What did you do in the Apiary today?

Opened up the nucs and hive I am introducing new queens into to take off the tape covering the candy plug - Wasted effort as the bees have done it for me - plug gone from all cages and (hopefully queen around somewhere in the hive) quickly withdrew and let them to it, fingers crossed now for the next week, I plan to inspect again next Saturday.
I've spent the last week clearing up the space around the greenhouse - moved a couple of tons of soil reserved for tidying the edges of the lawn five years ago - and never got round to doing it. Job now done, but what to do with the extra 20x15foot piece of garden I've reclaimed sale on in the garden centre I use so it's now a pollinator friendly flower garden - lupins planted, three cotoneasters in place, four patio type buddleia on the way together with the chive border which I'd planned and grown on in pots, sage and rosemary and a hit and miss scattering of borage and wildfloweer seeds - grandfather will be turning in his grave again at the thought of good vegetable growing land being put to flowers, but I've got so much garden I can afford to do it (still got another patch of land slightly larger which hasn't been started on yet - well I've only being living here since 1997!)
I've also bought a small (3 inch pot) bay tree sapling which i plan to plant behind the greenhouse to replace the on SWMBO and i bought when we strted courting which unfortunately succumbed to the cold winter two years ago - started off the same size, was 9 feet high when it died.

jenkinsbrynmair said:

I've spent the last week clearing up the space around the greenhouse - moved a couple of tons of soil reserved for tidying the edges of the lawn five years ago - and never got round to doing it. Job now done, but what to do with the extra 20x15foot piece of garden I've reclaimed sale on in the garden centre I use so it's now a pollinator friendly flower garden - lupins planted, three cotoneasters in place, four patio type buddleia on the way together with the chive border which I'd planned and grown on in pots, sage and rosemary ...

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Its a great pity that your bad back is slowing you down so much ...

Noted a frame of capped worker brood in a nuc box containing the 1500 bee cast that arrived in a bait hive last weekend. I thought they may have temporarily lodged in my chimney as there was activity up there on the eve of the day they moved in. Looks like they were there long enough for their virgin to get mated.....else its a very small prime and someone round here doesn't mark their queens! Either way, thanks to the bee goddess!

Thanks also to jbm & rogue drone for good advice re the about-to-swarm colony. The modified demarre seems to be on track with 2 nice looking uncapped qcs cooking in the top box. All girls busy and happy.... Time to do the hols thang!

jenkinsbrynmair said:

Opened up the nucs and hive I am introducing new queens into to take off the tape covering the candy plug - Wasted effort as the bees have done it for me - plug gone from all cages .

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Mine did the same.

Margaret Elisabeth said:

Sat on a stool about three feet away from the hive and watched for a new queen I thought I saw orientating earlier. Then saw her fly off with just a few attendants. Hope she does OK.

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You are so lucky to have seen that! In more than fifteen years I have seen only twice a queen leave for a mating flight! Hope your queen has returned safely.

heidiherrmann said:

You are so lucky to have seen that!

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Been really good weather here today, quite a lot of virgin queens seen going out on mating flights...and returning with the mating mark.

lol its taken me 5 years to see a queen lay an egg while watching

Went to inspect our bees in the garden today to find a sizeable chunk of them hanging in a tree instead of being at home in the hive. that wasn't part of the plan!

But on the up side, we recovered the swarm and ran them into a new brood box up a ramp, and watched them all march in in formation. The first time we have had the courage to do this without worrying that they will all end up in the air! Magic!

LJ

itma said:

Its a great pity that your bad back is slowing you down so much ...

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Would have taken me only a day a few years ago - weird thing is, this kind of work makes my back better not worse It's just working at sea that's a pain, although I'd go back tomorrow if the MCA would let me -wouldn't have been a problem on commercial ships - it's just fast craft I'm not allowed on

I looked through about 30 colonies on different sites today and then at the end of the day - it was 8.30, noticed a swarm in a tree in my apiary. Initial thought was it couldn't be mine - they all had queens except for one, that had eggs.

Of course it must be from the one colony where I didn't see the queen. Puzzling that a clipped queen would go up a tree. She was marked blue because I couldn't find the yellow pen, so I'll wait for the swarm to settle in the box, and then look for her.

it's encouraging to newbies like meself to read that it happens to the most experienced of beeks!

Its great to watch a queen emerging from her cell but to watch two emerging is a bonus albeit the second with a little help from me.

I had a queenless colony just over two weeks ago so I gave them a frames of eggs and let them get on with making queen cells. Yesterday I thought I'd take a quick look inside the hive as a final check before leaving them alone for the next 3 weeks.

I lifted the frame and saw two virgins, one had already emerged the other was just in the process of climbing out of her cell, both were piping and within 20 seconds they started fighting it out and fell off the frame I was holding and back into the nuc luckily. I was about to return the frame when I noticed a second queencell behind the first and could hear another virgin piping. I carefully removed the cell to inspect it and made a small hole in the tip to confirm if the queen was inside before closing up the nuc.

After confirming she was piping and was trying to get out I took the cell over to a swarm I collected some weeks ago which when opened roared and I've suspected is now queenless. At the time I should of done things differently but I placed the queencell in the entrance and waited to see what happened.



10 or so minutes later the virgin finished cutting the wax away to create a hatch and started to climb out. Some of the queenless bees came out to greet her and several of them stood waiting for her to emerge before they greeted her briefly before she ran inside the nuc.

If you want a happy tale stop reading now.



Written in white so you may need to highlight to read the following -

[Sadly though within 20-30 seconds I'm sure I saw her fighting with 2 bees and the three of them fell off the edge of the entrance into a long grass. I tried to find them but despite looking for a minute I couldn't see them. Seems odd that a queenless colony would reject a perfectly good virgin queen. The only thing I can think of why they rejected her was because she didn't smell right or smelt of the other colony, if I'd put the queen cell inside the nuc and not checked it by partly opening it in the first place she might of stayed in the cell for a few more hours and survived and been accepted by the time she emerged in her own time. Instead though, I thought I'd just let her run in like I've read others say they have done.
An hour later I remembered I had a queen cage in the my pocket... if only I had thought about using it... ]

Up at 5.30 a.m. to take off some supers and extract Bees were up before I was. Lovely morning.
Cazza

There's only 5.30 in the evening in this household
Vm

victor meldrew said:

There's only 5.30 in the evening in this household
Vm

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Try a.m. You'll like it in the Summer, honest!
C

Just watched a large swarm (not mine) enter my oak tree bait hive. Happy days
Cazza

inspected my one remining hive in beautiful warm sunshine. Bee numbers appear to be increasing rapidly now as the colony was low on numbers coming out of the Winter being a late nuc from last summer. BIAS and the most placid bees imaginable. Lots of yellow pollen coming in and HM seen wandering around as if on a Sunday afternoon stroll

My son cut the grass around the hive on the ride-on mower and had no bother from the bees at all-they just minded their own business and got on with their own work.

I love my bees

Cazza said:

Up at 5.30 a.m. to take off some supers and extract Bees were up before I was. Lovely morning.
Cazza

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Same here! Except I was walking the dogs. Was a great morning

Marked two recently mated queens.

First from a warre, I held by hand and marked her - easy peasy. (No frame holder for warres).

Pride cometh etc.

Tried the same on a TBH. Queen flew off and landed in grass. Only 1 meter away so hastily put her back on frame, frame onto frame stand, cage and marked..

(You cannot - at least I cannot - hold a TBH fame at an angle when warm and loaded with bees and expect it not to collapse. So a frame holder is essential for queen marking. Time to make 5 minutes).

So lesson learned.. Take a better grip next time ...

Did the first inspection on the bees I got last week. About half way through the 5L of syrup but they don't seem to have drawn out much more foundation. Queen present and laying.