What did you do in the Apiary today?

[SWHives]

United a Q+ nuc with a Q- hive, fingers crossed they are happy to see each other when they chew through the paper. Plenty of nuc flying bees still about so will shake them in tomorrow depending upon weather. They got a small feed on to keep them going until then. It's far too cold to just shake them out.

Nice! Done something similar but used the sugar syrup method and put the frames in the UBB. Bees seem to be attending to each other and not fighting so hopeful they will be fine!

 

[Do224]

Had a look in the observation hive in my garden shed. I started this colony without a queen this year and was disappointed that there was still no brood. No stores either. I had a good look and found a laying queen. caught her in the act. But it looks like the bees are consuming the eggs - presumably because of lack of stores / forage.

I've upgraded the feeder to something larger and more efficient and given them a frame of honey from another hive.

Any pictures of your setup?

 

[Redcap]

Did an inspection today, the first thing I saw was two workers in combat with a drone, one in particular was biting the drone's leg...not a good sign!

 

[Moobee]

I was in the middle of checking a hive that I was requeening (to see if the queen had emerged ok) and they swarmed! A big chunk of them flew over the hedge behind the apiary and settled in a tree above a huge ditch flanked by brambles. Doh!
Thought I had knocked all QCs back to one fat one..... On checking through the hive, I discovered that they had hidden a QC behind a bank of drone cells and decided to swarm. Little monkeys.
Luckily I had my swarm kit with me. After nearly coming a cropper sliding down the bank as couldn't see where the edge was, and using my loppers to carve a path through all the brambles (which were pleasingly coming into flower), I managed to knock them into a skep and deposited them into a nuc to settle down to pick up later as a lot bees still flying around.
Went back late evening to find them all clustered on the outside of the nuc so thinking that the queen was under there somewhere, I gently scooped them into the nuc and after 20 minutes they had all gone in. Moved them to the other out apiary.
Meanwhile back at the home apiary, I found a lovely new mated queen in hive 2 laying away so marked & clipped her.
Fed up with stroppy and unproductive hive 1 so found the elusive queen, took her out and added a brood box with my nice nuc's frames (which has been rapidly expanding) plus their lovely queen over newspaper and left them to unite.
Phew.

 

[Nannysbees]

Pouring down

 

[StephenT]

Noticed that the bees in the big hive in the garden were acting suspiciously on the landing board at 9am and then realised they hadn't been inspected for 8 days. Normally don't get bees gathering in numbers on the landing board at 9am on a chilly morning. Went in and found one sealed QC and a number of unsealed. Caught it just in time and nuc'd the queen etc.

 

[Wilco]

Bees pinging off my veil. By several colonies. If this keeps up after my suit is washed I'll be buying several queens in... To be honest I think it may make more sense to write the season off for honey production and focus on creating nucs.

Saw virgins emerging on a colony I'd missed swarming (last couple of weeks have been problematic for my usual weekly inspection... The Jazz is sadly no more, now replaced with a more grown up upgrade but miss the Jazz TBH). Chucked a few into mating nucs, one in the car to be dropped off to another tomorrow. This colony with the virgins was one of the calmest today.

Made an utterly rookie error. Went to inspect a double brood hive. No brood in any stage in either box. Bees erupting in a vicious cloud. Presumed Q-. Took mated queen from mini nuc, dipped her in honey and put her in. Disappeared between frames. Went to reassemble the hive, discovered several frames of BIAS in the middle shallow. Could not locate original queen but she must be there. Kicking myself, just wasted a lovely little mated queen. Fortunately the previous paragraph meant I could put a virgin into the nuc she'd come from. Utter *****.

Flowers, flowers, everywhere and not a drop of nectar coming in. Forecast not great, think will miss the bramble, lime and sweet chestnut at this rate. Put fondant on two colonies.

 

[Sutty]

Bees pinging off my veil. By several colonies. If this keeps up after my suit is washed I'll be buying several queens in... To be honest I think it may make more sense to write the season off for honey production and focus on creating nucs.

Saw virgins emerging on a colony I'd missed swarming (last couple of weeks have been problematic for my usual weekly inspection... The Jazz is sadly no more, now replaced with a more grown up upgrade but miss the Jazz TBH). Chucked a few into mating nucs, one in the car to be dropped off to another tomorrow. This colony with the virgins was one of the calmest today.

Made an utterly rookie error. Went to inspect a double brood hive. No brood in any stage in either box. Bees erupting in a vicious cloud. Presumed Q-. Took mated queen from mini nuc, dipped her in honey and put her in. Disappeared between frames. Went to reassemble the hive, discovered several frames of BIAS in the middle shallow. Could not locate original queen but she must be there. Kicking myself, just wasted a lovely little mated queen. Fortunately the previous paragraph meant I could put a virgin into the nuc she'd come from. Utter *****.

Flowers, flowers, everywhere and not a drop of nectar coming in. Forecast not great, think will miss the bramble, lime and sweet chestnut at this rate. Put fondant on two colonies.

Not tempted to split off the shallows as a separate hive & see if the introduced Q survives by a (slim) chance?

 

[Wilco]

Not tempted to split off the shallows as a separate hive & see if the introduced Q survives by a (slim) chance?

Didn't have the kit or time spare at that apiary to do it although in hindsight might have been able to bodge something. Can't believe I didn't check the shallows first though.

 

[Eyeman]

My 3 frame mating nucs normally have takeaway fondant tubs as feeders. Switched to home made sugar bricks, half the price & last twice as long. Best & quickest sugar brick recipe is 3% cold water to granulated sugar, mix with dough hooks on hand mixer or creamer/paint stirrer on drill for large volumes for a couple of minutes. Put in takeaway tubs, press down & into oven at 60C 1hr.

 

[Antipodes]

Bees pinging off my veil. By several colonies. If this keeps up after my suit is washed I'll be buying several queens in... To be honest I think it may make more sense to write the season off for honey production and focus on creating nucs.

Saw virgins emerging on a colony I'd missed swarming (last couple of weeks have been problematic for my usual weekly inspection... The Jazz is sadly no more, now replaced with a more grown up upgrade but miss the Jazz TBH). Chucked a few into mating nucs, one in the car to be dropped off to another tomorrow. This colony with the virgins was one of the calmest today.

Made an utterly rookie error. Went to inspect a double brood hive. No brood in any stage in either box. Bees erupting in a vicious cloud. Presumed Q-. Took mated queen from mini nuc, dipped her in honey and put her in. Disappeared between frames. Went to reassemble the hive, discovered several frames of BIAS in the middle shallow. Could not locate original queen but she must be there. Kicking myself, just wasted a lovely little mated queen. Fortunately the previous paragraph meant I could put a virgin into the nuc she'd come from. Utter *****.

Flowers, flowers, everywhere and not a drop of nectar coming in. Forecast not great, think will miss the bramble, lime and sweet chestnut at this rate. Put fondant on two colonies.

What a pain.
Is there robbing in apiaries there?

 

[Sutty]

My 3 frame mating nucs normally have takeaway fondant tubs as feeders. Switched to home made sugar bricks, half the price & last twice as long. Best & quickest sugar brick recipe is 3% cold water to granulated sugar, mix with dough hooks on hand mixer or creamer/paint stirrer on drill for large volumes for a couple of minutes. Put in takeaway tubs, press down & into oven at 60C 1hr.

Lids off to bake?

 

[Moobee]

Walked past the hives to close up the greenhouse last night and thought I saw a dead mouse in the entrance of hive 1….
On closer inspection, the bees have dumped a big wodge of newspaper shreds in the porch from the unite I initiated on Wednesday!

 

[Do224]

Walked past the hives to close up the greenhouse last night and thought I saw a dead mouse in the entrance of hive 1….
On closer inspection, the bees have dumped a big wodge of newspaper shreds in the porch from the unite I initiated on Wednesday!

I did a newspaper unite the other day and saw bees flying from the entrance carrying pieces of newspaper. Amazing to see a piece of paper about the size of a fifty pence piece being carried off across the garden by a bee

 

[Eyeman]

Lids off to bake?

Oh Yes. Then lids on for storage. Doing the same in the cut comb containers for the mini mating nucs. I like to leave them 3 weeks before inspecting but the fondant in the tub often doesn’t last.

 

[Beth]

Unite worked , removed the extra BB, rearranged frames and shook out a few dozen workers hanging around the old nuc adjacent.
Then I put a new BS BF Q in a hive that had a QC but I accidentally crushed it last week . Terrible weather for it, heavy, humid and showers forecast. They were mental. Some got in my jacket, should have known to put the full suit on!I left the cage tab in and will maybe join her to a push in cage tomorrow.h

I checked a second, weak Q- nuc. They drew 4 QC's on old brood . Aging them, no point in requeening so I'll shake them out depending on the weather. I have a hive that is recovering well, but not well enough to pull frames out of. They could go on a unite but the 2 possible hives don't need anymore distractions.

 

[Moobee]

Hurrah, all newspaper chewed through, lots of contented bees (apart from some pingy stingy ones from the original hive which had their queen despatched) so looks like the unite worked well. Finally found the queen in the bottom brood box but not before she had laid a load of (presumably) drone eggs in the super that was between the two boxes (as I was using drone foundation, doh!). Left them as DB and added a super for extra space as the first super was filling (despite the eggs!). Mental note to remove drone super frames on next inspection....

 

[The Poot]

Dodged heavy showers to check three colonies and a nuc.
H5 which recently had a test frame added is now queen right. Temperament very good.
H4 was split last week had made a number of queen cells, some of which were elongated and odd. I knocked them back to one cell, I hope! Temperament also very good.
Nuc still has syrup to go at and all looked good.
H2 which has shown no swarming intent, was defensive and not nice to inspect. Several followers afterwards. I could have done the queen in and put a queen cell in from H4 but had broken them down. The weather didn’t allow me to keep the hives open long enough to assess them all before taking action. I need to re queen H2 which is very defensive some times but ok others causing me to be indecisive about them until today.

 

[BeeKeyPlayer]

Any pictures of your setup?

I posted some here last year:
https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/threads/making-an-observation-hive.54442/post-867715

And here's one from this morning. I know it's not pretty, especially with the outer PIR covers off and the glass cover removed from the near side. A lot of the bees have gone round the back since I did that. The feeder jar is out of shot above the top. It's just an inverted jar with a holey lid. I swap it with a piece of mesh when I'm refilling it. The bottom frame of honey given a few days ago has been devoured. The bees started without a queen and now have one. She is laying, although was slow to start (probably because of insufficient forage / stores).

 

[Nannysbees]

Inspection today just before the heavens opened. Supers still empty and two of the hives had virtually no food. Took two frames of food from one hive to give to those two other colonies. Starvation warning from my local association. But on the positive all are queen right, all laying really well