Reversals, Nosema medication and cleaning out old supers.

Seems from the title of the post that there has been a lot going on this week.  I guess that's right, but I don't think things are quite as dramatic as I have perhaps made out.  Last weekend I topped up the syrup in both hives.  On Wednesday, although it was cold, I added/topped up the syrup and I guess I added about 2 litres to each hive.  This time I medicated the syrup with Fumagellin B as I had noticed some streaking on the front of the hives and thought that this might be nosema. The Fumagellin B was really added as a precaution.  I cleaned off the outside of the hive in order to see the extent of the streaking.  The following day it was quite clear the streaking was quite extensive (see photo).

This afternoon I went through the hives with Jurgen, a German friend who is playing with the idea of keeping bees. My girls' behaviour was exemplary! They were so calm. Jurgen felt very at ease and I reckon I'll be able to convince him to keep one hive for me, even if he doesn't want to keep any for himself this year. We probably had the hives open for 45 minutes and hardly used any smoke in the first hive. We opened the hive without smoking it in order to see the extent of the brood area. This wasn't really effective as the bees were all over the top of the frames and we couldn't make out the extent of the brood! It was another 5 or 10 minutes before we realised we left the smoker lying 20 feet away!

The first hive (blue queen) had 6 frames of capped and uncapped brood in the top box but no brood in the bottom box, although there was quite a lot of food stored in the bottom. We saw the queen.  I therefore decided to a reversal.  This all seems to be very good and all appears to be going to plan right now.  I topped up the syrup with another litre or so.

The second hive (white queen) had a couple of  frames of brood in the top box  - only small areas, and there was quite a lot of brood on comb between the top and bottom box which I had to remove. The bottom box however contained about 5 or 6 frames of brood (capped and uncapped).  Interestingly I saw the white queen in the top box and in the bottom box!  She must have jumped below while I was lifting out frames! This hive, like the other one, took about a litre of medicated syrup.

So, the new queens arrive next weekend. I feel confident I will be able to make at least one nuc from what I have seen in my two hives.

Last, but not least, I put a couple of old supers out for the bees to clean.  I had these supers on one of the hives over the winter but took them off a couple of weeks ago. On advice from Bob I left these out for the bees to clean up. It is likely that the honey in them is not really fit to be eaten as it has been left uncapped over the winter and could have exposed to contamination.  So the best course of action seems to be to have the bees clean them up and then maybe I'll re-use them later in the summer.  The frames and comb are old and very dark so I am tempted to remove the wax and put new foundation in them. here are a few photos of the girls cleaning things off...