What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Garry R]

View attachment 39343

That's internet dating for you and some of them drone on and on and on ...................

 

[Erichalfbee]

I’m despairing at the weather.
The bees will miss the dandelions which won’t open in the rain anyway.
I might get into the bees in May!

 

[Vanterrier]

Wet again here too... its depressing

K

 

[Antipodes]

Today I made my first split of the year after finding swarm cells. Fingers crossed I can get a queen well mated this early

(Suffolk)

It won't be a problem. She'll mate fine.

 

[Mint Bee]

Today I made my first split of the year after finding swarm cells. Fingers crossed I can get a queen well mated this early

(Suffolk)

Quick check in a couple of hives last weekend showed very limited drone brood, with some capped. With pupating time and a couple of weeks to reach maturity (think that's about right from memory?), it'll be 3 weeks minimum before any viable mating could be achieved here. Don't think I'll be attempting any queen rearing until early / mid May at current rate

 

[robmort]

It won't be a problem. She'll mate fine.

He's not in Australia!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

They tend to go to the drone congregation areas apparently.

what, they stay in a hostel there?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

He's not in Australia!

nor in cuckoo land

 

[Fellstoflats]

OSR a-plenty, and a settled warm morning here, so a pre-lambing check in order, to see where we stand before it all kicks off.
BIAS, patches s of drone brood, and a few play cups, very pleasing to see.

 

[Swarm]

The bees won't hang around waiting for the weather

 

[Fellstoflats]

The bees won't hang around waiting for the weather

Exactly

 

[pargyle]

It won't be a problem. She'll mate fine.

I would not bank on it over here with the dreadful weather we have had ... it's barely out of single figures and the rain is almost constant. I'm in the far South of the UK in a very mild microclimate and even down here there's no sign of any drones. If there really are swarm cells and the split was necessary I'd be forking out £40 for an imported queen from BMH or BS Bees ... better safe than waiting in hope - at least then you have some chance of a crop from the split.

Personally, I would want to be absolutely certain they were definitely swarm cells and not just the bees playing - ie: eggs and/or jelly in them. If they were swarm cells at this time of the year I'd have knocked them down to buy a week or two until the spring really arrives.

 

[boywonder]

I would not bank on it over here with the dreadful weather we have had ... it's barely out of single figures and the rain is almost constant. I'm in the far South of the UK in a very mild microclimate and even down here there's no sign of any drones. If there really are swarm cells and the split was necessary I'd be forking out £40 for an imported queen from BMH or BS Bees ... better safe than waiting in hope - at least then you have some chance of a crop from the split.

Personally, I would want to be absolutely certain they were definitely swarm cells and not just the bees playing - ie: eggs and/or jelly in them. If they were swarm cells at this time of the year I'd have knocked them down to buy a week or two until the spring really arrives.

Just speaking from personal experience, I have had Virgin Queens mate very well in mid-March before (and late September, for that matter). There always seem to be residual pools of drones. Furthermore it has occurred to me more than once whether the proportion of drone laying colonies exiting winter (c.a. 5% at a guess) helps to get early Queens mated. Whilst the weather is admittedly patchy (here in the Midlands), there are now plenty of mild/pleasant spells (today/now being an example), and I don't think that is now a big factor. Almost all my colonies have healthy, capped drone brood on the outer edge of the brood nest, and, whilst it will still be a couple of weeks until those emerge and are sexually mature, I'd personally be more than confident of a VQ flying today getting mated. Just my thoughts, anyway. The bees always find a way.

 

[Moobee]

They tend to go to the drone congregation areas apparently.

But they have to start from somewhere....

 

[Moobee]

I’m despairing at the weather.
The bees will miss the dandelions which won’t open in the rain anyway.
I might get into the bees in May!

It's rubbish isn't it? There is OSR just up the road but it's not warm enough for bees to be out or nectar to flow. I'm hoping this means we'll have a cracking summer....

 

[Swarm]

Today I made my first split of the year after finding swarm cells. Fingers crossed I can get a queen well mated this early

(Suffolk)

Suffolk

 

[BeeKeyPlayer]

Not quite in the apiary but I dropped off honey to a local shop and didn't pay for parking. I was only a couple of minutes but a warden was checking my car when I returned. I see you're a beekeeper, he said. (I had my B car.) We had an interesting chat. He's from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (I didn't ask until it felt safe to do so) and has 50 hives there on his father's farm The climate is warm and wet so the bees can forage more or less continuously. Varroa treatment is icing sugar. The resulting grooming keeps the mite population down. He said they do get brood breaks. Although they can't keep up with demand for honey, island life means that everything is very expensive. Hives they make themselves, but they don't have the tools for frame making. Seeing the long lugs of my frames he politely indicated that National hives were a complex way of solving a simple problem. Their volcano erupted a couple of years ago but the bees survived the hives being covered in ash. They did not survive a man made disaster though when a plane dosed the area in pesticide. We exchanged phone numbers.

 

[gregior]

Did 1st proper inspetion of the 14 I have at the home apiary. 1 had loads of bees but only tiny patches of sealed worker brood on 2 frames but no eggs or larvae so for some reason the Q had failed,squished her and united with a weaker colony. Most of the others were doing really well with around 8 to 10 frames of brood,tons of pollen and a little nectar too.
Saw mites in a few of the hives, one in particular had some workers with DWV so I put some Apivar strips in it and will treat the rest on the next inspection.
Another downer was the last one I looked at that had signs of CBPD.Found 4 shiny workers on the edge of the cluster so they got the heave-ho. Otherwise it looked really good but I will keep a close eye on that one.
Most had sealed drone brood and about 1/2 had adult drones.

 

[Newbeeneil]

After doing some relocating of a few hives in the last couple of days I checked some of the hives in the receiving apiary.
One I opened had drones roaming around and several "slabs" of sealed drone brood!

 

[Nannysbees]

It's rubbish isn't it? There is OSR just up the road but it's not warm enough for bees to be out or nectar to flow. I'm hoping this means we'll have a cracking summer....

Just watching the weather for the week, absolutely miserable, I do worry that the girls will be missing out on some valuable forage