What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Angry_Mob]

Three virgins eclosed in the incubator this afternoon; marked them white and ran two into two queenless colonies and made up an Apidea for the third.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Three virgins eclosed

Love it

 

[madasafish]

Stopped doing hive inspections three weeks ago. Too many full supers and lots of room with queens mainly replaced last year.
Just inspect nucs and mating nucs.

Too much lifting.

 

[North End Bees]

Stopped doing hive inspections three weeks ago. Too many full supers and lots of room with queens mainly replaced last year.
Just inspect nucs and mating nucs.

Too much lifting.

Works as long as the bees follow the rules..
I've got one hive in which they've suddenly started throwing QCs despite raising themselves a new queen last month.

 

[Curly green finger's]

Yes Emily That’s how you nuc a queen for a split. You isolate her from the foraging bees

If you leave the nuc open for a few minutes before closing up some of those fliers will leave any way, I've been moving mine to different apiarys 5 out of 6 are ok.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Completely different moving them away but most hobby keepers do not have the luxury
Flyers will go back even if you close up straight away
There is a back story to this. Emily did nothing wrong

 

[The Poot]

Stopped doing hive inspections three weeks ago. Too many full supers and lots of room with queens mainly replaced last year.
Just inspect nucs and mating nucs.

Too much lifting.

My back is telling me to adopt the same approach. With four supers to remove to gain access to the brood chamber its proving to be a bit painful this year. My queens are all in their first year and only one has produced swarm cells thus far. After a very swarmy year last year, I’ve dutifully carried out weekly inspections but I do hurt today.

 

[elainemary]

Yes. I’m very sad. Had named her Missee Lee after the female pirate in the books Swallows and Amazon’s. I had to split her colony back in late April due to swarm preps which foiled my plan to demarree. She then built back up to a full size double brood. I have been doing 5 day inspections and all was ok, but last week found early stage charged qc’s. Queen was put in a nuc with just the flyers and a mix of empty drawn frames and foundation. She was there Monday, but gone today. Left a few bees and a frame of eggs.

Sorry to hear this Emily. Has happened to me too in previous seasons. I hear more and more stories of Pagden type swarm control not working ie queen with flying bees. I now don’t do this. A ‘go to’ friend who has been keeping bees for 30 or more years told me to only ever do this with foundation, not even drawn comb to slow down and switch the swarm instinct which can be v strong. Put queen excluder setting on Nuc or q/e under brood box until laying too.

I now put the queen with nurse bees away from parent and don’t put flying bees with her. Can always reunite later once swarming instinct has gone.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

If you leave the nuc open for a few minutes before closing up some of those fliers will leave any way, I've been moving mine to different apiarys 5 out of 6 are ok.

totally different scenario. If you have just taken the queen away from a colony that has made swarm preparations, the last thing you want to do is move that nuc to a different apiary when it still has its flying bees as that'all that will happen is they will stay with the queen in the nuc and, as they still have swarming fever will swarm at the first chance they get.
The whole point of keeping them at the same apiary, and near to the original hive (which is now Q-) is so that all the flying bees leave the nuc with the queen and return to the original spot. Hopefully this will then mean the queen will just build up again and you end up with two hives.

 

[Curly green finger's]

totally different scenario. If you have just taken the queen away from a colony that has made swarm preparations, the last thing you want to do is move that nuc to a different apiary when it still has its flying bees as that'all that will happen is they will stay with the queen in the nuc and, as they still have swarming fever will swarm at the first chance they get.
The whole point of keeping them at the same apiary, and near to the original hive (which is now Q-) is so that all the flying bees leave the nuc with the queen and return to the original spot. Hopefully this will then mean the queen will just build up again and you end up with two hives.

Yes I get it when I remove mine I take the frame she is on and a frame of emerging brood so only two frames shake of nurse bees no more 5 out of six are still stable and now hived up.

 

[madasafish]

Works as long as the bees follow the rules..
I've got one hive in which they've suddenly started throwing QCs despite raising themselves a new queen last month.

My hives were re-Queened last year - so about 8 months of testing before I stopped inspections.

 

[Swn58]

Now that's how to read your bees!

Mind boggling stuff. I can barely count that high!

 

[Swn58]

Bad day: email notification of EFB with 3km of apiary.

I've had two! Checked my apiary.....e-mailed a report saying I could see no problems. Was told that I would be inspected anyway. That was a month ago. This is not the time of year to be told that sort of news and then kept hanging

 

[jeff33]

Checked a nasty hive re-queened a month ago. It's on dble brood (couldn't deal with reducing down to 1 at the time) and 3 supers. Packed full of bees and 9 frames of brood in the top box already.
The other filthy one re-queened at the same time as not done so well. Queen has failed to properly mate, no brood and a handful of qcs. Not much hope for this one
The last round of grafting has given me 8/10 take but the buggers have started drawing wax around the cells. I have added a frame of foundation next to it and will go in with the scalpel tomorrow to remove the wax and cage the cells.

 

[gregior]

Inspected my 6 big production colonies at the home apiary today. They are all going great guns with around 14 frames of brood in each,no signs of swarming in any and FINALLY starting to put something in the supers.Dismantled the 3 remaining demarees which seem to have worked for once .
We had a much needed decent amount of rain yesterday and the clover,bramble,thistle and willowherb are coming into flower so i'm hoping for a very nice flow this week. Bees all very calm. Forked out some sealed drone brood in each hive and didn't see 1 mite in any which at this time of the year is a result! Running out of supers.

 

[Murox]

Introduced a new queen to a nuc. Transferred one colony to another box ready for relocation to a more favourable site.

 

[madasafish]

After my last grafting exercise in futility (2 out of 13) ,decided I was an incompetent old #### and tried Nicot system again after three years. Started well - found Q on second frame I looked at .

Nice sunny 20C - maybe I may be successful - not holding my breath.

Nuc which looked Q+ and rejected a Q has decided to draw QCs on its third - yes 3rd- test frame.. Will they be worth the aggro they have caused? I hope so!

 

[BigAshW]

Visited the main apiary yesterday.

All the splits and swarms checked and they all have a laying queen except 1. The swarms have feeders on as they're all on foundation so hopefully can get a few boxes of comb drawn.

The queen less one was a swarm that we collected and they drew some comb and eggs were laid, the next week we had QC in there i suspect clumsy Beekeeper to be the cause.

This week no sign of the cells but no eggs either so possibly a virgin has hatched and the cells torn down but have put a frame of eggs in to see what they do. If they draw QC again I'll shake them through a queen excluder and then do a paper unite with another swarm.

Our biggest colony still shows no signs of swarm preparations which is good news they're all in the supers and have backfilled the demaree box with stores.

At the mating apiary, (AKA the back garden ) checked the two frame mating nucs that had virgins in cages introduced on Thursday. Took out any queen cells and released the tabs on the cages, didn't see any aggression to any of the cages so hopefully all accepted.

 

[GuyNir]

Checked all colonies. Couple of production hives with eggs in two cups. Will check again in ~3 days.

 

[StephenT]

Did my Basic Assessment at my BKA apiary today. I realise I should have done more learning on certain areas such as bee diseases. Good exercise and I would recommend all beginners to do it.
p.s. Can’t be arsed getting into a debate about the BBKA.