What did you do in the Apiary today?

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Checked my field of beans hive today
3 supers on and filling up nicely
Should have brought 2 colonies
All hives set just need the weather
 
Wasted more time! Pulled my ribs also which hurts like hell too :( I'm sure these bees are messing me about on purpose! Will go back Friday morning armed with everything, this will catch them out , hopefully! Will set up another Q- hive for rearing I think!
 
I have done some working bees in the rain, I too was surprised how well it went. Is this your new purchase Queen ?
 
Decided to fully investigate why my last queen rearing was a total abject failure. Inspected the hive which I use for cloake board rearing .
It has:
One basic langstroth jumbo brood box (full) of bees .
One queen excluder as part of the cloake board mechanism.
An upper jumbo brood box with only six frames which should have no queen.
Two supers.

I inspected the bottom brood box first: OK Queenright

The top box: eggs! and BIAS and a queen.. Obviously I lost a virgin somewhere ... Found her, marked her and put her in a cage and inserted into a into a Q- Apidea.

No wonder my QR failed in the upper box.
Doh!
 
quick super inspection on mine today,nectar pouring in ! had to add one super each to my strongest 3 my last 3 supers too! I do have some starters on these hives so will just harvest and replace these for the rest of the season. This is a Very very good honey year for me,i'd say the plants are around 10 days ahead of usual but there's still about 3 weeks of good forage left.
 
Added a 4th super and put an excluder under the top one - will extract that one on Friday (if I can lift it off - I pulled a muscle in my chest lifting that one back up there :( )

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They are usually quite well behaved but they usually get a bit boisterous when they have a lot of honey to protect. Today I inspected them later than usual, about 5.00pm, and they were totally chilled. I might try that time again.
 
Returned to the apiary after four days away to find one hive with three supers on had collapsed it's "temporary" stand. The legs just gave way sideways....splat.
The boxes were miraculously intact!
LESSON....anything temporary should remain so!
 
Returned to the apiary after four days away to find one hive with three supers on had collapsed it's "temporary" stand. The legs just gave way sideways....splat.
The boxes were miraculously intact!
LESSON....anything temporary should remain so!

You can't beat a couple of breeze block :)
 
Returned to the apiary after four days away to find one hive with three supers on had collapsed it's "temporary" stand. The legs just gave way sideways....splat.
The boxes were miraculously intact!
LESSON....anything temporary should remain so!

This colony has been united with another now and it's on breeze blocks ;)
I put a queenright box on top of it last night. The bees are still hanging out in the dark! Not good. We left a few on the floor and some spilled out around the new box when it was popped on top. All of these are back outside a nuc box put in place of their original home and I'll unite them to their neighbour.
 
Inspected all bar one before the threatened thunder and rain. Requeened two hives.
Discvered one I had requeened last week had had a virgin running around which killed my introduced queen. OOOPS.Killed virgin and inserted another queen in intro cage.

(The nice thing about raising queens with the Nicot system is it is easy to produce lots of queens with little skill (so suited to me) and my producing a surplus of queens was justified..:paparazzi:

Checked my last Nicot system raising , saw eggs so released queen..(The mother is three years old, never swarmed, docile bees ..no hassle so I want to keep her line)
 
Rescued bees from a compost bin. I've got some smashing pictures but don't know how to upload them. It is asking for the URL of the image???
 
Rescued bees from a compost bin. I've got some smashing pictures but don't know how to upload them. It is asking for the URL of the image???

Upload them using
Manage attachments
Choose file.. picture location on PC..
Upload.
 
Got home from some routine stuff at the apiary to hear a mighty roar in the trees st the bottom of the garden. We caught the tail end of a swarm into our tree box.
 

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