Post holiday bees 14 July 2011
It has been two weeks since I managed to catch up with the girls – so time to check what they had been up to.
First good news in the Pagden hive (Hive D) – there is brood and looks like a queen is in place and laying. What a relief. They are busy filling up a super and filling out the brood box, so I left well alone.
The Hive A Maisemore girls are moving things along too, with the brood moving into the half brood box, and with 2 supers almost full it is time to add another one.I didn’t overly bother the brood once I had ascertained that it had spread up to the half brood. I am hoping that the queen has no more swarming plans!
Not so good news in the swarm hives though. Hive B the Malvern swarm had now finished its apiguard treatment and has been building comb, but is still only brooding over 2-3 combs with about the same for stores and at least 4 combs still to pull in the brood box. This worries me half way through July and I was concerned that they would not make the necessary gains to have a strong colony going into winter. In addition there looked to be an emergency queen cell mid frame and I didn’t see the queen, so I am worried that something may have happened to her.
In Hive C there is also bad news. Though that hive had been going great guns through June, and had built up loads of comb around its apiguard treatment eke, when I checked this time the brood had deteriorated into a big mass of drone brood. This signals that either the queen has run out of sperm and is laying drones, or that she has gone and there is a drone laying worker. either case in not good news, and there was a queen cell in this hive too.
I will try to resolve Hives B and C together and write it up in my next posting as a separate adventure.
In the orchard Hive F is doing okay though the bees have flatly refused to move up into the second super and so I removed the queen excluder to encourage them. If I don’t even try to take honey until the end of the month or early August then we shouldn’t have too much in the way of brood in the honey issues. They were a bit lively, bouncing off our bee suits, but they settled down relatively quickly.
Hive G is still ‘handle with caution’ but again I opened them up to check how they were, looked at space issues and then closed them down again without going beyond super 2. They are less aggressive this time and didn’t follow us as much, though I understand that John was stung in his garden whilst I was on holiday. I am currently taking the stance of trying to regularly inspect them to get them used to it again but not overly disturbing them. However, they do have 2 supers that are almost full and have started pulling out wax on the third.
July 15th, 2011
Topic: Apiary 1, Hive 2 Apiary 2, Hive A original, Hive B (Swarm bees from Malvern), Hive C (swarm bees from Ashperton), Hive D - Padgen from nucleus, Hive F - Worcestershire hive Apiary 2 Tags: None
