apiary news

Honeybee on geranium

Weekly Inspection – 24th June

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Honeybee on geranium

Weather: really improved with temperatures climbing to 20°C – 23°C. Set to continue with a mini heatwave forecast for the coming week.

Forage: Bramble, rosebay Willowherb, Ragwort and Buddleia just beginning. Checking my forage notes from last year season looks to be about 10 days ahead.

Main flow has really started with the main colonies adding a super in just a week. Not sure how long it will last with the forage being 10 days in advance of last year.

Flax colony looks to have hatched out a Queen but there were still 2 sealed Queen cells, so squished one and put one in an Apidea with Bees also from Flax.

Thursday, 27th – inspected River Mole colonies. Queen cells in Indigo so needed to make a nuc split (now called Jade) with queen from Indigo.

Honeybee on thyme

Weekly Inspection – June 16th

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Visiting Thyme

Honeybee on thyme

Weather: some heavy showers, with temperatures between 16°C to 18°C. Forecast is for fine weather and temperatures to rise in the coming week.

Forage: bramble, elderflower, cow parsley, and lime.

Looks like the Bees in the river Mole apiary are bringing in some stores, but still slow in the home apiary colonies. Decided that the swarm I caught in the bait hive was queenless with no sign of a queen or eggs after two weeks. So united on the 18th with the original queen from Flax, which was in a nuc – Indigo.

Looks like the Buckfast Queens I’ve ordered will be delayed for three weeks because of bad weather so will need to reassess which colonies I re-queen and whether I still go for a split with Aqua..

 

 

Honeybee on geranium

Weekly Inspection – 10th June

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Honeybee on geranium

Weather: fine with temperatures between 16ºC – 18ºC, cool on the evenings

Forage: bramble elder flower and cow parsley continuing

Moved swarm in bait hive to River Mole apiary  as well as old queen from Flax in 3 frame nuc.

Still nothing in any of the supers – very strange

Ordered 2 Buckfast queens as I’m not happy with how some of the colonies are performing. Will use 1 in Flax and decide whether to split Aqua or requeen Green

Honeybee on Red hot poker

Weekly Inspection – 2nd June

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Honeybee on Red hot poker

Weather: same as last week with temperatures between 15ºC – 18ºC

Forage: Bramble just b starting, elderflower, pyracantha – appear to be in June gap

Found lots of dead bees in front of 3 of the hives when I cleared the weeds. Not sure what’s happened,m could be poisoning as I checked for signs of disease didn’t see anything untoward. Some of the colonies appear to be shrinking in size – again not sure why.

Denim look to have DLW or DLQ – so united with Cyan on 5th June

6th June – captured swarm in bait hive – probably not prime judging by number of bees

Honeybee on geranium

Weekly Inspection 24th May

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Honeybee on geranium

Weather: fine with temperatures 15ºC – 20ºC.

Forage:Hawthorn, elderflower and cow parsley

Bees don’t seem to be doing very well, some colonies diminishing in size. Not bringing much nectar in, similar to reports from other beekeepers. Looks like we could be in for early June gap

Honeybee Queen cell

Weekly Inspection – 18th May

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Honeybee Queen cell

Queen cell tip thinned out by the bees to help the queen emerge

Weather: continued improvement with temperatures between 17°C to 20°C stop no showers despite being in forecast.

Forage: chestnut, green alkanet, cow parsley, Hawthorn and elderflower just starting.

Finally got to inspect the honeydew colony at the river Mole apiary site and it’s doing well. Still have three colonies that I’m raising Queens in. Will be interesting to see what emerges!

Finally starting to see the Bees bringing in nectar and starting to store some honey in the supers.