What did you do in the Apiary today?

[JWF]

It's about 20 Deg C here and really humid.

Bees were quite arsey with me earlier, clustering on my veil, especially the queen less half of a split where I had to knock down all the queen cells bar 1. I had to walk away a few times.

I'll put it down to the end of OSR, being Q- and the humid weather, hopefully normal service will resume in a week or two!

 

[Erichalfbee]

I can begin to imagine.

All grist to the mill. There is a master plan. I might live long enough

 

[colinc]

Strange weather for bearding???
15degC and persisting down. Can only assume few optimistic foragers can't get back in for chilly bees hogging the warm bit of the brood nest. This is on double brood too.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

D'oh!!!!

Went and checked again last thing still large group on front of the hive. My wife heard a piping queen and I peeked in through the roof vents and couldn't see anything, normally small clusters of bees up there. Seems that a lot of brood has hatched that would probably have replaced the swarm bees that we stopped with the AS. Absolutely wall to wall and roof to floor with bees so gave them 2 empty drawn supers. Bit late on this evening so they weren't exactly happy.

Praying they don't swarm tomorrow.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Ely]

Did an artificial swarm. The queen presented herself and everything went smoothly for the first time ever! Until I dropped the frame with the queen on while moving it to the new box! Doh...there is always something

 

[Anduril]

Did an artificial swarm. The queen presented herself and everything went smoothly for the first time ever! Until I dropped the frame with the queen on while moving it to the new box! Doh...there is always something

Did you still have the queen when you picked the frame up?

 

[Ely]

Did you still have the queen when you picked the frame up?

No, it was dropped on top of the new hive. Time will tell if she is in there undamaged

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

Introduced new queen. Fingers crossed.

 

[colinc]

Found my big hives new queen. Nice size virgin who was literally blowing her own trumpet as she ran around the hive. Removed a couple of undersized queen cups in the hope it stops them swarming and they are eggless now so all going to plan for once. If they want to replace her now they will have to supersede once she is laying.

 

[madasafish]

Checked my TBH which had a virgin Q introduced two weeks ago.Eggs.

Checked my nuc with virgin Q (cast). Eggs . Marked her.

Checked one of my two horrible hives. Will dequeen once replacement is ready.
Meanwhile sting count rises..

 

[Goran]

Temps goes above 30C.. Now we go bearding, but seems wild blackberries and some honeydew give a flow cause bees are rare at the water and visible some fresh nectar in combs..
Bees are still very calm.. as lambs.. This year especially.
Still didn't manage to start with qrearing.. Time.. isn't on my side..

 

[witchcraft]

Fended off three more swarm collection requests (I'm out of kit) and then found that the farmhouse near my hives has bees in the wall - silly swarming season this year.

 

[einsteinagogo]

quick check on hives, lots of activity today, will check and inspect over the weekend, and that promised vape, need to charge battery.

 

[Goran]

I am sweating and bees are bearding..

 

[Tremyfro]

Did a flit through the nucs today...to check for queens/brood. Saw one queen and marked her...lots of brood in all stages in her nuc. They were a bit buzzy though...hmmm I will keep an eye on these. The next nuc had lots of brood...some even capped...but didn't see the queen...such lovely bees..hardly moved on the comb...no buzzing or flying up. The nuc with the newly arrived queen was out of her cage and had lots of polished cells ready for her. Finally the swarm cast nuc has a queen but didn't see her and lots of polished cells. They have been busy collecting honey...yay!
Combined two colonies together. One was rather too buzzy for comfort...so before it got any bigger I decided to combine with a much nicer colony...since I was lucky enough to find the queen as she wasn't marked....ha ...she is sleeping in the freezer now. It's the first time I've combined colonies properly...usually requeening instead...but I'm hoping it will also give me a bigger production colony. I seem to have all small colonies ATM. I sprayed them all with thymolised syrup and combined over newspaper. All seems fine...I didn't see any fighting...so I hope I don't see a big death toll tomorrow.
The exciting moment today...was seeing capped honey in a super...

 

[Fusion_power]

The spring flow is over in this area but we still have enough pollen and nectar coming in for maintenance. I started queen cells 11 days ago so today was time to remove cells. I made up nucs and moved them to my land to mate with the drone source colonies I keep there. This round was raised from a superb 2 year old queen that produced a good crop of honey last year and again this year without swarming. To get good established nucs, I split the colony that produces the cells into nucs each with 2 or 3 frames of brood, bees, and honey and give each a mature cell. This eliminates problems with cell acceptance and results in good nucs for overwintering.

The rest of my day was spent in the vegetable garden.

Re the bearding bees, that is why we use slatted racks aka Killion Bottom Boards.

 

[Roola]

Just caught my 6th swarm of the season in one of my bait hives. Looks like a biggun. Will check to see what I've got later and put in some foundation.

 

[Goran]

The spring flow is over in this area but we still have enough pollen and nectar coming in for maintenance. I started queen cells 11 days ago so today was time to remove cells. I made up nucs and moved them to my land to mate with the drone source colonies I keep there. This round was raised from a superb 2 year old queen that produced a good crop of honey last year and again this year without swarming. To get good established nucs, I split the colony that produces the cells into nucs each with 2 or 3 frames of brood, bees, and honey and give each a mature cell. This eliminates problems with cell acceptance and results in good nucs for overwintering.

The rest of my day was spent in the vegetable garden.

Re the bearding bees, that is why we use slatted racks aka Killion Bottom Boards.

Over here are used mesh boards, but I somehow stick to solid boards. As due to high outside temps bees will cover mesh to stop entering warmer air inside and I rather let them go for bearding outside..

 

[Millet]

I wrote everything down that i did over the past few years my pen ran out Today, the pen should have lasted 10yr's with normal use.

 

[Helen]

Fended off three more swarm collection requests (I'm out of kit) and then found that the farmhouse near my hives has bees in the wall - silly swarming season this year.

Interesting. Had loads of calls last year for swarms. This year, had 2 days with loads of calls each day, but then nothing.

 

[Hachi]

QE on and a super for more space for a early swarm. It started to rain half way thro.... Jeez they got mad real quick. This is from my s****y hive.

Clearer board on to remove the empty super I'd given them to get them onto a broad and a half for them to just ram it full of honey....... god you gotta love the little darlings...