What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Tabby15]

Inspecting by proxies (husband and mentor)
Cf hive - found new queen and marked her -hooray. Super being filled and second one is on.swapped them round on advice

O hive - marked queen(swarm acquired beg June) super inand everyone looking busy. Loads of brood

Phew.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Checked AS and added another super.
Checked parent hive. Large QC removed emergency ones made. Now fingers crossed.
Added more supers to other two and have run out of kit. Had to quickly knock up 10 frames assemble an MB super and put it on without painting it.
Nothing's being capped.

 

[Walrus]

Found that one hive had filled 1.5 supers since last week. I have 4 hives and 2 nucs at present. Only 2 of the hives are making honey (one has 3 supers & one has 4) - the others are too small but are building up nicely.

One of my new 2013 queens has produced the best sealed brood I've seen - both sides of a 14x12 absolutely wall to wall brood & almost no empty cells. Some of my others are quite poor compared to that.

My experimental poly hive (all mediums) is drawing comb on the 3rd box & I added box 4 today. Not sure yet if I prefer it to my cedar 14x12s. I suppose over wintering will be the test.

Beans have finished flowering so now it is rosebay willowherb then balsam.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

COLLECTED AND HIVED A NEW NUC. 13 July 2013, I became a practical (honey)beek rather than a theoretical one. "Asterisks", just N of Brighton, are amazing and the journey home was a breeze. Within hours, it was like the M23 I'd just driven up across my garden and the girls were coming back in swarms with the biggest packets of pollen I've seen other than on one of my queen bumbles. Amazing. So I'm off to a great start and fingers crossed.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

No sign of the red queen, but all signs she made the transition.

 

[Shabro]

Brought a nuc box home last night after rehousing the colony in a hive, only to find a swarm in it this afternoon.

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[jenkinsbrynmair]

Bees don't go beyond the dummy board MY A*SE

Full hive inspection today - confirmed all introduced queens accepted and laying BIAS in hive and both nucs , both nucs are 6 framers dummied down to five - the one in Garn cottage has foraged so well the last week that the nuc was chocker block with honey apart from one frame with a classic food arch waiting for HM to lay BUT they had gone the other side of the dummy board, drawn the foundation and filled it with stores - and that's before any of the new queen's brood has emerged! so had to drive all the way home to get a full hive to transfer them to the other hive down there had filled a whole super (but I had one made up ready ) the Cardigan hive now has two full supers and I've put a third on - if this year's batch are as good as this queen I have high hopes.
The queen in other full hive at home has started laying again - eggs and larvae on three frames, replacement being ordered for her tomorrow I think
Loads of scout bees still around home apiary and my bait hives I can see a day in the workshop next week.

 

[MuswellMetro]

Added supers, added supers added supers ooh this glorious weather added more supers , I had forgotten how fast they can fill a super in the flow, so different from the last three years

Making up frames still, another five supers to fill with frames for tomorrow

 

[smith.james0]

Ran out of brood boxes so I added a super to the big hive

 

[Polyanwood]

Catching queens and removing them because my new queens get posted on Thursday.

 

[Suzi Q]

Busy day, united a hive to another. Caged 2 queens from apideas, put one in a Q- hive and made up a nuc for the other, then added capped Q cells to the apideas. Inspected other hives and all's well, especially a 2012 queen. I used the 'nuc' method of AS, and she is now in a hive with a super on and the brood box just about full. Must decide whether to add another brood box or maybe take some emerging brood frames and donate to another hive.

 

[sunhivebee]

Three prime swarms on three successive days; the last one, today, has so far resisted all attempts at hiving (won't tell how many).
Inspected all new colonies and more than I can count established ones - all well, except smallish brood area in one for the time of year.
The three lime trees in my garden are finally in flower!

 

[galileo]

Moved new Queen in hive 2 down into drawn 14x12 as she's laid up 6 frames in the old deep after superceding her mum. Requeened hive 3 with spare mated Queen after first choice turned out to have a dodgy wing and ended up dlq. Fed 3 mating nucs containing emerged and seen baby queens with nectar from uncapped extractions (20% water) and extracted another 50lb from 2 supers. Too hot to inspect others.

 

[madasafish]

Opened a mini nuc to check on queen introduced last week. She immediately took off, flew around in a circle and promptly went back into the nuc again..

 

[Rosti]

Due to floods and early crop losses in my part of Yorkshire, most OSR round here ended up as Spring sown. It is still comfortably in bloom here.
Intended to wait for the blooms to fade but lost my nerve and harvested yesterday. Glad I did - some corners were just starting to crystalize.

Never know, I may get back from hols and find a second crop?

 

[Walrus]

Answered a call to deal with a swarm and found it was bumbles. Glad in a way, because if it was honey bees they'd probably be mine, plus it is seriously hot to get the suit/wellies on! Isn't this weather fantastic?

 

[BeeJayBee]

Isn't this weather fantastic?

Yes! Amazing, especially after the last few so-called summers!

 

[Swarm]

Due to fetching my daughter from Heathrow late last night, didn't get into the bees until later than planned and suffered because of it. A lot of humping and shifting (and cursing) but the bees were having a great time and very well behaved considering all the movement.
Queen from Ceredigion has been laying well and they've outgrown their nuc as the bees had drawn wild comb in any available space, so into a hive they went. Added supers for the others.
Poly hive on double brood and three supers has decided to draw queen cells. Great timing! Split the boxes and went through both twice, too many brood frames to shake all the bees into bottom then excluder and brood on top, I didn't fancy putting another BB in the present stack or it would be ladder work. By now I was beginning to feel nauseous and faint and I didn't really want to start re opening the rest and donating excess brood frames in order to AS so I split off a nuc instead.
Looks like another visit after work mid week to assess. Maybe it'll be a little cooler

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Decided to have a cursory look into the hives to check what was happening in the hived swarm from Friday midday. I knew I would have put a couple of dummy boards in as there had been two frames short when the bees went in. Sure enough there was wild comb in the space. I scraped it off and passed it to my son who as soon as I looked back into the hive to install the dummy boards I had made announced that it was delicious. He had dug his finger into some nectar in the comb and tasted it.
The bees were drawing comb on seven of the ten foundation frames in the box and bringing in nectar. I fitted the dummy board, closed up and left them to it.
I looked in the split I had made a week ago and the queen cell has been capped, also a couple more evident. I will have to revisit that hive.
Then I looked in the original hive (WBC) which produced the Friday swarm and found an open queen cell with a very healthy larva in it - picture taken by my son in my album.
There has been lots of air traffic all day and hives 1 & 2 have a lot of stores so my son has sampled a couple of cells of capped honey from no 1 hive and pronounced it very good.
The bees were still not drawing comb in no 1 super still so I painted the foundation with sugar water and left them to get on with it.

 

[dpearce4]

Did my basic.