What did you do in the Apiary today?

[ugcheleuce]

Had a very busy week. On Sunday I split three of my four largest colonies (in the Hoenderloo apiary) down the middle and moved the splits to an apiary in Ugchelen, a town 10 km away. I also made two shook swarms from those large colonies and added them with newspaper to two two-month old mating nucs, and moved them to my location in Klarenbeek (15 km away).

Yesterday, I checked on the hives at Klarenbeek to see if they've merged successfully or not. In the one hive, the bees ate half of the newspaper, but in the other, they only ate about one line of newspaper (and not even in the places where I made slits), so the second hive had many, many dead bees in the bottom box. There are now three hives at Klarenbeek, including my fourth largest colony which will be host to my first honey harvest.

I also tried to check on my hives in Ugchelen, to see which of them have their queens and which of them are making emergency cells, but the bee stall is badly designed and I was unable to do an inspection. The roof of the stall is very low, and it's very dark inside the stall, so to inspect the hives I would have to take a camping table with me every time and stand in front of the hive and put the boxes on the table while inspecting the frames.

So then I drove to Hoenderloo where the original three hives are, and checked them for queens/queen cells (I marked the six hives so I know which hive is a split of which other hive, so if one of the pair has a queen, then the other doesn't). Two of them have their queens (saw one of them), but the third one was queenless and I saw about ten queen cells in it. I killed the oldest cells and left about 3 good-looking queen cells in it. I also took the opportunity to remove all wild comb. In that hive the bees got it into their heads to build comb perpendicular to the top bars, so I could not take out the frames individually, and in the end I removed 7 frames and destroyed the entire comb in it (and gave them new frames with straight foundation this time).

Ideally I should go to Ugchelen to break some queen cells today, but I'm not sure if I'll have the time...

 

[pargyle]

Had a very busy week. On Sunday I split three of my four largest colonies (in the Hoenderloo apiary) down the middle and moved the splits to an apiary in Ugchelen, a town 10 km away. I also made two shook swarms from those large colonies and added them with newspaper to two two-month old mating nucs, and moved them to my location in Klarenbeek (15 km away).

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Isn't it a bit late in the season to be splitting hives and trying to get new queens from them ? By the time you have a viable mated queen it will be nearing the end of August - if you are lucky ..

I would be keeping big colonies as they are and letting them build up for winter and making your increases in the spring ...

Is there a rationale behind what you are doing ?

 

[nantmoel]

Got Stung!

I'll be glad when these nasty buggers are replaced by out new Buckfast Queen's prodigy! Received this sting last night about 20 mins after closing up the 'nasty' hive where we replaced the queen almost three weeks ago! They just keep on chasing you, stung the dog and even had another go at him a little later as well.

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[Samurailord]

The hive I split last week decided to swarm.

Luckily we were able to catch it and rehome it, but when we looked at the colony it had come from we found a couple more qc's fully ready to hatch so I helped both queens out, keeping one in that hive and killing the other as I had nowhere to keep her.

The split was also checked - no queen cells and plenty of brood, but from the age of the brood it looks like when I split the original hive I moved the queen too (couldnt spot her so we assumed she had already gone as there were several sealed QC's).

Hopefully the new queen in the oiginal hive will do well, she is from a very nice and placid line.

Andy

 

[BeeJayBee]

I noticed another card on my winning wax block (pink this time) I've won the EJ Tanner Perpetual Memorial Trophy (big silver cup) for the best cake of wax in show - what more can I say?

Brilliant! Llongyfarchiadau!

 

[Jimmys Mum]

Damp and miserable - perfect bonfire weather, so I burnt all my old black brood frames that I have replaced over the season. Most were too black to be worth any attempt at wax recovery. Lit up the garden a bit!

 

[Sadders]

A bad day.

My single colony has been robbed out by wasps.

I checked in my bait hive and what is left of them (including the queen thank goodness) have taken up in there. Put on some 1:1 and fingers crossed.

Fortunately, as the colony was weak I already had a nuc on order as insurance. Coming tomorrow

 

[Obee1]

Absoloutely nothing. One nuc has virgin who should be out on mating flights, one hive has new 36bee and don't want to disturb her, and my bucky hive I tried really hard to think of a reason to have a peek in - but couldn't think of one.
As for my out apiaries - one hive in a garden a mile away I looked in midweek and all is fine and my three hives on the side of caerphilly mountain..... They need checking and probably need a super adding but didn't have my car today as lent it to my big daughter so couldn't do them.

As I said a big fat nothing done in the apiary today.

 

[kazmcc]

Another great day! Hive 1, new queen has been laying like a laying thing! I've never seen so many eggs, and she even gave me a pip to say hello! Just waiting to see how she turns out. No supers from that hive, still filling. Couldn't see any varroa on the board on this hive.

Hive 2, took 5 supers from them today! Couldn't see much in the way of eggs, but the comb is very dark so may have missed them. Queen was seen and she looks good. High varroa drop on this hive so treating next week.

Rob came with us today, so he finally got to see me in my element Extracting on Monday.

 

[Falesh]

Only a very quick tidy up today as I haven't managed to save enough energy since last inspection to do a thorough job. The bees have started to get quite a lot of honey capped in the supers which is nice to see. I'm going to feed the honey from the brood frames I took off back to the bees and then render the wax down as the frames are getting old now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JybQhgVX6PQ

 

[Goran]

Distributed some qcells into mnucs and couple of colonies.. Got distracted in the middle of further planning of actions and had to rush to "job" after call. Now have to get up before sunrise to catch up.. And again on monday at "job". Constant running, I hate such.. I am more for complete plan and execute. Now have to adapt in the move.. I will mess up something, so far all is functioning more than I believe.. Even improved queen stock than last year. Still in queen rearing ( 2nr round). Bees are wonder..
Still warm and day temps 30-40C.. Predicted whole August such drought..

 

[gsxr]

being the weekend, I could not get hold of a super for a decent price, so me being me, I improvised and took 2 undrawn frames from one hive and swapped them for 2 near ready to be capped from another hive, hoping this buys me 2 to 3 days for delivery.

 

[pargyle]

Not exactly in the apiary .. Did a cut out on a colony that had taken up residence in a compost bin .. in a garden about 8 miles away -the lady and her family had been tolerating them although they were a bit close to the back door. There were a couple of young children in the family and the increasing size of the colony was of concern and they had to be moved. They had been there for over a month and were pretty well established. Lots of comb attached under the lid and lots that had broken off at some time in the past lying on top of the compost. Plenty of brood in there - I wired the comb with brood in it into some new frames,found the queen and got them all into a nuc. With all the flying bees it was difficult to see how big the colony is but I'll have a look in a couple of days and see what it's like - dreadful rain forecast for tomorrow so not much hope although I'll give them a bit of 1:1 as there were not a lot of stores in there - most of the comb under the lid was new so I suspect that the previous comb had collapsed during the hot weather a week or so ago.

Considering what I had to do with them they were very well behaved .. there were bees everywhere as I took their home apart ...no stings at all and no aggressive behaviour. The family watching from behind the patio doors were enthralled ...They were taking photos for the whole time so I should have some coming to me eventually, I'll put them on my Flickr account if they are any good and share them.

I went back this evening and they were all in the Nuc so sealed them up and now they are sitting in my apiary.

OMG ... 6 HIVES NOW !!

 

[Cussword]

Yesterday hived my newly acquired nuc of local black bees. They were very calm, I gave them syrup and will leave 'till next weekend.

 

[Tremyfro]

Not exactly in the apiary .. Did a cut out on a colony that had taken up residence in a compost bin .. in a garden about 8 miles away -the lady and her family had been tolerating them although they were a bit close to the back door. There were a couple of young children in the family and the increasing size of the colony was of concern and they had to be moved. They had been there for over a month and were pretty well established. Lots of comb attached under the lid and lots that had broken off at some time in the past lying on top of the compost. Plenty of brood in there - I wired the comb with brood in it into some new frames,found the queen and got them all into a nuc. With all the flying bees it was difficult to see how big the colony is but I'll have a look in a couple of days and see what it's like - dreadful rain forecast for tomorrow so not much hope although I'll give them a bit of 1:1 as there were not a lot of stores in there - most of the comb under the lid was new so I suspect that the previous comb had collapsed during the hot weather a week or so ago.

Considering what I had to do with them they were very well behaved .. there were bees everywhere as I took their home apart ...no stings at all and no aggressive behaviour. The family watching from behind the patio doors were enthralled ...They were taking photos for the whole time so I should have some coming to me eventually, I'll put them on my Flickr account if they are any good and share them.

I went back this evening and they were all in the Nuc so sealed them up and now they are sitting in my apiary.

OMG ... 6 HIVES NOW !!

Ha ha...look how rich you are now! 6 hives.....I expect you are already making a long list of new equipment to get in the sales! I hope you have a hidey hole to store it all! SWMBO...will be counting.....

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

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OMG ... 6 HIVES NOW !!

Careful Phil - you'll be throwing away your queen excluders, babbling rubbish and telling everyone (with the aid of Google) there is only one way - yours! if you carry on like this

 

[Jimmys Mum]

OMG ... 6 HIVES NOW !!

Where will it end.......?

 

[Tremyfro]

As we were nearby...I got the chance to call in at Maisemore yesterday....wood saw going like mad a spewing sawdust out into bag...a lovely smell of fresh timber! A quick trolley around the shop....now poorer but in possession of some frame feeders for my long hives, some foundation, some Squeezy Bears...for Xmas Honey Presents.....and a few other bits. It was great to put faces to voices over the phone too.

 

[pargyle]

Ha ha...look how rich you are now! 6 hives.....I expect you are already making a long list of new equipment to get in the sales! I hope you have a hidey hole to store it all! SWMBO...will be counting.....

I had enough trouble smuggling the bees in .. I had to volunteer to go to Asda and do some shopping for her in order to get out and collect the bees, then I had to coordinate the shopping trip with SWMBO taking the dog out for a walk so she would not be there when I arrived back... she was a bit suspicious about me brewing up some bee food this morning (I claimed the weather has been really bad for a couple of days) but I worry that she is beginning to recognise the signs of bee increase ....

 

[pargyle]

Careful Phil - you'll be throwing away your queen excluders, babbling rubbish and telling everyone (with the aid of Google) there is only one way - yours! if you carry on like this

I'm a third of the way there anyway ... been babbling rubbish for years !