What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Lucky Bee]

Thank you for all your kind messages. An expensive lesson but one well learned x

 

[Tonyatcwfarm]

Big swarm arrived at home apiary bait box
The majority missed the opening so will spend the night under the poly nuc
Iv covered them with a plastic sheet to keep the worst of the weather off them
2 in 2 days and neither from my hives

 

[Psycad]

Opened my hive

No Varroa (maybe too hot for them or I am too isolated)
2 Acherontia Styx mummified
Excellent honey
Larvae and capped cells
Full of pollen in nice colors
But cant find the queen

Chequered frames work but now I have 4 frames half with capped honey so cant taste my own honey yet.

Well will be for ramadan

Salaam

 

[Minxpinx]

Drove to my out apiary, got suited up etc then noticed I'd forgotten my bucket with hive tools in. Found an angle bracket in the boot of the car that made a surprisingly good stand in!
Split 2 colonies that had queen cells and added another super to one hive. That hive has been amazing - filling a super a week for the past 5 weeks! I'll be taking some off next week if we get a dry day.

 

[Michael Palmer]

First good nectar flow of the spring today. The bees have gone from the brink of starvation to the horn of plenty in one day. They never cease to amaze me.

 

[Fusion_power]

Sad in a way Mike, the flow is winding down here. Bees have stopped drawing new wax and are finishing off cells of mature honey. The distance from here is about 1200 miles and a bit over 800 of it is going north.

 

[Barbarian]

Transferred bait hive swarm (3 frames ) to a nuc. Spotted the Q. Thinking of re-queening with a Q from my apiary (known characteristics).

 

[Tremyfro]

The swarm we captured seems to be staying put in the nuc...it's only a small one covering about 3 frames. I had given them a frame with eggs on it so they could make a queen if we didn't get her but when we gave then some syrup yesterday evening...they were quiet and no queen cells started...so perhaps she is in there after all. We will leave them alone now for a few weeks and see how they get on.

 

[Anduril]

Added another super to one of my hives that makes 4 and 2 of them are nearly capped. A few of them are now on 3. No OSR in sight.

 

[madasafish]

An empty hive I had left after it became Q- earlier this year, attracted a swarm yesterday.. Not one of mine..they are very dark and very feisty..

Requeening on schedule for them.

Cellpunched another 14 cells and placed in Cloaked hive this pm.
Put out 5 mini nucs last night.

More queen rearing at Association apiary this am.


Bees taking over my life at present..

 

[JWF]

Made up 50 super frames, as I'm expecting to take supers of 5 colonies tomorrow and these will go on to make sure theres enough space for the bees once the clearer boards are on.

I'm anticipating that I will need to carry out an AS on at least one colony too.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Home apiary inspections - as suspected the colony whose queen I moved into a nuc last week are trying to supersede, unfortunately I damaged the QC in the nuc whilst inspecting so hopefully they'll get another up ASAP the one in the hive should emerge this weekend.
Demarreed three hives - two for queen making and the other for swarm prevention, although I hope to get a few QC's off her as she's very prolific and reluctant to swarm. Would have Demarreed another but coukdn't find the queen - eyes still playing up.

 

[colinc]

Things suddenly got busy today.
Big hive threw QC's everywhere. Charged with larvae and couple close to getting capped. Gone from 6-7 full frames to 2 full supers in a week, brood boxes nearly doubled in weight......
AS performed, QC's knocked down as going to make the colony queenless then give them eggs from buckfast queen.
Smaller colony also busy filled 2 supers this week and given them a BB of foundation to draw out, put a clearer board on and will be harvesting honey tomorrow.


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[Eyeman]

Things suddenly got busy today.
Big hive threw QC's everywhere. Charged with larvae and couple close to getting capped. Gone from 6-7 full frames to 2 full supers in a week, brood boxes nearly doubled in weight......
AS performed, QC's knocked down as going to make the colony queenless then give them eggs from buckfast queen.
Smaller colony also busy filled 2 supers this week and given them a BB of foundation to draw out, put a clearer board on and will be harvesting honey tomorrow.


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I like to leave all the uncapped swarm QC's till my next inspection 1 week later then knock them all down along with the emergency QC's. Then I either put some grafts in or a frame of eggs from my chosen breeder colony. Then 10 days later these QC's come out and the colony is requeened from one of my nucs. Letting a honey production colony requeen itself holds back honey production. Giving all A/S swarms 2 rounds of queen cell rearing seems to reduce the chances of them wanting to swarm again?

 

[Eyeman]

Home apiary inspections - as suspected the colony whose queen I moved into a nuc last week are trying to supersede, unfortunately I damaged the QC in the nuc whilst inspecting so hopefully they'll get another up ASAP the one in the hive should emerge this weekend.
Demarreed three hives - two for queen making and the other for swarm prevention, although I hope to get a few QC's off her as she's very prolific and reluctant to swarm. Would have Demarreed another but coukdn't find the queen - eyes still playing up.

I thought you had them recently fixed!

 

[Hachi]

Went to each of my out apiaries and all bee's not happy at all the weather here is bright sunshine with 50/50 fluffy white clouds and dark water laden buggers and a good wind. We've just had a shower of big heavy rain drops, didn't last long but we still had it. I managed to put additional supers on but had to be quick. Its amazing to watch the bee's climb upwards and launch going immediately to battle code red in about 2" of flight time and the amount that came at me was awesome. Not everyone's cup of tea but good for the CPD

 

[deanrpwaacs]

Good couple of hours on the bees . All in order except when i got to top field there was a mass of swirling bees at the top of the tree line . Shoot i thought not another swarm . I then looked at hive fronts and one of them was boiling out . A virgin then waddled out and took flight . Within 20 mins the mass of bees up in the trees drifted down over me like a cloud the noise was amazing and started to re-enter the hive . Much fanning going on . By the time i had checked the others all was back to normal . Fantastic stuff .

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[rdmw]

Any ideas about what has caused the deformed wing in this bee. Strong hive. Very few varroa.

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[colinc]

I like to leave all the uncapped swarm QC's till my next inspection 1 week later then knock them all down along with the emergency QC's. Then I either put some grafts in or a frame of eggs from my chosen breeder colony. Then 10 days later these QC's come out and the colony is requeened from one of my nucs. Letting a honey production colony requeen itself holds back honey production. Giving all A/S swarms 2 rounds of queen cell rearing seems to reduce the chances of them wanting to swarm again?

This is my intention. The laying queen has gone into a brood box with bees and stores, fed some weak syrup to help draw comb. If no more QCs appear in the main hive she will go back to her hive after I have made it queenless. I don't want her daughters and wouldn't want them to swarm and end up with some other BK, as that would be 2nd gen Buckfast mongrels. The brood box AS will then get the same treatment, made queenless and then given a frame of eggs to requeen from my Buckfast or be merged back to the colony. I don't really want 3 hives.

Harvested 50lb of honey off 2 hives today. Both are double brood and have plenty of stores in the BBs. Quite happy with that.


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[pargyle]

Any ideas about what has caused the deformed wing in this bee. Strong hive. Very few varroa.

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Looks like DWV to me ... it's a virus - it's possible for a colony to contract it even when you have a low varroa count ... it is spread by varroa as they pass it on when feeding on the bee's haemolyph but it can be spread by regurgitated food when the larvae are fed or even passed from the queen when the egg is laid. Varroa just vectors the disease and amplifies the effect on a colony.

It does not look that severe to me ... just one wing not looking fully functional so if it's only a small number of bees I would not worry unduly there's not a lot you can do about it.

It it's just an odd one or two it may just be a 'normal' deformity - queens lay thousands of eggs and occasionally one that it not the round penny is going to get past the bad larvae police ...

There's a possibility that it coule be K Wing ... but I can't see whether the second wing on the bee (which gives this virus its name is joined or not from the photo.)