gavin

Had a visit from a Scottish Government inspector and an inspectress yesterday. As a result I have an insert in the floor of one hive to take out next Wednesday and send to the lab, one hive now short of 60-100 flying bees, and I was able to sit and watch while the brood frames of all of my main hives were shaken free of bees and given a thorough going-over. All in the name of science, and performed professionally. I'm all in favour of that.

Nothing much to report from the visual inspection. No frights from sacbrood bags of watery larval tissue. No scale. No smelly brood. Smelly piles of dead bees thrown out onto the wet ground outside some hives though. Surprisingly good slabs of brood in many of them, surprising given the wet weather lately. They should be good for the heather when (if) it eventually flowers. They had been bringing in honey, some of which ended up elsewhere as the frames were tilted for a better view, but in the afternoon they'll have replaced that and more. It was a warm and slightly muggy day and the flowering lime trees nearby had their feet in very damp ground. The tree beside where we parked the cars was full of honeybees, mine I presume.

Then, after they went, I marked queens in the nucs. I'm getting quite good at picking them up by the wings, but I have to say that my paint application skills have gone downhill. A wee bit messy. I should try the plunger thingie particularly to snip a bit of a wing in a controlled manner. That Jon knows his beekeeping. Thankfully there were enough half-decent days for most of the queens to get out and get mated. Two turned drone layer and one just failed, but the rest of them were fine. Two more have tried to supercede since though. I'm not surprised, it really was very wet while the queens were in those receptive three weeks or so.

Then off to Edinburgh to meet Nellie. A fine young man and an asset to the forum. No doubt he's trying to drink some Edinburgh pub dry as I write this.