What did you do in the Apiary today?

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I moved the two hives I set in the lovely raised bed garden. The property owner states that he was weeding and they chased him out of the garden. I walked all around the garden for 15 minutes with no suit on, even right across the front of both hives and they didn't even check me out.

Oh well; The owner and i are good friends and I want to keep it that way, so home they came.
 
930am nice sized swarm 3 ft up in my plum tree
Set up under them but as soon as I knocked them into waiting box they took off and entered the bait hive 10yds away,filled it out with foundation frames,hopefully a prime
Checked out my oun hives and all seem present and correct
 
Checked my home hives - the new queen was missing from the push in cage after 48 hours. She was supposed to wait to be let out by me. Rather puzzled by the number of bees in the cage - surely that many haven't emerged since Thursday. Then noticed a small hole chewed through the foundation under the cage. The little monkeys had released her. Luckily I saw her walking around on a frame.
The q- part of an a/s has now made a laying queen and two nucs I made from QC during the same a/s also have new laying queens. That's three queens made from my fave queen. She is now living in a retirement nuc and the new superbee queen runs the main garden colony.
Over at the farm I have installed two other new superbee queens in nucs. Both are released and walking around. Took supers off the hives now OSR is over. Note to self. Next time make sure I have my bee brush. Had to improvise with a folded sheet of newspaper. They were not impressed.
Now need to extract said OSR honey.... Well knackered.
 
Just had a stroll round the apiary this evening.
Air conditioning going full blast on each hive
Is it just me or is anyone else getting 3 or 4 tree bumblebees swirling around each hive at this time of day ?
I suspect it's the smell of evaporating nectar that's the attraction ?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Checked Dadant bait hive which was occupied by a swarm while I was away over the bank holiday weekend. The hive is full with bees covering all frames. It must have been a massive swarm and an impressive sight when it arrived.
 
Bottled up and delivered the last sixty odd jars of 2016 honey. Popped down to Garn cottage to check the Demarree going on down there and assess how much honey is ready to be taken off in a week or so. Also did a bit of trashing around the hives before it gets too long and the new queen in the nuc has trouble finding her way back from her mating flight! :)
 
Grafted another 45 larvae. Gave up on my fancy stainless steel grafting tools and went back to the cheap Chinese grafting tool.
 
Bee Watching....in my Bee Yard. I have an empty hive set up for any swarms which might descend upon us. I actually saw a bee checking it out today...it's been ignored for weeks.....perhaps we do get visitor bees here after all.
Lots of activity in all hives today...even in my mating nuc.
Inspections on Tuesday ...I wonder what they will reveal? Every week it's something different.
What would I like to see? Hmmm....eggs from my new carniolan queen would be good.....and lots of honey in the supers.
 
Removed supers above the clearer boards put on yesterday afternoon full of OSR and dandelion. OSR hardly capped but starting to set in the frames. If I had left it til next weekend I'd have been buggered.

Collected two swarms and gave both away to mates and club members.

Got the strimmer out and cut down the grass that was nearly waist height and the bee's didn't bat an eyelid, well they wouldn't have if they had them....

Got the extractor out and dealt with the supers removed earlier today. Buckets of lovely amber nectar yummy yum yum. Will jar next weekend.
 
B+. said:
Grafted another 45 larvae. Gave up on my fancy stainless steel grafting tools and went back to the cheap Chinese grafting tool.
Click to expand...

Indeed!! gone back to my fleabay grafting tool too. Grafted more in to the Nicot System, Fantastic results from last weeks grafting. No Burr comb at all and more take. Totalled 48 sealed cells, and caging this week as we can do that now, takes off the pressure. ( will update post in queen rearing section with a couple of pics)
Feeding colonies about 2 litres each, most looking good after taking brood and bees from the majority. Chestnut should start in 3 weeks a little later this year. all looking good so far!! Just need some decent weather to get queens mated, but its looks much better for this week. lots of drones around too.

Lots of strimming and clearing grass and brush growing around apiaries at its usual astonishing spring rate!
 
Had a phone call from a lady about a swarm in a village about 5 miles away. When we got there she explained that had come from a hive in her garden, which was a friends, the friend is a week into a two week holiday. The beekeeper had done an artificial swarm with the queen in a nuc with flying bees. Maybe a QC had been missed, was a good size swarm though. Looks like the bees took advantage. The swarm had settled 10 feet up a fir tree just over the fence, an easy catch. Now at home.

Inspected all hives at one apiary, moved one lot out of a nuc and put in a hive as they were on 4 frames of brood, and eggs starting to fill frame 5 on one side. Removed a super honey from one hive, added supers to another. The other nuc looks like it may be queenless, put in a test frame, if it is I will knock down all qc's and combine to the one just moved into a hive to give them a boost.

Went to our other apiary, inspected 5 hives, will do the other 5 today. Looked at my big hive, 10 out of 11 frames full of bias in both brood boxes and half the super above had bias, the super above that is being filled with stores. all the other hive doing well with some having supers added to them.

Had a quick peek at what looks like two cast swarms I picked up on a very cold Wednesday, I put them in the same nuc, still in two separate groups.

Love being busy with the bees.....got me out of doing the housework for the day :laughing-smiley-014
 
Mrs shoot. Did the lady not want to keep the bees?


My Ricky Wilson queen is out and laying a week after I introduced her so pleased.. She has rescued two dying colonies and they have been moved into a full size box.
The Buckies are wall to wall brood with third super on top. Repatriated an AS queen and all seems well. There were 25 emergency cells in the box I put her in!! Happy days :)
 
Supers back on for clean up after extraction. English feeders with cappings put on previously split colonies to help draw foundation.

Checked my bee buddies hives that were Q- after donating a couple of frames of BIAS last week and it seems weird that they have not fed eggs or larvae..... wondering what's going on there.

Strimming will have to wait another week.

Nuc'd the swarm I'd left in a cardboard box overnight under the oak tree whence it came.

Will feed the nuc I put in the garden last night.
 
Looks like blackthorn is finishing up here
Hives not as frantic with returning foragers
Saturday's swarm settled in
High temps and humidity forecast here for the week so hoping for 8 full supers to be capped so extracting can start,orders for 35 jars in the book
Great start to the year over here
Maybe the lime will produce for us this year
 
Went through the queenless part of an artificial swarm done 6 days ago only to find some neatly placed eggs on about half a frame on the outside of the BB. I know the original queen was transferred, as she's laying well in her new home.

The QC i'd selected is still capped, and it would be too soon for her to be laying anyway - so i'm left with two options (I think!) - there was a hatched queen, plus the original queen in the hive when I did the AS, or there's a laying worker.

It's too soon for laying workers after only 6 days queenless, and surely if there was a queen mature enough to be laying already, they would have swarmed from the original hive at least two weeks ago?

Or, this thought just popped into my head - what if one of my virgin queens from another hive has been out for a mating flight but ended up returning to the wrong hive? That seems possible, as I'm expecting three queens to come into lay very soon.

Why don't bees do as they're told lol!!!
 
Bad day today, feeling a little worn out.

Went through hive 1 and could see no Queen or eggs. Not surprising as I usually struggle, lots of larvae though so no problem. Then found a queen cell unsealed, followed by two sealed,then a couple more. I'd remembered how to do an artificial swarm however that required the queen. Packed up and went in search of the Internet for advice.
In the end I moved the frames with larvae food and Queen cells into a spare hive and hopefully left the queen, eggs and food in another. Figured doing something was better than nothing.
Into the next colony and they were as angry as normal. Multiple stings and my arm is all swollen.
Might have to requeen the aggressive ones as it's really draining the fun.
 
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