todays news

**gavin** · 12-05-2012, 10:29 PM

They can sometimes be really calm in spring. We had an 'improvers' (essentially second year beekeepers) class at my apiary today. The bees were lovely, but we never considered going butt naked! Once upon a time I did have to drop my trousers in the apiary, but not today thankfully.

http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/en...in-the-orchard

**GRIZZLY** · 13-05-2012, 11:10 AM

Sad about the Apple tree Gavin but it looks as tho.it's got heart rot -common affliction of old fruit trees.Nice early orchid tho'.

**Neils** · 13-05-2012, 11:57 AM

Mixed bag for me yesterday but I have finally managed an inspection. Up on the allotment I have one strong hive with a super that's full of sugar, that's not the end of the world though.

I have a swarm that appears to have no queen in it.

I have a full hive that should probably go in a Nuc.

I have a Nuc with a queen and a handful of bees in it that is hanging in there.

On the nature reserve they've essentially had it. They've just dwindled down to about a frame of bees. I don't honestly know at the moment what's gone wrong with this one, this is the colony that swarmed in march last year and produced the most honey. They were treated for varroa and show no obvious signs of varroa related disease, no obvious sign of nosema and no dead bees in the hive. I' ll try and get a sample from it to test for nosema but it's the end of the road for them I fear.

For the allotment I'm going back up today, I gave the swarm a test frame of eggs yesterday and while 24 hours might not enough time from that point of view I'm going to go through the frames to make absolutely sure they're queen less, if I'm satisfied that they are then my intention is to requeen them with the queen from the Nuc. I've not discounted that it might be a cast so I'll be taking an apidea up just to give me some more options but these are ligustica so them not having their own queen is no great loss for me and the donor frame comes from a hive I don't really want to raise queens from either, the queen in the Nuc however mated last year and appears "raring to go" just constrained by the number of bees in the Nuc she's also my last chance for a colony I actually want to raise queens from rather than the only option.

**Neils** · 13-05-2012, 04:06 PM

Well, we'll see what happens. went through the swarm hive 3 times without seeing any evidence of a queen. If I can find one in an 11 frame packed to the rafters hive I'd like to think I'd have been able to find one in a quiet 4 frame swarm.

The Nuc is no more, the queen is in a cage in the swarm

**Neils** · 19-05-2012, 05:36 PM

Today I have mostly been improving the allotment apiary after last week's shenanigans:

We've also repositioned most of the hives that we could so that they point towards the fence and that building rather than out across the allotments. They haven't quite got the hang of the netting yet and seem content to fly into it rather than over it, but I'm sure they'll get there in the end.

My best hive is coming along nicely:

Only two supers, the third is the empty one that all the hives have. The first super isn't quite full, but it's bursting with bees so it's as much to give them some extra room.

The poly hive which houses the swarm is coming along nicely, I thought this one was queenless so popped in the queen from a Nuc that was too small to really get going, sure enough I found eggs this time but could I find that queen?

Then I spotted this little minx running around: Turns out I can't spot a queen in a 4 frame swarm after all! In my defence she's quite short and fat and for a second I did have to double take to make sure.

And badly marked her. i'm revising my opinion on clipping after this spring, touch wood I haven't lost a swarm yet this year, but Hive 1 can't be too far off thinking about it.

**Jimbo** · 19-05-2012, 06:48 PM

Checked all my colonies today. No queen cells yet but close to swarming in some colonies. If the weather is good next week should get some swarm cells next week. Checking back my records for the last 10 years swarming usually starts about the 21st May so they are on track this year even though it has been cold.

**Neils** · 19-05-2012, 07:05 PM

Interesting stuff Jimbo, I'd be a liar if I said I had much of a sense for that kind of timing around these parts at the moment.

And it's nice to be actually talking about bees again.

**lindsay s** · 20-05-2012, 11:08 PM

I had to inspect all of my colonies today because it's been three weeks since I was last through them.
The weather was overcast with a cool easterly wind and not above 11°c. Although the bees were flying they soon got grumpy once the crown boards were removed, so I kept the frame exposure times to the bare minimum.
My strongest colony has seven frames of brood and needs a super. The other eight colonies have from four to six frames of brood and are short of stores. Three colonies are still being fed small quantities of syrup to help them draw out new foundation. One colony has a high level of chalk brood but the rest are OK. I still need to mark six queens but I will have to wait till it warms up.
I had plans to move a few colonies to a new apiary about ten miles away for the summer, but that will have to be put on hold for the moment. Overall my bees are well behind for this time of year.

**Jon** · 20-05-2012, 11:18 PM

A friend of mine found a colony close to starvation this evening.
We checked colonies at the association apiary this afternoon and they had sufficient stores but this one was on a different site 400' higher up where it is a degree or two colder. The ones at the association apiary were very calm, inspected at 13c but my mate said that the other one was vicious and it is usually very quiet. I have noticed that hungry bees can get very cranky.
Some of mine have got low on stores but I have been moving frames of stores from colonies with plenty to colonies with very little.
Weather is set to improve this week anyway.
The other good news is that I grafted 18 cells yesterday and on checking today 5 were started so at least I am up and running for the 2012 queen rearing season.