The 3 association hives were inspected at their temporary site on Saturday.
Richard with his son Sam came along to help Mandy and Peter.
The first colony inspected was doing fine. This is the hive where the queen had been above the queen excluder. So there was plenty of brood above the excluder but only a small amount of of larvae in the brood box.
We think the queen is safely down below again and we whooshed the drones down with her. No signs of queen cells. Next time the drones will need releasing from the top again.
In the second colony we found some charged queen cells but also the queen was in residence. We made up a nuc with the queen on her frame, a frame of brood, a frame of stores plus foundation. Afterwards, Peter took this off to his own apiary as a temporary measure. The original hive had all but one queen cell removed and they should bring on a new queen ok. We will have to be careful about the timing of moving this back to the home apiary as we don’t want to lose a new queen if she is off on a mating flight.
The last of the 3 colonies had 2 sealed queen cells and no young brood at all. We did not see the queen so she may well have swarmed from this one. We removed one of the queen cells and again this one will need to be left where it is for the new queen to get established.
We got through the hives just in time to avoid the early afternoon rain.
Next job is to get the home apiary relocated..