Barns apiary 28/05/2017 enjoyable meeting on Sunday: the highlight was probably Jim Burns climbing a tree to retrieve a swarm!
Dave Stokes and West Linton provided the picnic (including the traditional cheese sandwiches on homemade bread, accompanied by homemade pickled onions, of course). There was plenty to do checking out the bees and seeing how they’d come on since last week.
Picnic
All the hives are correctly numbered, and their details recorded.
1: Checked for queen cells – none seen
2: Checked for queen cells – none
3: Shallow frames in brood box cleaned of drone brood and 1shallow frame (with brood and eggs) put in super above queen excluder. Queen cell seen – this frame together with 2 other frames (including one shallow, which was well laid-up) were removed to make nuc2. Eggs and larvae remained in brood box.
4: Sealed queen cell seen (14th May) 2 weeks ago, no queen seen, nor new brood/eggs, frame of eggs added from hive 1 just in case.
5: Colony left again, ill-tempered and much activity at front, possibly about to swarm/swarmed.
6: Frames drawn out but no larvae/brood yet (queen & frames removed to make nuc on 7th May.
New super added.
Nuc1 created 07/05: no brood yet
Nuc2 created 28/05: from hive 3, including one shallow frame from brood box.
Swarm recovered from fir tree by Jim Burns, hived by Peter Stevenson on evening of 28/05.
Next visit (4th June): more deeps and shallows need to be made up and brought to the apiary.
Bring syrup to feed nucs and possibly swarm (to encourage it to draw out foundation, which could be harvested and stored for use elsewhere)
Buy 2 queen excluders
Bring bin bags and wax collection bucket
Change the hornet traps (syrup and attractant) already at Barns
Put on supers as needed
Check for new brood in 4, 6, nuc1, swarm: perhaps remove 1 or 2 frames of drawn comb (if present) and replace. Add super and feed if needed.