Spring

It’s spring, the bees are doing what bees do...

My split has worked! On Good Friday I split my strong hive and 11 days later there are a couple of queen cells, capped. This weekend she should emerge and in another week or so should be laying! I’ll go back in on or around 13/5/19.

My strong hive (which was the one I split) is filling a super, so I added a second.

The weaker hive was in a single deep; when I took a look inside I found the bees building comb above the inner cover. So I removed this, shuffled the deep frames as not all were built out, and I’ve added an excluder and a super. Hopefully they’ll start to fill this now. I’ll go back this weekend to try to sort the deep out a bit.

My bait hive hasn’t been occupied yet, which I guess is good, but I’m still on the look out for a swarm...

Spring Preparations

It's been ages since I last posted. I think I've done stuff on Facebook but nothing since September on my blog?  Oops! I seem to have taken my eye of the ball.

Which is not all I have taken my eye off...  I lost two hives over the winter, I think to starvation.  Four were alive at Christmas when I do my oxalic acid treatment, but sadly two of the weaker hives did not make it through to March.  However, on the plus side, the two that did make it seem strong and are currently taking advantage of the mild weather. Lots of pollen is being brought in and there's generally a lot of bee stuff going on.

A couple of weeks ago I cleaned up the two dead-outs and reversed one of the surviving hives; moving the super from above to below the brood box. This morning I removed super (which was empty of both stores and brood) so I now have two colonies, each in a single deep. When I do find my feeders I might consider encouraging some brood rearing but for now I'm happy with where these hives are, given it's mid-March