Budding Cottage

Hive 3

This is becoming a bit of a tower hive. It was visited by the LAN group when it was due to swarm; so we took an artificial swarm from it (into hive 5) and knocked down some queen cells leaving two of the best behind.  However that was a few weeks ago, and so the swarm probably happened (it was inevitable eventually).  So, I didn’t really know what to expect – other than this hive is still full of bees!

Anyway, it was too heavy for me to lift properly – the super is very full of honey so I had to leave it until I have help. I know that these bees probably swarmed not so long ago, so am okay leaving it in situ, particularly with the June lull due,.

Added to this,  I couldn’t get into the main super and brood box but expect that there may be stores there but also a new queen settling in below the queen excluder, if they followed expected practice and swarmed, leaving behind a virgin queen.

I added an additional super in case the bees feel like filling it (old manky comb though – I’m a bit short on nice new super comb).

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2014 at 8:26 pm and is filed under Hive C (swarm bees from Ashperton). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.