What bee-thing surprised you in 2018

[Beagle23]

I made a split back in the spring, placing a new queen into a NUC and leaving one hatching cell in the national
A couple of weeks later I marked the new queen in the NUC and the new queen in the national. The following week after an exhaustive search I determined that the NUC queen was gone probably eaten on her mating flight. so I shook the NUC bees back into the national and let them get on with it.

Another week passed and I carried out an inspection on the national, the third frame I pull had the NUC queen on it....and also the national queen, both were laying.

I split them again and all was well. But contrary to every thing I've read these two queens did co-exist for a week

 

[Amari]

Were there any eggs or larvae in the nuc?

 

[For want of a better word]

I was surprised at the headless chickens charging around panicking over a couple of Asian hornet sightings!

 

[Curly green fingers]

Finding a small amount of osr honey in one of my supers at home the nearest osr was three miles away , also weighing my first honey super 32 lbs..

 

[SDM]

I was surprised to find that in north Wales you really need 5 or 6 supers per hive.

 

[BeeSpace]

Successfully raising a queen by taking a nuc out of a bigger hive. It was my first year, so 'twas surprising when anything worked.

Of course, finding her before I bought a queen for the 'queenless' nuc would have been optimum

 

[Curly green fingers]

I was surprised to find that in north Wales you really need 5 or 6 supers per hive.

Double brood SDM ? The forage must be good in North Wales?

 

[SDM]

Double brood SDM ? The forage must be good in North Wales?

Yes double brood, but the 12 weeks of sunshine starting in May was the driver. Until last year I'd have thought anyone claiming hives hitting >200lb locally was full of it.
Now i wonder if I'll ever see it again.

 

[Millet]

The thing that surprised me last year is how hard it is to find a tiny drone laying Queen three times..
When i first found her i left her in the hive till i ordered some bought in Queens as it confirmed i did not have a laying worker and to stop the bees making king Queens from drone cells..
When the New Queens arrived i got everything ready for this particularity colony..i laid a spare brood box to one side and slowly went through the frames looking for this tiny Queen and placed the frames in the new brood box...i missed her on the first sweep but spotted her on the second..once spotted i walked well away from the hive but stupidly took my eye of the Queen for a second and she was gone..so i had to go through all of the frames again in the new brood box and the original hive..
I finally found her for the third time back in the original hive..she had flown of the frame i was holding and back into the hive about 10 yards away..lets say i never took my eye of her this time and she was quickly caught and dispatched..
It took me around 45 minutes to deal with this palava but the plus point of it all i now have my eye tuned in for spotting normal sized Queens.

 

[Curly green fingers]

Yes double brood, but the 12 weeks of sunshine starting in May was the driver. Until last year I'd have thought anyone claiming hives hitting >200lb locally was full of it.
Now i wonder if I'll ever see it again.

It was a good year last year wasn't it , my best was almost three supers of brood/half. spring ,summer and balsam - late summer honey , the balsam wasn't quite a full super. I can't wait to go double brood .
I hope we have a good season.
What bees do you have?

 

[Beagle23]

Were there any eggs or larvae in the nuc?

No, but I watched both queens laying on the same frame in the main hive.

 

[Wingy]

Got my first Nuc over winter with all odds stacked against it. Got it into a hive early and it built up very fast. Took a Nuc from it which ended the season on brood + half. Missed a Q cell & lost a swarm but the subsequent Q was so prolific it made double brood (Langstroth).
Didn’t get much honey though

 

[Hivemaker.]

I was surprised at the headless chickens charging around panicking over a couple of Asian hornet sightings!

It all got rather silly.

 

[GuyNir]

I was surprised how well my honey sales went. Wasn’t aware there’s such demand for local, small scale produced honey in my area and people willing to pay good money for it. 1st year I got enough honey to sell, over 300lb via 2 local farmshops, sold out in couple months.

 

[B+.]

The thing that surprised me last year was just how late bees will continue drawing foundation.

 

[For want of a better word]

It all got rather silly.

Somewhere between The Goodies and Dad's Army !......

 

[Harley1]

I was surprised that after 10 years with very little trouble with my bees, this year turned out to be the worst ever and I still haven't worked out what went wrong.
I got off to a late start due to my husband's death, but was pretty sure that I had everything back under control quite soon afterwards (and I'm still most grateful for the advice and kinds words that I received from some of you).
And then the bees did nothing all summer. They didn't attempt to swarm, they almost starved in the middle of August, but after a couple of days feeding they seemed to be working as normal. And then they continued to stay happy and healthy and went into winter well fed and looking like nice, large colonies. They just didn't do anything much at all, other then survive. I took no honey at all and had to feed a bit as well, to get the boxes too heavy to lift.
So I'm now wondering what this year will bring. Their stores are lasting O.K so far and warm days see plenty of activity so I'm hoping for a return to normal.

 

[tonyofarr]

Sorry about your husband Harley.

I was surprised the honey flow finished down here because it was so dry, and not because it started raining. I would love 2019 to be the same, bet it won't be though.

 

[Millet]

I was surprised that after 10 years with very little trouble with my bees, this year turned out to be the worst ever and I still haven't worked out what went wrong.
I got off to a late start due to my husband's death, but was pretty sure that I had everything back under control quite soon afterwards (and I'm still most grateful for the advice and kinds words that I received from some of you).
And then the bees did nothing all summer. They didn't attempt to swarm, they almost starved in the middle of August, but after a couple of days feeding they seemed to be working as normal. And then they continued to stay happy and healthy and went into winter well fed and looking like nice, large colonies. They just didn't do anything much at all, other then survive. I took no honey at all and had to feed a bit as well, to get the boxes too heavy to lift.
So I'm now wondering what this year will bring. Their stores are lasting O.K so far and warm days see plenty of activity so I'm hoping for a return to normal.

It was a long dry hot summer last year and from what i have read on here some other members also had a bad year..maybe the lack of rain caused the forage your bees use to produce very little nectar but just enough to keep them ticking over..other folk in different areas including me had a brilliant 2018 regarding honey yields..the best of luck for this season..

 

[bpmurray]

What surprised me was how easily I got the numbers wrong when raising queens. I grafted and went off on a fishing trip, returning to find that one queen had emerged and dispatched all the others - I had expected to find a bunch of queen cells ready for nucs & apideas.

The mistake? Queens emerge on day 16, but grafting day is actually probably day 4, so I had only 12 days to play with and not 13 as I had miscalculated! Ah well, I suppose I'll learn from this.