What did you do in the Apiary today?

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Queen cup means nothing. You can safely ignore as they will make plenty more. However if it is charged with jelly it is a different story. It is then a queen cell
 
With summer like that, who needs winter...

1st nice day, My bees will be heading straight to the trees.
 
I think your English is getting better...Well done.

BTW I never follow links in any forum...you never know where they ,might lead..

Good job we are just writing, otherwise I wouldn't be able to understand Ecky-Thump 😉
By not following the links you have missed out on quite a bit. After some of the questions you have asked and been given the answer via a link. Do you think Admin and HM would allow dodgy links?
 
Queen cup means nothing. You can safely ignore as they will make plenty more. However if it is charged with jelly it is a different story. It is then a queen cell

Cheers! I'll not get excited if I see any more then. :D
 
Started taking the spring crop off, not looking too great. Weather has been very hit and miss over the last few weeks. Most colonies massive for this time of year so hopefully the summer will be good.
Looks like a few virgins have gone missing or not mated so given some colonies test frames to check.
Last year I was given a few unwanted colonies in standard nationals. If anyone can give me a valid reason for those plastic frame spacers they can have them!
 
Re-Queened six of my hives and clearer boards on.
 
Went down to allotment yesterday looked at bees then ive sold all lot to young man in next garden cant seem to get them sorted since i lost my husband he made all my frames up for me never really liked it on that allotment but took it on to get bees out of my garden at home so ive made a agreetment with him if i decide to start up again he will give me some bees so hope you all have a a good season and take care
 
Having a barbecue to make the most of the warm weather. Bait box which has not had any interest for 3 years attracts a swarm. Timing.
 
Maddy dog : Looks like a few virgins have gone missing or not mated so given some colonies test frames to check.

I have also been inserting test frames as several virgins from my hives have also gone missing. Last time this happened (a few years ago) the area seemed saturated with house martins but not noticed many insectiferous birds this time. Not to worried at the moment as I have several spare queens standing by in nuclei.
 
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if i decide to start up again he will give me some bees so hope you all have a a good season and take care

Denise, I hope your love of beekeeping comes back. If he reneges on his promise I'm sure I can find you a nuc of bees at some future point.
 
Got to the association apiary and in doing my preflight check I realised the seam had come open under one arm of my suit so I packed it in and went home.
 
Hi Beefriendly i think he will stick to his word ive helped him a lot with setting up bees and giving him things when we first moved onto the allotment ive finnished for main reason been on my own down with bees if non of others are up i dont feel safe lots of druggies about ant its a bit out of way moved to another garden but cant have bees but im working on it and thanks a lot for offer x
 
Swarm I caught a couple of weeks ago have made a sealed queen cell for whatever reason they see fit! (have BIAS too). Loads of space and a super available with some drawn comb, they obviously know what they are doing (I hope)... Also need lessons in drawing comb out properly...: :hairpull:

Largest colony who I presumed had killed their queen after drawing emergency cells, have a laying queen - found her and went to mark her and found it is the old queen as she had a tiny fleck of red paint on her back. She has laid up 4 frames of BIAS too. Sometimes I have wonder if they do it to make fun of us ...
 
Maddy dog : Looks like a few virgins have gone missing or not mated so given some colonies test frames to check.

I have also been inserting test frames as several virgins from my hives have also gone missing. Last time this happened (a few years ago) the area seemed saturated with house martins but not noticed many insectiferous birds this time. Not to worried at the moment as I have several spare queens standing by in nuclei.

Inspected a 2 frame nuc with a queen cell today that would have emerged on or near the 13/5. Found the bees balling the queen, when I gently disturbed them she flew off. Random event or due to my disturbance it's impossible to know but I've got to look for eggs at some point!
Interested to hear from members who have raised numerous queens how often they've seen queen balling?
 
Swarm I caught a couple of weeks ago have made a sealed queen cell for whatever reason they see fit!

Probably an old queen in swarm and supercedure to replace with new fit model...happens fairly frequently.
 
Collected 25 sealed queen cells and grafted 60 more. All from NL-55-35-33-2018. These are intended to be drone mothers / production Colonies for next year.
 
Another inspection. First hive that I did splits from last week I realised I have inadvertently made queenless. Not overly concerned as I inspected a real strong nuc from which is slightly calmer bees so I dropped a frame into the queen less hive. The nuc had queen cells so made a another split with a queen cell in order to reduce the numbers.

Another hive is also broodless, I seen a 2017 marked queen last week but I have a hunch its a 2016 queen. The previous week I seen another queen which I marked as she was laying; not sure what's going on there exactly so gave them a frame of unsealed brood from another hive.
 

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