Neils

a Chance to have a look around.

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Neils
, 18-04-2010 at 01:25 AM (1974 Views)
Finally, finally, finally. Making the most of the lovely day to finally get my hands in the hive. Although my eagerness to get the lid off the hive was somewhat tempered by one of the neighbouring plot holders coming over to introduce herself and let us know she's prone to anaphylaxis from bee stings.

It took all of 3 second once she made her way to the gates for the smoker to be lit and the suit to go on.

So let's get the numbers out of the way, right now there's:

7 frames of brood,3 sides capped the rest mostly eggs and very young larvae at the moment.

a frame and half of stores and 2 and half frames currently unused.

There's a little drone brood at the moment, maybe quarter of a side in total but no drones active in the colony right now.

The queen is also sporting a nice new red spot because I'm too lazy and cheap to have sorted out a selection of colours. I decided against clipping in the end. I get the arguments for it but I think I'll take my chances.

Things are looking quite encouraging at the moment and the next couple of weeks will be interesting.

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  1. Jon's Avatar
    Hi Neil.
    That sounds pretty good.
    I have a couple of colonies like that but most are smaller.
    If there is a frame and a half of stores, they don't need any feeding.
    If you have 4 frames of eggs and young larvae, get ready for the population explosion in just over 2 weeks.
    Updated 18-04-2010 at 01:02 PM by Jon (wrote 4 sides instead of 4 frames)
  2. Neils's Avatar
    I was thinking the same thing and it will be interesting to see. As there was an unused frame of comb at the back of the colony I moved that to the edge of the brood area which might give her Maj an extra frame to play with so there might be more yet

    I was trying to limit the feeding this year and I could taste the sugar syrup from the odd bits that fell from the frames so I think I overfed them a little earlier on in the year. i've still got plenty of wax for them to draw so I'm not overly concerned about the syrup at the moment, but this time last year I'd have been adding several litres of syrup in one go and not thinking twice about it so I'm slightly amused by the differences already apparent this year.

    I found a couple of empty queen cups on a couple of frames, but with no drones in the colony I'm not reading too much into that at the moment. At least I'm making the assumption that if they don't have any drones they'll assume no-one else has either and not try to swarm. I've knocked them down anyway, I'm never too sure whether I should or not but I know that if I find a queen cup next time it [probably] wasn't there last time I looked.

    I know things went a little quiet on the Bee Database front, but I'm now starting to use it in earnest and it's not a million miles away from what i wanted so I'll try and find a couple of days next week to tidy it up and get a version you can use real information in out to the peeps who gave me feedback.
  3. Jon's Avatar
    Cheers. Be good to give the database a try.
    Don't worry about those queen cups unless you find a larva in one.
    They make them all the time.
    If you get 4 frames of brood hatching within a couple of days that could be well over 10,000 bees.
    I have a couple in a similar situation.