Jon

  1. Queens still laying.

    I just checked a full colony, a nuc and a couple of apideas and all had fresh eggs in them.
    The colony is one I requeened a month ago.
    I accidentally knocked over the nuc last week so needed to check for eggs.
    Stores were good and lots of pollen in cells.
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  2. Another mated queen

    Found another queen laying in an apidea this afternoon.
    This was one which came from an emergency queen cell made by the bees in the apidea after they killed their queen for some reason in early September.
    It emerged 25 days ago so was cutting things fine.
    It actually looks ok for a queen from an apidea emergency cell, a wee bit small but perfectly acceptable.
    there are still a few drones about and I have been checking this apidea every couple of days since mid September. ...
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  3. Catching an apidea swarm

    I got a call on Friday evening to say that there was a small swarm 20 foot up a tree at the end of a branch at our apidea mating site.
    I devised a cunning plan which involved fishing line and a frame of drawn comb.
    I was going to tie the line to a weight, throw it over the branch then pull up a comb to attract the bees which would then be lowered down safely.
    It was raining on Saturday morning so I didn't get round until about 11am but luckily the apidea contents were still ...
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  4. Apiary visit from Terry Clare

    We has Terry Clare as a visitor at our regular queen rearing group meeting tonight - fresh up from Gormanston last week.
    I just heard this morning that he was in the neighbourhood.
    It was nice to be able to show him our set up and we had about 25 beekeepers in attendance as well.

    We had nothing special planned but about 8 mated queens were removed from apideas and new queen cells were put straight in.
    Terry was able to cast his eye over a few fine looking queens ...

    Updated 29-07-2013 at 10:24 PM by Jon

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  5. Supersedure

    saw a classic supersedure situation today with a queen of mine in her 4th season.

    This colony tried to supersede last August but I inadvertently captured the daughter in an apidea when she made a pit stop with her mating swarm on a fence post. This was apiary vicinity mating. At the time I could not work out where the stray queen had come from but I found an opened supersedure cell in this same colony the next day.
    The old queen overwintered anyway but the colony started weak ...
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