Next round of inspections

Over the weekend I looked at the two hives that are in good shape. The hive down the street and one of the hives at the Gardens.

Both show no signs of having any queen cells and both look well set up for the main nectar flow which I hope starts this week. I have 2 supers on the hive down the street and 3 on the Garden hive.  So fingers crossed. 

My next round of inspections will be in the hives and nucs that contain the queen cells, but that is still a week off so I may recheck these good hives next weekend.

Here are a couple of views of the Garden hives.

Well what do I do next time? 'Cos the business end of the season is starting to roar

Home hive:
Well, I went through this hive again last night with the intent to perform an Artificial Swarm.  I would have done it too, but there was NO QUEEN!  So I removed all but two developed, and capped, Queen Cells. With luck the first out of the gate will terminate the other and there'll be no secondary swarming. The good news is that with no Queen in the hive the girls are busy bringing in nectar!  Well, what else is there for them to do!

I'll check on the hive's progress in a couple of weeks (May 25).  After all, I want the new Queen to settle in.  If the cell is currently capped it must be within 6 days of hatching.  Add a week for her to get mated and return home and a few more days to start laying and we'll be good.  So all I have to do in the meamtime is keep "supering"!

Diane Hive:
There was nothing untoward going on in this hive, so I think all I need to do is check in the hive for any swarm cells (May 11) and add supers should the two there now be filling nicely!

Ladue Hives:
This had swarm cells in it so I think I need to check the hive again but not too soon (May 24) just to see how the hive is doing.  It would also be worth lifting the supers to see their progress. And of course i need to rummage through the garage and check on the equipment that's stored there!

Mating box:
This is no longer occupied!

New Nuc Box
This was made up from bees in Ladue and contained some frames woth Queen Cells.  I reckon I need to check on this again in a couple of weeks (May 25) in order to give the Queen enough time to hatch, get mated, return and start laying.

Observation Hive / New Home Hive!
The New Home Hive was made from the old observation hive "nuc" I prepared from the Home hive!  Confused? Anyway, I went through the observation hive / "nuc" last night only to find a new Queen Cell in it and no existing Queen!  I think the cold weather at the earth day event did her in!  A shame!  So I decided to put all 5 frames in the nuc back into a full deep but this time I'll make sure the Queen stays in her hive and I'll wait to do another check until she should be laying (May 25), or even later.

Garden Swarm Hive #2:
OK, this hive now contains Queen Cells I took from home (from the mating box). As with so many of my hives I'll wait long enough for any queens to hatch, get mated and start laying (around May 24).  It will be worth lifting the supers as well, especially as the bees in the hive have nothing else to do and there was some honey already being stashed away!

And I'll certainly rummage in this garage again for equipment, but I doubt if I'll get quite as lucky as I did on Monday!

Garden Hive #1:
Nothing untoward was happening here but I'll check for Queen Cells soon (May 10) and maybe add some more supers if the ones that are currently in place are filling quickly.

Checking to see if the swarm hive took! It didn't!

An Extended Day Beekeeping!

The weather was so bad this weekend that I didn't manage to get any beekeeping in, yet again.  Instead I took Monday off (May 6) and went round my hives.  This activity actually started on Sunday as I needed to plan what I was going to do at each hive location so that I wasn't unnecessarily running about.  Broadly my planning worked! Broadly, but not quite...

So what follows are my plans and notes of what actually happened - a few surprises came my way!

Equipment needs:
Tool box - 2 empty drawn frames + mating box frames.
Spare deep - no frames.
Supers with cut comb x 2.
Supers x 10.
Dolly.
2 nuc boxes for possible splits.

Should have taken my back support!

Home hive:
Check for queen cells and/or queen.
Perform artificial swarm if cells present! or simply reverse if not.
Need excluder and deep of drawn comb for AS.
Add 1x super with cut comb.

Didn't see the queen, but saw Swarm cells were present on two frames. Relocated one frame to mating box (centre compartment) left one in the hive but removed 2 of the 3 cells on it. If the queen in the hive doesn't take maybe the one in the mating box will.

I think it may be likely this hive will swarm!

Bottom supered with frames for cut comb. Three supers currently in place.

Diane Hive:
Check for queen cells. Remove any queen cells to tool box then to mating box in yard.
Reverse.
Add supers x 2 (max).

Didn't see the queen, no sign of supersedure cells or swarm cells. Didn't reverse. 

Bottom supered a single super. Two currently in place.

Ladue Hives:
Check two hives for queen cells. Remove to tool box/nuc box if present.
Perform reversals.
Add supers x 4.

Down to one hive, but combined the hives.

Swarm cells removed from the one surviving hive (removed a total of 4 frames) to make up a nuc at home.

Added 2 supers.

Mating box:
Check queen cells.
If not hatched relocate to nuc box/tool box, take to Gdns for swarm hive, otherwise leave.

Swarm cell present in western compartment. Decided to leave it in place!

These cells (and those in the centre compartment from the home hive) were subsequently all relocated to the "swarm hive" at the gardens.

Garden Swarm Hive #2:
Check for queen. If present OK. If not use frame from mating box.
Reorganize and reduce to 2 deeps.
Add supers x 2.

No queen! Swarm was either Queenless or they killed her! 

Reduced bees into 2 deeps added 2 supers (3 total now). Put in queen cells from the mating box. A couple were damaged in transit (at the bottom of frames) but hopefully either the healthy capped cell or the viable uncapped cells will develop. Check back in a couple of weeks!

Should have taken my swarm cells to the gardens as planned. The "swarm hive" was queenless and needed these cells and I had to drive home to collect them!

Garden Hive #1:
Check for queen cells. If present relocate to swarm hive or nuc box.
Reverse.
Add supers x 2 - check garage!
Add one super with cut comb.

All ok! Added two supers. Total of two in place.

A montage from the Botanical Gardens of some lovely brood,
pollen and a very prominent Queen Cell.

Another montage from the Botanical Gardens,
including the delivery of the Queen Cell!

Another Queen...

Well the hive in my back yard has got some capped Queen Cells in it! But the existing Queen is still there. So I removed the Queen Cells and put them in my mating box! I'm not sure if the hive will swarm - probably it will - unless I can perform an "artificial swarm" on it. However, given the weather forecast I think this is unlikely before Sunday. And by then it might be too late!

Still, I hope I'll have another Queen to raise which I can use to split another hive! I'll check in the mating box in a week or so to see what's happened!

Preparing my Observation Hive

Now that I know I have a Queen in a mating box I just have to decide what to do with her! Well I have now decided; she's going into my Observation Hive.

I took two frames of capped brood from the hive that is located next to the mating box and put them in the OH. Tomorrow I'll put my new Queen (and her two or three frames of brood) in with the bees that have stayed with the OH. I'm hoping the nurse bees that don't go back to the parent hive will happily accept their new queen.

I'll try and develop the OH into a nuc that I can use later on, once its done a tour of the local schools!

Bees 1 : Owen 0

Some excellent news!

Lets just hope the UK government abides by the ruling!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22335520

A very helpful summary of the issues being faced by the Honey Bee.

Earth Day at Kirkwood Farmers Market.

What a way to end an excellent week of beekeeping! Yes, Earth Day was last week but here in Kirkwood they held their own local version yesterday. Sadly it was wet and cold, but surprisingly well attended!

Walter from Cornucopia (the local cook shop that stocks some of my honey) asked if I'd like to have a stall. I jumped at the chance! I had no honey to sell but I love taking my observation hive places.

But it's been so cold lately and the hives are so far behind (developmentally) that I wasn't sure if I could find enough frames of brood etc. to full the observation hive. However, I had a brainwave! I sealed off the nuc below the observation window and decided to put in just a single frame of bees from my mating box. You'll remember the queens in these boxes had died or been killed off. I pulled a frame from one side of the box and thought no more of it.

I generated some interest at the market, which is actually quite easy when you have a hive of bees on display. People are always so interested and know quite a bit about the issues bees are currently facing, so it's nice to be able to talk about what is being done locally to help maintain bee populations.

I kept telling people that the frame was just bees and a bit of maturing brood, until one 9yr old girl said she saw the Queen. No way! But she was spot on! Clear as day, there was a Queen, quite black with a black shiny saddle on her thorax on the frame. She'd been busy too, lots of eggs and larvae were on the frame and we alao saw her laying. She was not only recently hatched, but mated too!

What had happened? This is my hypothesis. First the timeline: On 5 April I pulled one frame of eggs and brood from a hive at home and from the gardens. On 6 April I added new queens purchased from the club to these frames in the mating box. On 13 April I found the queens had died or been killed and I saw queen cells being raised on one side of the mating box. Finally, yesterday, 27 April, I had a new laying queen.

I'm assuming the bees started to raise a queen almost immediately after the frame was removed from the donor hive. One of these queen cells could therefore have been formed around a 3-day old egg. So the egg could have been laid on 3 April. This queen should then have hatched 16 days later, on 19 April. Now Queen cells are capped after 10 days so the cells I saw could have just been capped when I saw them. It's been 7 days since the queen hatched and I believe its perfectly possible that she took her maiden flight, got mated and started laying within a week of hatching. Quick, but not unusual!

My only worry now is did her trip to the cold day at the market upset her? And if not, what do I do with her? Well, I think I will split one of my hives in a couple of weeks time and I'll install her (or should that be invest her?) as the new Queen.

It's certainly been interesting this week!