Spring Queens

It's Easter Sunday so the perfect time to install new queens. I got hold of four lovely Italians on Saturday and spent Friday preparing hives and splits for their arrival. Here they are...

I made a split from the single hive at the gardens; taking 4 frames of eggs, brood and pollen from the hive there and transferring it to a new single deep.

I took frames from the two strong hives in Ladue and put 4 into the weak hive there. I also killed off the ineffective queen in this hive. 

I relocated the weak hive I had at home to one of Jurgen's Ladue apiaries and added four frames of eggs, brood and pollen (from my Ladue hives) to this hive as well.

The final queen went to split a hive I sold to my friend Paul a week ago.

So the end result is....

No hives in my back garden.

Two hives at the Botanical Gardens. 

Three hives in Ladue; one requeened.

One hive to be sold to Jurgen and currently relocated to one of his Ladue apiaries.

Why selling and relocating hives?.... More on this later...

Last Treatment of the Year?

Well, at least I hope it is!

With the final harvest complete it made sense, given the cooler weather that is forecast, to get into the three hives that needed further mite treatment i.e. the two in the backyard at home and the hive in Ladue.  I didn't go through the hives very thoroughly today but I did go through the top boxes to make sure I saw what I wanted to and to install some MAQS between the top and bottom deeps.

All three hives look in pretty good shape.  There is some solid capped brood in each hive and plenty of young larvae present.  I'm also very happy with the quantity of honey stores that are already in these hives; several frames in the top boxes are already full!  I'll leave the hives for a week before I remove the treatment and I hope (I really hope) that temperatures remain low and that the treatment doesn't effect the brood and Queens like it did last year.  Next week I'll take a closer look at the nests and stores present and maybe even take a look at what is going on in the lower hive boxes.

I figure that if there turns out to be a need to feed I will still be able to feed syrup into October.