What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Anduril]

Went through one of my hives and found one white eyed drone, poor thing he's blind.

 

[taurus]

Went through the hives, the last one had no eggs and no sign of the queen, but no queen cells either.

So checked the supers and sure enough there were eggs in there. She must have snuck up when I removed the QX for 48 hours to get them to go up into the supers.

Little villian led me right merry dance in this heat.

 

[Hachi]

Removed last super of setting ****, extracted what I could and stored the rest for winter feed. Checked hives at my out apiaries and am well on the way to another 100lbs+ of hedgerow honey all being well with most hives on Dbl Brood and a couple of supers on each.

 

[Tonyatcwfarm]

Swarm 4 of the year caught and hived
Polynucs with extra BB are doing the trick baited with some wax moth damaged frames
3 previous swarms all primes so hopefully today's will be same

 

[madasafish]

Dodged today's showers to make up 8 mini nucs. Then it rained.
QCs in each an hour later. Into garage or cool shed for two nights.
6 QCs left in hive with cell protector (Nicot Cupkit System).
4 additional Rainbow min nucs should arrive Monday from Thrones. Other 2 QCs promised to someone when emerged.


I find the Nicot system much easier than cell punching..(much less fuss).
Increased the number of bees in mini nucs by 50% from prior tries as I found queens not emerging - I assume our elevation and occasional cold nights# meant 1 mug of bees not sufficient to keep them warm..

# I have seen under 5C in our greenhouse in the past month when Q Rearing.

 

[einsteinagogo]

if you are in the UK, I assume you are suffering the heavy down pours over the last two days, so I'm glad that I put on feed on both swarms I caught..we will see what happens when the awful weather breaks, and check in the meantime.

Also got a delivery of Ultra Bee patties coming, never tried them before....

 

[G4WIL]

if you are in the UK, I assume you are suffering the heavy down pours over the last two days, so I'm glad that I put on feed on both swarms I caught..we will see what happens when the awful weather breaks, and check in the meantime.

Also got a delivery of Ultra Bee patties coming, never tried them before....

They get behind the plate on your false teeth [emoji23]


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[madasafish]

Put out min nucs yesterday evening - scattered through veg garden on poles and various posts.
It was not raining and only 40mph gusts...

 

[gregior]

Inspected all mine today during a brief break in the weather. 1st hive i opened up was my feisty one that i demareed 4 weeks ago (note to self-always inspect nasty colonies LAST unless you want bees chasing you through the rest of the inspections!) Found 8 sealed QC's but 6 were broken down 2 left intact,no Qcells that had hatched and eggs present so not sure if Q is still there (she is clipped) I wasn't going to upset them any more searching for the Q so i left one Qcell and will leave them to it,I don't mind losing this Queen as the bees are grumpy gits.Oh and they had drawn the fresh foundation horribly with big holes chewed out everywhere Not a good start!

next checked 2 casts that had occupied my bait hive,both have laying queens and look in good shape.

finally checked my other 2 big established colonies the were also demareed a month ago,no qc's in these and both are very strong and have filled 2 supers each.

Added supers to all colonies.

 

[B+.]

It was not raining and only 40mph gusts...

Unusual for an English summer then?

 

[masterBK]

Checking through some unites that I did last week (with paper held down by excluder). In two cases found queens in both brood chambers still alive and laying (ie ended up with two queen colonies). Normally I remove one of the queens but being short of time last week I didn't spend time finding and removing any of the queens. In both cases they were sister queens.

Also found a drone with odd coloured eyes (right eye black and left eye red).

 

[dolbz]

I checked on my two colonies today making the most of the gap between gales and more forecast rain. I restarted this season after a break last year following a loss in winter 2015.

I've got two swarms, one collected and one baited. The first swarm is in a full brood box. It is starting to pick up pace and cover more frames but needs feeding. The other one is in a nuc as it was a small cast. I saw eggs and some young larvae, it's 2 weeks since I captured them so looks like the virgin queen has mated successfully. I spent a while trying to find the queen in that one without success but noticed some unusual waggling. I think I was being a bit paranoid about the waggling if you've seen the thread I started earlier

 

[ShinySideUp]

Ingrates!

My occupants of my hungry hive are a bunch if ingrates. They are a bit short of food and I have been feeding them sugar syrup to tide them over until the weather picks up so this evening, while it was almost dark and raining I lifted the top of the hive a bit, to see the feeder above the crown board, to see if they need any more food (they do) and one of the little sods stings me for my trouble. Not a problem in itself as it was only a little sting but unbeknown to me my dog also wandered into the apiary and was standing in front of the entrance to the hive and got stung several times, poor thing. Honestly, these bees need to be a bit more laid back and grateful!!

Is it ok to take a frame of honey from my good hive to feed to the hungry one?

 

[Goran]

Blackberry/honeydew/lime honey.. it will be interesting combination.. I mean tasty..
Some of splits checked, again qrearing postponed.. Buying queens isn't option since shared experiences of other beeks on bought queens..
Bees pretty calm, since lime still didn't start for real.
Today I watched some plants at our property.. and counted 5 different species of only Salvia:
Salvia nemorosa
Salvia verticillata
Salvia glutinosa
Salvia pratensis
Salvia officinalis
Around 200 plant species are present at our property, enjoyable trivia for me..

 

[Millet]

My occupants of my hungry hive are a bunch if ingrates. They are a bit short of food and I have been feeding them sugar syrup to tide them over until the weather picks up so this evening, while it was almost dark and raining I lifted the top of the hive a bit, to see the feeder above the crown board, to see if they need any more food (they do) and one of the little sods stings me for my trouble. Not a problem in itself as it was only a little sting but unbeknown to me my dog also wandered into the apiary and was standing in front of the entrance to the hive and got stung several times, poor thing. Honestly, these bees need to be a bit more laid back and grateful!!

Is it ok to take a frame of honey from my good hive to feed to the hungry one?

If that hive can take the loss go for it, but personally i would feed them if honey production is not a issue.

 

[einsteinagogo]

Ultra Bee arrived, and smells good enough to eat, and the cats were interested in it!

slap some on tomorrow, weather still awful here again today.

 

[Eyeman]

Lots of light hives and one split Q+ nuc on verge of extinction- rescued with sugar spray then fondant .
25kg of fondant has gone on all nuc and mating nucs plus a few splits over the last couple of days.
Preventing starvation is one thing I have control over!

 

[BMH]

View attachment 14434

Lots of light hives and one split Q+ nuc on verge of extinction- rescued with sugar spray then fondant .
25kg of fondant has gone on all nuc and mating nucs plus a few splits over the last couple of days.
Preventing starvation is one thing I have control over!

Yep.

I had a nuc starve yesterday!

Managed to salvage the queen and get her in a queenless nuc.

Have fed all colonies (barring my production colonies on double brood).

 

[drex]

What a difference location makes. Did my OSR extraction 3 weeks ago. One hive already has 3 supers on and will soon need a fourth. Hived a swarm from my bait box today and the queen is marked yellow. I do not use year colour codes. All my old queens are marked yellow, and all accounted for! new queens from this year will get a white dot.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Face and headful of bees when I forgot to do my veil up properly...........sigh