A rota of experienced beekeepers will check the association colonies roughly every 10 days. Mandy will be leading this visit.

Beginners will be welcome to come along to these sessions.

Visits should not take more than an hour. The midweek visits are suggested for the Tuesday-Thursday.

This way the visits can be shared, and place less of a burden on the usual small core of volunteers.

Report from David on the latest from the association apiary:-

After watching the weather forecast, I went along to the bees at 1.30pm today and was helped by Mandy and assisted by Shirley Sharpe and Elaine and Alan Murrison.

Hive 1 (the furthest away) was very grumpy! They had very little stores, so Mandy gave them some syrup trickled over a couple of frames. We closed them up and after a short while they were noticeably calmer. Our short opening and closing of the hive will have released a few drones from above the excluder, but we didn’t go through the brood box. It can be checked on the next visit – but be well suited up!

Hive 2 had quite a few queen cells, so we made up two Apideas which I have here to hopefully hatch, mate an start laying. We removed all but one remaining sealed queen cell.

Hive 3 looked as though the queen cell had been pulled down by the bees. It didn’t have a lot of bees and no brood, so we placed in two of the queen cells we had removed from Hive 2, in the hope that at least one of them is viable and hatches out alright.

As we headed back to the cars, Shirley was carefully carrying the Apideas and remarked “one of them was quacking, like a duck”!  She was quite right, it was a queen piping . . . what an extraordinary sound. I recorded it on my phone and have attached a copy. Maybe it could go on the web site?

Queen piping in apidea 19 06 18

Date and time provisional. Details will be posted here and by email when confirmed.

A rota of experienced beekeepers will check the association colonies roughly every 10 days. David will be leading this visit.

Beginners will be welcome to come along to these sessions.

Visits should not take more than an hour. The midweek visits are suggested for the Tuesday-Thursday.

This way the visits can be shared, and place less of a burden on the usual small core of volunteers.

Apiary Relocation Day

We need to shift the spare hive equipment, plus the storage sheds and their contents, and prepare the sheds and hive locations at the new site. The bees are at a temporary location at the moment and will be moved back when the new site is ready.

We will have use of a van to do the heavy carrying but manpower will be the most useful thing. The odd toolkit and spade might be handy, and bring some refreshments for afters. If you need a lift or want to car share please email Peter.

The scheduled inspection of the association hives will be happening the day before, Saturday 9th also at 2pm, at the temporary apiary. Beginners are welcome as usual to help with the inspections. If you want to come along for the inspection please contact either Mandy or Peter.

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..

Wilma and Linda will be inspecting the association hives.

Meet at the apiary at 2pm.

Beginners are welcome to come along to these sessions.

Visits should not take more than an hour.