancy breeder queens and I was keen to get them into hives, so I met up with the students, even though the weather wasn't great. All was going OK. We found queens and squished them and then I put the new queen with the plastic tabs still in the cage into the top supers. (I will put them into the brood boxes at the weekend.) All was going well until we got to Mrs Cyprus, whom has been great, but the colony has become over defensive, particualrly in bad weather. Short story is I...
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Wed 27th July.

The honey is coming in slowly. Normally the honey flow stops around this time for me. Just hope there is going to be a late flow. Right Hive. 6 frames of brood Top super 4/5. Just the outside frames needs capping. 2nd super 1/4. Left Hive. 12 frames of brood Top super. 4/5. 2nd super. 1/4.
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Sticky

I used the manual extractor to get about 90lbs of honey out of the 3 supers. It took hours and I was hot and exhausted by the end of it. Daughter K helped me do the last one, as I was feeling very sorry for myself by then. Didn't get to bed until the wee hours and then had to get up at dawn to try to clean the kitchen. Perhaps it is worth it, as people do appreciate it, but at times last night I was wondering why I didn't just leave it to the bees. I've ordered more jars as depending on the weather there should be more to come. The 90lb was off one colony and there were 3 more partially capped supers on that one. On the other colonies the frames were't sufficiently capped to extract yet. I do think that the high density of...
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Tue 19th July.

As rain is forecast for the next few days and this is the 1st time this week it’s not been raining. I had to do my inspection a day early. I removed all the play cup in the Left Hive. Also the Queen I marked last week, the mark has almost gone. Right Hive. 6 frames of brood Top super 4/5. 2nd super 1/4. Left Hive. 12 frames of brood Top super. 3/4. 2nd super. 1/4.
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Wild Dancing

My sister has been married 20 years and they were having a party yesterday... so there was wild dancing to the ceilidh band and afterwards more wild and strange dancing to David Bowie and other odd choices. I met Mark the Oxfordshire beekeeper. It is still high season for the bees, so I inspected a few hives before we went and we didn't camp overnight, so that I could go through the rest of the boxes today. Good news is that 3 of the nucs are ready to go - 2 National and a Langstroth. I'm going to get a move on because what happened last year to some of the nucs was they outgrew their boxes and swarmed before I could sell them! I've brought back the 3 full supers to extract and found that my student has brought back the...
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On the honey

Son and his mate came to help at the wasteground tonight, because I relalised that I could end up in hospital trying to replace those capped supers at eye level. I've put on the Porter bee escapes to clear 3 capped supers because although I would rather extract in one go, I also don't want to not be able to work the hives on my own. I had one of those, "I'm losing the plot" moments today. Last week there was no sign of my fancy clipped queen (you know the one from the breeder queen). Worse than that the hive was full of queen cells. No eggs or young larvae. Y'know I took that as a sign that they had killed Mrs new Fancy queen. I destroyed all the QCs and introduced another clipped mongrel queen. Today the cage was empty and...
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Wed 6th July.

The honey is coming in slowly. Saturday removed and extracted the super. Got about 26lb, a few frames had a bit of crystallized honey in. Right Hive. 6 frames of brood Top super 3/4. 2nd super 1/5. Left Hive. 12 frames of brood Top super. 1/2. 2nd super. 1/5.
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