What did you do in the Apiary today?

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We took 18 frames off my girlfriends three allotment hives on Sunday. I half expected a bit of a fight from one of them, as I had a bit of trouble a few months back. Everything was very calm though! I span out about three gallons of honey today. It will be in jars by the weekend, with any luck.
I will be back at the farm tomorrow to check on a new queen down there. There's another story. One very weak nuc from Thornes led to it never building as quick as the others. They were fed, but never seemed to grow much. I then noticed that there seemed to be no new brood; looked for the queen and couldn't find her. I decided I would have to re-queen.
Last Friday, after I realised what was happening, I visited with a new queen. I opened the hive and this time there were at least five frames of perfect sealed brood, with loads of honey and pollen around them! I still could not find the queen though. I decided to remove two frames of brood, plus loads of honey and pollen supplies. (Bees shaken down, queen excluder added, then wait for nurse bees to go back up on the frames, before putting them in a nuc box) I then added the new (boxed) queen and locked them down. I will be back tomorrow to see if she has been released and is still alive. I will look at the original hive again. It may be okay, but at least I now have insurance, in the form of the new 'queen in waiting'....or there will be a new colony!
 
Yesterday blocked up all entrances for workmen in the apiary today. It means the loss of a days foraging, but they’re big blokes and discretion and all that......
 
Just taken six supers off hive in the Preselis and replaced with supers for the heather which has to be good this year surely.....
 
Took 4 full supers off.

Also removed a couple of optimistically applied ones, that would have been filled if we had a good flow, but alas, most were empty. During the removal, I left 1 frame that was about a quarter of honey, in an exposed super. I thought the bees were swarming when I turned around 5 minutes later, and saw thousands of bees all over this super. I've seen them robbing before, but never this quick, or ferocious.
 
Dodged the showers yesterday to confirm that a test frame had no queen cells on it, neither did any other frames in the hive. Being optimistic I reckon there is a virgin seeking around as the bees were more settled than on the previous visitation. here's hoping anyway.:nature-smiley-013:
 
Just got back from feeding the nuc at the lineside and the wife said the nuc in the garden was humming.. They had 3ltrs half hour ago it took them long enough to notice :sleep: maybe they were snoozing.
 
It was a busy weekend - cooked myself moving a tonne of sugar from its drop off point into and out of my truck first thing into storage, and also took delivery of an IBC of syrup. Emptied half of it into jerry cans ready and thymolised half. Then the next day I cobbled together 20 hives from the stacks, cleaned them and painted the poly ones ready to take a batch of expanding nucs that are on two sites, as well as collecting a trailer-load of good timber ready to make a batch of my hive stands up for them.
Off down to the New Forest this weekend to check on the colonies on the Heather.
 
Somerford said:
It was a busy weekend - cooked myself moving a tonne of sugar from its drop off point into and out of my truck first thing into storage, and also took delivery of an IBC of syrup. Emptied half of it into jerry cans ready and thymolised half. Then the next day I cobbled together 20 hives from the stacks, cleaned them and painted the poly ones ready to take a batch of expanding nucs that are on two sites, as well as collecting a trailer-load of good timber ready to make a batch of my hive stands up for them.
Off down to the New Forest this weekend to check on the colonies on the Heather.
Click to expand...

:cheers2: hopefully you find time for a bit of this.. And there was me thinking having 35 colonys was lots, how the other half live hey!!
 
Had a swarm to deal with. At last inspection 1 hive had 5 QCs on 1 frame, no eggs and no sign of queen, I was putting them back to a normal set up from a demaree, QCs were in the bottom brood box. So I suspected supercedure. Looks like I was wrong.
 

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DaveG23 said:
Had a swarm to deal with. At last inspection 1 hive had 5 QCs on 1 frame, no eggs and no sign of queen, I was putting them back to a normal set up from a demaree, QCs were in the bottom brood box. So I suspected supercedure. Looks like I was wrong.
Click to expand...
I always consider more than two QCs especially on one frame, swarm cells
Or emergency cells of course if the description fits.
 
Tuesday .... collected a swarm in torrential rain... it had been seen making comb in a tree, by the time I got there it was on the ground in leaf litter, moss, heather and tree roots..... got very wet!
 
Erichalfbee said:
I always consider more than two QCs especially on one frame, swarm cells
Or emergency cells of course if the description fits.
Click to expand...
I had initially wondered if they were emergency cells, cells seemed smaller than usual. But then thought that lack of eggs meant queen failing or dead. As that hive had been a bit weak in spring and queen was entering 3rd season, I thought supercedure, especially as they were at the end of a 4 week demaree. Will be interesting to see if the swarm try to replace her before winter.
 
Last edited:
Probably did the wrong thing, but... you'll probably let me know if I did!
Found swarm cells in a hive on 26th July, so I used the nucleus method to make up a nuc with the queen( I'd already done a Pagden AS on this colony in May). Last weekend, I went in to destroy all but one QC in the hive. The good couple of QCs I'd marked up when I did the AS weren't there any more, but there were other QCs so I reduced it down to one good one. Bit worried about them tearing down the original QCs and also about a new queen getting mated at this time of year, but I had the old queen in the nuc as insurance, and figured the bees knew better than me.

Then yesterday, I saw robbing of the nucleus. It can't have been going on for more than an hour or two and they were holding their own, but I knew I had to do something pretty quick, especially as my backup queen was in there. I don't really have anywhere else to move the nuc to at the moment, so I decided I'd merge the nuc back with the hive. I carefully went through the hive, destroying anything that looked like a queen cell, and as it's 11 days since they had a queen there was nothing else but capped brood. I put the 6 nuc frames into a BB and used the newspaper method to put it on top of the original hive.

Today I've already got newspaper fuzz falling through the floor, and a peek through the clear crown board doesn't show any fighting in the top BB (yet). Not sure what else I could/should have done? I'm sure they'll probably still be keen to swarm, but it's done now, so fingers crossed!
 
Watched the entraces,bees working the Balsam very well now and with hot humid conditions forecast for the next week or so one last chance to salvage the season.
 
Put clearer boards on another two hives. Noticed drones being thrown out of one. Nectar just beginning to dry up, real lack of rain doesn't help!
Honey selling really well at the gate!
E
 
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