What did you do in the Apiary today?

[beeatshellards]

went to another beekeepers apiarys and checked his 8 hives, afternnon tea provided too, lovely, one new beek came along and she took great delight in smoking the bees , looks like she is hooked

 

[Dilligaf]

OPened my hive this morning, all looks well, queen seen, still lots of brood & brood box filled to the gunnels with bees. Just the one super on as the hive is less than 3 months old, 7 frames drawn to one extent or another.
Got a call from a friend who was opening his hive for some prospective beeks. Went down there and was told he had taken a large number of queen cells from the hive on the last 2 visits. Opened the hive & found out why. No visible queen, no brood & bees pinging off the viel good style.
Nipped back home & extracted a frame from my hive, replaced with a frame of foundation as I don't have any drawn comb & quickly back to his place & dropped the frame of brood in. Hopefully he will have queen cells again on his next inspection.

 

[VEG]

Hope it had eggs in as well

 

[Dilligaf]

I do too. It was the one HM was on at the time & it was getting close to rain at the time so too dark to see properly. She has been laying well and there was polished cells available so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[psafloyd]

Had a peek in my large colony and discovered the top super has a goodly bit of honey in it, though not all capped, while the super I pit in underneath has barely been drawn out.

The amount of propolis was mild before my holiday, but now is unreal. Still, more for me to gather in autumn.

Hope to take that super off tomorrow and see what I can get. Then will have to try and get some more next weekend if at all possible.

Colony 2 has more honey than before and BB fairly busy, though not inspected. Looks like there was a gap while I was on holiday and it has started again.

I say this as number 3 had ignored it's second super but has jus started drawing the foundation and has started filling two frames with nectar. not as much honey as I had hoped, but not as many problems as I feared. Not a bad trade for first full season, methinks.

Now I know a lot more, am always learning and have a load of drawn comb, too, so way further ahead than last year.

 

[Tom Bick]

Just went and watched the entrances interesting thing was out of the hives on site (not all mine) the weakest one left alone by the wasps and it was one of the strongest and well defended hives that had great interest from the wasps.
Me thinks wasps are perhaps not that smart or that something is not obvious with that hive and I need to look at it.

 

[Mike a]

Still patiently waiting for colonies I'll be taking supers from to finish capping 95+% of the cells. Seems to be taking them longer this year, hopeful they will be ready before the end of August so its not a mad rush to extract it, settle it, filter it again and jar it before the shows and events I want to sell my honey at.

 

[beeboybee]

Did a inspection in the sun, lovely calm bees two supers refilled and almost capped, and the biggest news I finally marked the queen!!!! Not a pretty dot more of a splodge but went well, tried with crown of thorns but could not risk stabbing HM so let her settle again on the frame and just delicately dabbed the pen on her thorax which i made sure was loaded with paint on the nib, before she realised what was happening she had a nice white spot!!! watched her on the frame for a bit but all looked good so popped the frame back.

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

Nothing to do except check the varroa trays I forgot to yesterday. Nearly zero mite count so spent a happy half hour watching the bees and swatting the odd wasp

 

[YorkshireBees]

Checked 9 of my hives in 2 out apiaries. Mostly in good shape. 1 Hive is awaiting a new Q to start laying (lots of polished cells), another hive I found the new Q that must have been laying a couple of weeks now (lots of BIAS) and marked her. Removed some drawn but empty supers (not as much nectar flow as there could have been this year!) and generally house kept the rest ready for removing any honey and varroa treatment at the end of this month.

Just got to get through 4 more hives and my remaining Nuc before another week away working!

Ah almost forgot, in one hive I found 3 QC's in various stages of destruction! This hive had been re-queened about a month ago due to aggression and the new Q is still there and laying well. Was surprised to find the QC's which appeared to have been more swarm cells that supercedure (along the bottom of 2 frames) and as I said at least 2 of them had the sides / top removed.

 

[MrB]

Watched the bee's still bringing the balsam in!

 

[wondervet]

Got the refractometer today. All the uncapped honey in supers I checked were about 17% water good news

 

[MuswellMetro]

fed Fumadil B in diluted ambrosia syrup to all my colonies,a 60 mile round trip

I returned later to the first site to add a feeding eke to a nuc and found they had already eaten all of the 1L i had put in a rapid feeder in 6 hours

 

[WelshPaul]

Came home from 2 days away in work, wasp problem seems to be gone now, SWMBO told me that she have found a lot of bees dead in the house. Bit worried as I checked the hive on the weekend and they are not drawing come out on the foundation, there is a tiny bit drawn on top of one of the frames, about 2mm deep, but thats it and the colony is about a quarter of the size it was when we caputered it. I cant see if the hive would have swarmed because I had a QE under the brrod box, but I may be wrong.

 

[Appinpiper]

Made sure that the top bar hive had enough syrup and spent the rest of the day finishing off a new National for use next year (fingers crossed )

 

[TBRNoTB]

Fed the long 14x12, treated one 14x12 Nat

 

[Mike a]

fed Fumadil B in diluted ambrosia syrup to all my colonies,a 60 mile round trip

I returned later to the first site to add a feeding eke to a nuc and found they had already eaten all of the 1L i had put in a rapid feeder in 6 hours

There will be a note on the front of the nuc next time you arrive.

"No admittance without a 6 pack or keg"

 

[madasafish]

Second treatment of thymol strings and refilled feeders...

Tried to convert one TBH to hinged roof: abject failure- not enough clearance.. Needs a new roof for that.. Not worth the effort to do that so will sit down and think about bodging it..

 

[busybee53]

Fed both colonies, one with a bodged up feeder because last time we used it we broke the little plastic bit that stops the bees drowning. Used a squashed plastic flower pot and a lot of lavender stalks to fill the feeder so they have something to climb on instead of drowning. Fingers crossed. Only just thought as I write this that I hope there is nothing toxic in the plastic it is made from.

Put together a flat pack nuc for the first time. Hit my thumb. Ouch.

Wrote my weekly bee report and e mailed it to friends who keep requesting the next instalment. They even pass it on to their own friends. They love the bit where a bee gets in your suit but not the bit where the queen goes in the freezer of doom.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Checked all three of my colonies can call them that now as both my virgin queen one in a nuc and one in the brood box are now mated and laying - woohoo!
saw the queen in the brood - nice big fat one, hoping she'll be a good one for next year.
As for the main colony - well, see separate post! http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=13363
meant to be a quick shufti as the weather isn't very good but spent some time to make sure the queen was there and what the hell was hapenning! so they got pretty angry, so I've now examined my first angry colony, great being pinged constantly in the middle of a cloud of bees- needless to say put my gloves on after the second sting!. But good news is five minutes after closing up they're cool again
Bad news is due to the whole mullarkey, there won't be as much honey as I was hoping to take off next week - but still more than i expected for my first year