Jon
Curate's egg
by
, 14-04-2013 at 09:43 PM (3070 Views)
15c today so I checked the 10 I have at my allotment.
The good news is that all the queens are there but the bad news is colony strength.
I have about 6 colonies on around 3 frames with a bit of sealed brood and another 4 which might be better off in apideas.
Other than that I have a couple of tiddlers in the garden and a few at the association apiary which are not too strong either.
I had an e-mail earlier this evening from someone in my BKA who has lost all her bees and she had about 8 colonies last summer.
I know quite a few people in a similar situation who have lost everything.
When the stats are collated I suspect NI is going have the heaviest losses this year.
I can't see any queen rearing starting until June at the earliest.
Normally I have a couple of very strong colonies which I can take brood from to strengthen the weak ones but this year they are all weak.
Bit of a bummer but at least I have bees to work with unlike a lot of others locally.
The summer queen rearing programme is going to be important as a lot of people will not have access to working with bees otherwise.