I was feeling like a warrior goddess today, fresh from the Park Run 5k where I shaved more than 7 minutes of my best ever time. Obviously still full of that.....but this is mostly about beekeeping.
Looked at the allotment bees with the 3 students today. The nucs all looked OK, save for one, where the queen cell appears not OK... she should have emerged by now, so I cut out a QC from the colony that I only just recombined last week after an AS. It is the only monster colony with 6 supers and 2 jumbo broods and the queen was still in there fat and laying, but there were 2 charged queen cells. I suppose that being a new queen her pheronomes might not have been enough to suffuse the whole tower. A bit irritating as it is not great swarming weather and there is not much flow. I'm praying for glorious weather next week.
The mini nucs were not looking great. Two more had few bees and no queen.
Other hives all OK, except I have the usual complaint: it is beautiful at that apiary and it is perfect for teaching, but where's the honey? I don't think it is ureasonable to expect full sized hives all to give some honey crop, and because of the bad weather and poor flow the supers were lighter this week. Grrrrr!
Looked at the allotment bees with the 3 students today. The nucs all looked OK, save for one, where the queen cell appears not OK... she should have emerged by now, so I cut out a QC from the colony that I only just recombined last week after an AS. It is the only monster colony with 6 supers and 2 jumbo broods and the queen was still in there fat and laying, but there were 2 charged queen cells. I suppose that being a new queen her pheronomes might not have been enough to suffuse the whole tower. A bit irritating as it is not great swarming weather and there is not much flow. I'm praying for glorious weather next week.
The mini nucs were not looking great. Two more had few bees and no queen.
Other hives all OK, except I have the usual complaint: it is beautiful at that apiary and it is perfect for teaching, but where's the honey? I don't think it is ureasonable to expect full sized hives all to give some honey crop, and because of the bad weather and poor flow the supers were lighter this week. Grrrrr!
