I ran the virgins into the mininucs this morning. One flew away and 2 had managed to escape in the nursemaid colony. Took nucs to other apiary.
The nursemaid colony were still bad tempered. They were stinging me through the latex gloves, so I put on another beesuit on top and put on the Marigolds because I wanted to go through the brood box thoroughly. There is still just one charged queen cell and eggs and the laying Cypriot queen. Left the queen cell because I would love to have bees that supersede rather than swarm. They've never been grumpy before until this week. Weather has been bad and I was inspecting at 8am today, but still does not fully explain it.
There were a few wasps about today, which is early, but this colony is too big to be a likely victim.
I had a look in the colony that I took the queen cells out of and that had lots of alien bees pouring into it at the weekend. No eggs, but polished cells and lots of pollen going in. I have worked out where the bees came from. At the weekend I'd tried to move bees that were overcrowded in a small swi-bine mini nuc into a bigger Kieler mini nuc. I had shaken the bees out and into the Kieler and taken their old home away, leaving the new larger nuc in its place. I saw that they didn't like it and that some of them were voting with their feet and piling into the adjacent small swi-bine that was already occupied. Today both nucs are empty. That would be enough bees because the one that was overcrowded had a mug full of bees hanging outside even in the rain, it was so overfull.
The nursemaid colony were still bad tempered. They were stinging me through the latex gloves, so I put on another beesuit on top and put on the Marigolds because I wanted to go through the brood box thoroughly. There is still just one charged queen cell and eggs and the laying Cypriot queen. Left the queen cell because I would love to have bees that supersede rather than swarm. They've never been grumpy before until this week. Weather has been bad and I was inspecting at 8am today, but still does not fully explain it.
There were a few wasps about today, which is early, but this colony is too big to be a likely victim.
I had a look in the colony that I took the queen cells out of and that had lots of alien bees pouring into it at the weekend. No eggs, but polished cells and lots of pollen going in. I have worked out where the bees came from. At the weekend I'd tried to move bees that were overcrowded in a small swi-bine mini nuc into a bigger Kieler mini nuc. I had shaken the bees out and into the Kieler and taken their old home away, leaving the new larger nuc in its place. I saw that they didn't like it and that some of them were voting with their feet and piling into the adjacent small swi-bine that was already occupied. Today both nucs are empty. That would be enough bees because the one that was overcrowded had a mug full of bees hanging outside even in the rain, it was so overfull.
