Set up a new apiary today near my parents house. I moved 6 Paynes Polynucs I had overwintered to the site this morning and set them up about midday. I opened them and left them a few hours while I did some clipping and marking at my fathers apiary. His log hive had swarmed on Thursday and the swarm had gone straight into an empty hive. It had a beaut of a queen which I marked and clipped. It already had ...
I ordered 9 cases of 18 Apideas from Swienty. Not all for me but I do intend to hang on to at least 60. The rest of them are going to local queen rearing groups. Carriage from Denmark is 172 Euro so the order needs to be large to be cost effective but they are working out at under £18 each including the carriage and the cut the credit card company takes on the exchange rate. In a decent season you should average over 2 queens per Apidea so it is an investment which should ...
Checked a colony on Friday which had a queen and brood 3 weeks ago. All it had was a few capped cells on one frame and on opening a few they had chalk brood mummies inside. The colony was really calm and had a single opened supersedure cell. I thought maybe the queen had had a mishap the last time I opened it but if this were the case there would have been multiple emergency queen cells. I could not find a virgin but the colony was very calm so I suspected there must ...
I have 4 queens overwintered in apideas. Two of them had dwindled to the point where a couple of cold nights would have done for them. I caged both the queens and made up a 2 frame nuc with each. A frame of brood and a frame of stores and pollen in a poly nuc filled out with poly dummy frames. Luckily I have a couple of colonies strong enough to take a frame of brood and bees from. I left them closed up for 24 hours after making them up on Tuesday and let the bees ...
The bees seem to have overwintered well. I have ten colonies at my allotment in various polynuc and wooden box configurations. Gavin Ramsay was able to cast his eye over them on Monday as he was in Belfast for the Ulster Beekeepers Conference at the weekend where we heard his presentations on bee communication and other topics. Most will advise that it is far too early to check bees but I like to have a quick check around mid March to ensure that queens are laying and that they ...