In the Apiary - May & June
Week Ending 23rd June
Hooray. At long last I have a harvest, albeit small at this stage. I have done two extractions this week and plan another for Monday. The clearer boards are on and this will give the bees two days to clear from two supers. Clearer boards have one-way hatches in them so that bees can go down into the body of the hive but can't get back. This way the supers are (almost) clear of bees when I come to remove them. I had a stroke of luck when I inspected hive 2. This was the one which I had planned to requeen with a new one from one of the nuclei. As I lifted out the frame with the queen cell, there she was just emerging from her cell. Straight into a matchbox with her and immediate uniting with hive 9 already alongside. This saved me many possible fruitless searches looking for a virgin queen.Of the other two nuclei, one is hatched, mated and laying and the other is hatched but I can't find her. The cells are polished ready for laying so it looks promising. Hive 6 and hive 8 have been a little short tempered this week. This is a great pity because up until now, both have been very docile, excellent foragers and produced the biggest colonies. Decisions to be made now as to whether I should reverse my choice of hive 8 as a breeder colony.
Week Ending 14th June 2001
The hive which was artificially swarmed sealed several queen cells so I decided to split them into three colonies. Two have gone into smaller nucleus hives and the third remained in the large brood box. One of the nucleus queens has consequentially hatched successfully but has yet to mate. She may have just had time before this spell of bad weather but I'll give her a few more days before I check again. I had a look last Wednesday to see if I could start harvesting some of the supers (the upper shallow boxes) but although most of the frames are full, they have yet to be capped and the honey is still not ripe. Last year I was extracting honey in the latter half of May so it just shows how behind we still are.
Week Ending 2nd June
It's all been happening this week. Seven of the colonies have reached a good productive size and the weather has been perfect for them to forage. The oil-seed-rape and the honesty are just going over the top but there are beans coming on flower now.
One colony is now up to four supers and I shall have to think about extracting before I run out of boxes.
Hive 7 has superseded but I have yet to see if the new young queen has mated successfully. Both hive 2 and hive 5 started making queen cells and I decided to cut them out of hive 2, I wanted to requeen this one anyhow, and artificially swarm hive 5. This was done by removing their old queen on a frame of brood and placing this in the centre of another brood box containing empty combs. The original hive was moved to one side and this new one put in its place with all the supers on top. All the returning foragers joined their old queen in an empty brood box and hopefully, assumed they had swarmed in their absence. The original hive has now been left to raise a new queen from one of the queen cells.
Week Ending 19th May
Last weekend was glorious and the bees worked like the clappers. All but one of the hives now has one super in place. Hive 4 just hasn't built up at all and although the queen was new last year she is not very large. Time therefore to unite with hive 7. Hive 7 was moved across the apiary 1 metre a day until it was alongside 4. On Friday the queen from hive 4 was removed and the two brood boxes were placed one on top of the other with a sheet of newspaper between them. By the time they have nibbled their way through, their scents will have intermingled and they will peacefully co-exist as one colony; hopefully large enough to start supering. All the other hives were checked on Friday but none were ready for a second super yet.
Week Ending 12 May 2001
At long last some real beekeeping weather; and haven't they loved it. All the colonies have now had their spring-clean. I start with hive one and give them a cleaned and disinfected floor and brood-box (main hive body) and scrape down all the frames as I transfer them to their new home. The two oldest frames of comb are replaced with some which is relatively new or containing wax foundation. The hive parts released are then cleaned up to be used for hive two and so on. I started adding supers to two of the colonies on Monday. (These are the top boxes of comb into which the bees put their excess honey stores.) They were not what I would call properly ready but as we are already a month past last year's supering date I decided to go for it. It has obviously worked because the excellent weather on Tuesday saw my little friends up in the new frames so I put the queen excluders in. These will stop mum getting up into the supers and laying eggs where they are not wanted. As each colony grows over the next week or two they will all hopefully start to increase in height. The oil-seed rape is now properly on flower and I want to get as much harvested as possible as it doesn't look as if I will have the bonus of a nearby borage field this year.
Archives: October '00 - Jan '01