Back from a business trip to London I'm curious to see what a week of acacia has done to my hive. The weather hasn't been the best, but they've had plenty of flying time.
I guess this will help me decide whether they're doing well or they need a new queen.
Since Monday its bank holiday in the U.K., and not here (and working for a London company I follow the uk holidays) I'll inspect tomorrow and report to my advisor at the LBS on Monday. Need to go to the local junk dealer as there seem to be some cheap trellises and it's on the way there.
When I opened the hive there was a distinct aroma of honey coming out, which wasn't as strong in the other visits, also a lot more activity at the entrance, so the colony has finally started getting properly busy.
The queen has started laying properly, only a patch in the center of each frame, call it a third of a frame, as the rest is occupied by stored, but it is spanning several frames, so there is a much larger amount of brood than last time.
I'm sure the bees will sort that out soon enough.
I found quite a few drone cells and spotted a few drones in the hive, so I set up the bait hive with two nest combs and four super combs. The old combs will attract the swarm and the super frames will allow the bees to draw wax under them, exhausting any contaminated honey they might have had on them.
Super is still untouched. A few bees in there, but no honey.
Many beeks here tend not to use QEs for the acacia flow, and then add it for following flows. Not sure how that works, but next year I'm going to try one hive with and one without and see if I spot any differences.
. Should be fun , and good to have another pair of hands as I want to change 7 floors too .
- in correlation: better to have something I can't sell ( for endurable price) than to have nothing to sell.. At least honey is lovely..
