What did you do in the Apiary today?

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Sold 5 more colonies.. Now I have gone below 50c.. Now one of my apiaries is rarely beautifull apiary..
Sorted what left, made inventory and move on..
Heard with young beek which I sold 2 colonies ( my queens, my "selection"), he said he never seen such strong colonies ( now a bit of vanity..). In a moment he bought them ( I think 30.3.), they were at 6 frames of brood, and he said they now reached 15 frames of brood..
Also they are calmer bees, not aggressive like some beasts I have from time to time..
 
Nothing today - far too cold and no bees flying. Yesterday quite different, warm and balmy, typical varied spring weather. Comedy moment yesterday - tripped over hidden root whilst carrying brood and super off top of unite to check all successful and queen not killed off by queenless half. Quite a black cloud erupted as boxes landed rather heavily! Note to self, rootle out the pesky bramble roots. Amazed how quickly they calmed down again though.
 
Finally managed to get up and check the Carreg apiary weather, transport difficulties and commitments have prevented me so far - all hives now sorted out, some already with brood on nine frames,all bringing in fresh stores one extremely placid hive at least destined for double brood and increase I think.Need to get myself into overdrive now - six left at Brynmair to check and some to move to Garn Cottage and the association apiary to be sorted by the weekend. reckon most colonies are a month ahead from last year.
 
Checked Apiary No.2 The Bait Hive, no swarm as yet, but then no swarms have been reported in the area as yet, I've not seen any drones in my apiary, despite capped drone cells.

Bitter cold yesterday, warm and suns out today.
 
A Shed for the Bee Stuff

Hurrah....we went to pick up my secondhand shed. It is 8x8 so big enough for lots of 'stuff'. The man gave me a length of worktop too...so somewhere to play with wax...without spoiling my new kitchen. There is a high shelf in the roof of the shed where I will be able to store extra hive bits too. Can't wait for OH to build it...can't think why he has to stop for tea and lunch!
 
New Bees Found

Hey All

All 3 colonies inspected and looking good.

I also discovered that I have a new bee type to me, resident in the apiary grounds the very good looking Tawny Mining Bees, see link:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tawny_mining_bee

They live in burrows that look like little vulcanoes that I originally mistook for worm holes until I saw a ginger coloured bee going in and upon further inspection spotted many holes with bees watching me. My bee knowledge continues to expand :)

Cheers
Matt
 
Not today, but Saturday. Spent 3.5 hours going through four colonies.

To be fair it was my first time in this year, and I spent more than an hour on the first one. Yeah, I know – well out of practice.

All good, QCs present, but fairly convinced HM no longer there. These were on nadired supers, so I had the two boxes to go through, but I eventually found her, split them and moved on to the others.

Others all in fine form, not as built up and fewer drones than the first, but very nearly there with mucho drone brood in the pipeline.

Swapped boxes around and added a QE to one as there was only stores in the super and plenty of space (relatively speaking) still in the BB.

Yesterday I passed the bees and saw a bit of commotion. The split hive was clearly being robbed by the one with the original queen, so closed up entrance to just one bee space with grass to give it a chance of defending itself.

Watching brief now, and hope I get some viable colonies from AS as I want to put a couple of colonies on another site about 15 miles away.
 
My mentor came over this afternoon to go through my hives with me ( I have been inspecting on my own but he likes to pop in and check on progress) . All 3 of my hives are in good shape. all 3 hives are now on brood box and a half and my strongest hive is also half way through filling a super of honey. He said I may have to artificial swarm my strongest hive in a week or so - he marked the queen and made sure I know how to do an AS ....eek ( he also said do it then phone him and don't panic). I should add he found signs that the strong hive may be thinking of preparing to swarm.
 
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Just been down to Apiary One, and checked all the supers, bees are up into the supers, and working them, probably from two fields of OSR, 80m away.

I also spotted my first wasp of the season hanging around, I dispatched two queen wasps yesterday, under hive roofs (sorry!). But I lost a colony last September due to wasps, so would usually leave, but not this time.
 
Not today but yesterday moved four hives from two different sites to the osr including twenty supers and four empty hives as I am only allowed a vehicle on the field once. I will have to barrow the supers to the gate when I take them off. On the flipside the hives are on an old railway line which should produce after the osr has gone.
 
Hives are full with orange coloured bees.. Their heads and thorax covered with orange pollen. Frames are filling nicelly, when place frames horizontally fresh honey is dripping down. Forests are all in bloom, air is still with fruit scent, but less than before - going to an end.. Now I wait to see what will give " South European flowering ash". For years it didn't give nice flow, how to say it is time to cover all these fails..
 
Quick check on both apiarys, setup another bait hive in my garden, where a swarm arrived last year. That's two years in a row, in the same spot!

Spotted more Queen Wasps at the apiary, sniffing around my hives.

Warm here today, 19 degrees C, I left a 1 oz block of beeswax, in my porch, and it had melted when I came home!
 
Found queencells in a very large colony, lucky to find the queen amongst all those bees, so marked and clipped her and did an As, also taking a Nuc from the original colony to the out-apiary.

Another colony had no queen or eggs and a single (that I saw) sealed queencell. Still plenty of bees, so maybe she tried to go off (clipped) or something happened to her. Loads of brood, mostly capped, left, with lots of food coming in. Fingers crossed I get a nice young queen, and didn't miss any queencells.
 
Tremyfro said:
Can't wait for OH to build it...can't think why he has to stop for tea and lunch!
Click to expand...

He doesn't have to stop. Take him a mug of tea and sammy to eat while he works! Hope it gets built soon.

Obee
 
Obee1 said:
He doesn't have to stop. Take him a mug of tea and sammy to eat while he works! Hope it gets built soon.

Obee
Click to expand...

Good idea!
I have almost finished painting the 6 poly nucs we picked up from Maisemoors at the Convention.
The bees are busy making lots of brood. Our big colony has built comb on all the foundation in the brood box I put on above the 14x12 brood box ...so now I have a BS comb. They have 3 frames of brood in it and the rest they have filled with nectar. They have also partly built comb on the 2 14x12 foundation frames I put in the main brood box ...some of it has eggs in already. There are 9 frames of solid brood. The 2 frames which had a thick band of stores on the west sides have been cleared and laid with brood. They have partly filled the super with nectar too. This colony is busy, busy, busy. In Hive 2 ....they are on brood and a half.....they are making good progress in recovery after I removed some frames to make a nuc for our new Buckfast Queen. New comb has been filled with eggs. Lots of drone in this hive in the half brood box. About 6 frames of worker brood too. Bringing in loads of nectar...so put on a super of drawn comb above a QE.
 
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Inspected my solo colony to find no queen, brood or eggs.
Lots of bees all very clam.
Today will mostly be spent trying to find someone with a spare frame of eggs.
 
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