What did you do in the Apiary today?

[user 819]

Some of my colonies in above but one post.

Getting taller.
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They both got two boxes taller today. The forage at this site is very good , I had the same last year & in 2019. Last year it started early March, 2019 I was feeding little and often to prevent starvation till end of June, then the forage went mad. There is another week of this weather forecast so the incoming one would think will continue, some rain from a weak low pressure coming up from the south tonight and should pass through by 9am or so. Once this flow ends we should be in to Blackberry and Lime.

Last year my sample wasn't analysed for pollen species so once I have some sealed stores I can get a sample off and hope maybe this year it will be analysed.

 

[BitterleyBee]

inspected recent swarm in new hive to find them producing drone cells?! that surprised me. bringing honey in, some eggs / larvae there and probably about 20 or so drone brood capped, even though they only occupy 4 brood frames so far. what are they up to??????

 

[BitterleyBee]

Checked 9 mating nuclei in mhy garden today. results 6 queens laying OK, one nucleus robbed and died out (bees all dead in heap on floor and stores all eaten with cappings torn down typical of robbing) , One queen in Apidea seems to have disappeared (saw her a couple of weeks ago) and has probably absconded with half the bees and finally my first 2021 unmated drone layer (see brood photos). I expected a few more considering the weather in may (and maybe will see more when I go to the out apiary where I have many more mating nuclei.
The drone laying queen is laying one egg per cell but in very patchy pattern. Bees have raised supersedure cells in response but on unfertilised eggs so nucleus is doomed. Will take it down to outapiary tomorrow and shake it out.

is there scope to drop in a brood frame with eggs from another hive?? might that work?

 

[user 819]

If you have worker brood then should be nothing to worry about, it is natural for all colonies to have drones on board.
It also may be a reason why they swarmed and the Q is running of sperm, wait and see was the % of drone lying is and how the pattern develops. Give her time to lay a decent amount to see what is occurring.

You don't actually say how much worker brood there is.

 

[pargyle]

If you have worker brood then should be nothing to worry about, it is natural for all colonies to have drones on board.
It also may be a reason why they swarmed and the Q is running of sperm, wait and see was the % of drone lying is and how the pattern develops. Give her time to lay a decent amount to see what is occurring.

You don't actually say how much worker brood there is.

Yes ... it's early days - perhaps just getting back into her stride - give her a week or two before worrying too much and wait and see what happens ...

If there's also worker brood in there I would not worry at all ...

 

[masterBK]

is there scope to drop in a brood frame with eggs from another hive?? might that work?

Not likely to work and even if it did it would not be worth it as the bees in the nucleus are getting rather old and depleted in numbers so would not feed a larvae very well. Better the start from scratch. With 28 colonies and over twenty mating nuclei all in play I'm not going to be wasting time and effort worrying about the odd one going wrong. Anyway the bees from this drone laying queen nucleus were shook out this morning freeing up a 5 frame nucleus box for future use.
Went through all my colonies at the out-apiary. Only two has produced swarm cells since my last visit a week ago ( I expected more with all this warm weather) and these were artificially swarmed (one vertically and one laterally). Honey (strictly speaking = Nectar) is pouring in most colonies . However I decided to requeened two colonies that were not performing and were not in the super (one had bad dose of chalk brood) by uniting nuclei to them with brand new "white" laying queens. Ran out of time (had to be back for lunch) so didn't check the rest of the mating nuclei. Maybe do that tomorrow.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Nipped up to the castle then back to Garn cottage today. The bees at the castle are shovelling it in, one hive has filled two supers in a week and the others aren't far behind - lucky I'd packed plenty of spares!
Arrived at Garn cottage to see a wagon blocking the driveway, My mate Tiddy has started on tidying up the outside of the estate now that the inheritance is officially his, fair play Sarah does keep him on his toes - the tree fellers (well, two actually) have turned up to cut down the five conifers (one died years ago) lining the driveway up as far as the bridge over the moat as we call ther stream that divides the garden. They were planted a few years before we were born so quite a size, he had been talking of doing it himself (I'm sure me and the trusty husky would have been dragged in to that naughtiness seeing as I dealt with my own monsters at Brynmair ) but Sarah knows our track record way back from school days - so the proffessionals were called in
Seeing as I couldn't get the truck up to it's usual spot it was a bit further to carry extra supers so lucky I keep the newly re-wheeled MK2 beebarrow down there. I'll have to coax him to give the trees around the apiary a 'haircut' next - although I did sort a few out over the winter

 

[Antipodes]

Nipped up to the castle then back to Garn cottage today. The bees at the castle are shovelling it in, one hive has filled two supers in a week and the others aren't far behind - lucky I'd packed plenty of spares!
Arrived at Garn cottage to see a wagon blocking the driveway, My mate Tiddy has started on tidying up the outside of the estate now that the inheritance is officially his, fair play Sarah does keep him on his toes - the tree fellers (well, two actually) have turned up to cut down the five conifers (one died years ago) lining the driveway up as far as the bridge over the moat as we call ther stream that divides the garden. They were planted a few years before we were born so quite a size, he had been talking of doing it himself (I'm sure me and the trusty husky would have been dragged in to that naughtiness seeing as I dealt with my own monsters at Brynmair ) but Sarah knows our track record way back from school days - so the proffessionals were called in
Seeing as I couldn't get the truck up to it's usual spot it was a bit further to carry extra supers so lucky I keep the newly re-wheeled MK2 beebarrow down there. I'll have to coax him to give the trees around the apiary a 'haircut' next - although I did sort a few out over the winter


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Great photos.
Anything planned for the timber?
Masts for a Brig?

 

[elainemary]

My first white queen has mated and laid her first comb. She was an early supersedure cell in April, when drones were just maturing in our area. She emerged not long after 7 May and I fretted during 3 weeks of poor weather if she would mate well.

Spotted her on 19 May when she looked still a virgin (see pic). Wouldn’t normally have opened the hive but another supersedure and a couple of emergency cells had appeared around the time of her emergence that I took down and I wanted to understand if they’d made any more. They didn’t.

Decided to mark her. Didn’t have a white marking pen so dabbed her green as her mother was blue and blue mother was still around on 7 May when I last saw her too.

She’s since doubled in size, I marked her yesterday with the new white pen (you can see an edge of green just showing through) most of her original mark had been licked off

Looks to have mated well judging from her increase in size.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Anything planned for the timber?
Masts for a Brig?

If it wasn't for Sarah I'm sure Tiddy would have some harebrained scheme (his father was the same, only a gifted engineer so a lot of the schemes bore fruit)
But here's a few more recent snaps of the first two down

 

[madasafish]

Grafted another 10.Law of diminishing returns applies: If they all make it through to being queens (unlikely I know) I'll run out of mating nucs and bees to fill them..

 

[masterBK]

Checked another batch of mating nucs today down at the out apiary. Better than expected considering the awful weather we had in May
The combined results from both home and out apiary show 75% success
15 queens laying OK and all now marked white
5 fails (two absconded along with the bees, One nucleus robbed out and starved to death and two with drone layers now deceased!)
The above were all set up on May 7th with sealed cells 2 to 3 days off emergence
I set up another 8 from Demaree tops during the last two weeks of May but didn't check those today as probably too soon to see anything. With a bit of luck and the current gorgeous weather continuing hope to see eggs in some of these at the end of next week.
Now the work begins to cull queens from underperforming colonies (together with those with undesirable traits like susceptible to chalkbrood, too runny on the comb, hints of aggression, following etc) and replace them with my brand new queens derived from my best colonies.

.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Gave the bees a day off today - sort of. Drove over the mountain for a long awaited but delayed by Covid assignation.
Finally delivered Tom Seeley's book which he signed at last years UBKA convention and a spare second English edition Digges that I'd promised Dani, together with a tub of heather honey which I'd saved her from the 2019 harvest. Thanks to Covid it's only the second time in three years we've had the chance to sit down and chat face to face. Had an enjoyable hour in the bright sunshine talking bees (and defending my choice of a pink T-shirt )
Brought back a litre of fresh from the farm whole milk for SWMBO's morning coffee tomorrow

 

[Erichalfbee]

Yes JBM....definitely pretty in pink
Good catch up

 

[Curly green finger's]

Fenced around one of the apiarys today in a Bee suite even though I was two metres infront of them the bees were just flying past me not one bee all afternoon came to have a nose.

 

[Worker bee]

Checked my brood boxes I use as supers and they're drawn and nearly full so it's nearly time to spin them out and use them for splits and get some more blanks in them. I'll feed the honey back to them to keep the queen's laying and the bees drawing

 

[Erichalfbee]

Fenced around one of the apiarys today in a Bee suite even though I was two metres infront of them the bees were just flying past me not one bee all afternoon came to have a nose.

You obviously don’t smell as nice as a flower, Mark

 

[Erichalfbee]

Nipped up to the castle then back to Garn cottage today. The bees at the castle are shovelling it in, one hive has filled two supers in a week and the others aren't far behind - lucky I'd packed plenty of spares!
Arrived at Garn cottage to see a wagon blocking the driveway, My mate Tiddy has started on tidying up the outside of the estate now that the inheritance is officially his, fair play Sarah does keep him on his toes - the tree fellers (well, two actually) have turned up to cut down the five conifers (one died years ago) lining the driveway up as far as the bridge over the moat as we call ther stream that divides the garden. They were planted a few years before we were born so quite a size, he had been talking of doing it himself (I'm sure me and the trusty husky would have been dragged in to that naughtiness seeing as I dealt with my own monsters at Brynmair ) but Sarah knows our track record way back from school days - so the proffessionals were called in
Seeing as I couldn't get the truck up to it's usual spot it was a bit further to carry extra supers so lucky I keep the newly re-wheeled MK2 beebarrow down there. I'll have to coax him to give the trees around the apiary a 'haircut' next - although I did sort a few out over the winter


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Do you know ... I would have left them like a living sculpture. You could put a fairy on each one st Christmas time

 

[Curly green finger's]

You obviously don’t smell as nice as a flower, Mark

Wish I did dani, maybe the smell of harwthorne was blocking it out lovely!
Im hoping the main flows are good this year the perennial weeds are looking good.

 

[StephenT]

Was planning to go double brood on a 13th April nuc'd swarm (one of ours) that had gone to double brood box nuc on 13th May and then into a brood box + super last week. Found about 8 QC's over 3 frames, one sealed and the others all open. Found 'the queen' although she was missing the blue dot she had a couple of weeks ago (or was it a new queen - "couldn't be" we both said). Anyway, we popped her into a one handed Q catcher which we then placed in a nuc that we were putting together for an AS. Heard a strange noise coming from the nuc and my wife asked me whether my stomach was rumbling. "Nope" I said. We carried on and the same happened again. Do Q's make a stomach rumbling type noise ever? Anyway, marked and released her into the nuc with stores, sealed brood, frames and a couple of shakes of bees. Won't bore you with the further QC's at the next hive. It was getting dark, the QC's were smallish and not sealed so can deal with them over the weekend. Medicating with alcohol now.