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The Knapweed has taken over most of the ‘wild flower meadow’ on Ealing Common and is starting to flower now.

Just wandered over to Ealing Common as it‘s a warm and humid morning, the hives are all busy and there’s loads of lime trees there. Bees not foraging on the trees I looked at though.

The hive where earlier in the week we removed some pollen bound frames, reversed brood boxes and put some foundation in the top BB is looking nice and balanced now. Have already taken two supers off this one and put them back on (4 supers now) need more storage space already. Plan to give them...

Not humid at the minute but looks to be increasing from Sunday with a bit of rain. Here’s hoping.

There's dozens of Lime trees on and around Ealing Common and at least one has just started to flower. Hopefully by the weekend they’ll be lots out and the bees will take an interest in it.

Horrible creatures. I remember being savaged by them when fishing as kid and ending up looking like the elephant man/boy. Another reason to avoid the dangerous countryside ;)

Checked the mongrel hive to see if the queen that emerged a couple of weeks ago was laying and she was. Couldn’t spot her but she’ll be getting a nice pink splodge when we do. A week ago we merged a nuc using air freshener into a hive that had swarmed two or three weeks back. Bit of a risk but...

What’s that tree Ian?

Been a more noticeable ‘gap’ this year compared with before but the Lime is about to flower as well as the Cotoneaster and Lavender which is very popular in the gardens around here.

it’s not on a Demaree now as that was taken down about 3 weeks ago when we decided to let the hive have the new queen they had made during the Demaree and we took out the old queen. Most the stores in the bottom BB is pollen rather than honey and the poorly drawn foundation there originates...

One of our hives has a shed load of bees, a newish queen (from the Demaree they were on), no signs of swarming yet and has pretty much run out of laying space. It has 9 frames of brood in the top brood box (the other 2 are stores) but in the lower brood box there does not seem to be much space...

Make enough space in the brood box they are going into and stick the nuc frames in with air freshener. I’ll tell you later if it worked on our latest one when I check the hive we did it to a few days back 😁. It worked on two we did a while back but that was two weeks after we had nuc’d the queen...

Made another elementary mistake a couple of days ago. Nuc’d a queen on 13 May as the hive was in latter stages of swarm preps. Added a nuc super on 27 May as they were running out of space but they didn’t touch it and on the recent inspection discovered they swarmed about a week ago...

Clearing a super off each hive, extracting tomorrow and then sticking straight back on in the hope that the bees go for the lime this year. We look after another hive for an elderly gentleman about a mile away. They’ve drawn 3 supers of which we’ve extracted one and will extract a second next...

Yep. At least none of the neighbours noticed but I did lose a lovely Black Mountain Honey queen from last year 😢

I always put extracted supers under the other supers on the basis that bees like to fill from the top. Working well this year.

I (my wife was away 😂) neglected to inspect a hive for 10 days recently. We checked it 3 days ago and no sign of the queen or eggs but 3 unsealed QC’s. checked it again today and lots of QC’s on the frames that had small larvae. Possible supersedure but probably swarmed. Kept 2 QC’s and will...

Have noticed not so much of a pong of nectar in the garden the last week or so with the Horse Chestnut finishing. Not much Hawthorn or bramble in the London suburbs here. Still plenty enough to keep them going until the lime comes out in a couple of weeks.

Just clearing a super each on two hives to extract tonight and stick back on tomorrow morning. Thought that 4 supers per hive would be ample but far from it this year. Need to knock up a few more with foundation.

Did second stage of nucleus method and hopefully left just one selected QC. Without my wife to double check the frames, I do worry. Stuck a 4th super on the hive as well as the 3rd seemed about half full. That‘s all our 12 drawn supers deployed on 3 hives now. Extracting next weekend. Checked...