Weekly Inspection 10th August
Weather: improved and temperatures, 18° to 22°C. Some heavy showers,
Forage: golden rod, knot weed, rosebay willow herb and borage
Starting to see foraging activity slow down. lots of wasps around
apiary news
Weekly Inspection 31st July
Weather: cooler temperatures 20°C with lots of showers. Evenings starting to get chilly
Forage: Rosebay Willowherb, Echinacea, Runner beans, borage
Noticeably, less foraging activity taking place. Created a nuc from the Queen in the Apidea with frames from cyan and emerald Queen was laying in the Apidea.
Weekly Inspection 23rd July
Weather: cooler temperatures with some heavy showers, including a couple of all day spells.
Forage: Buddleia, St John’s wort, Borage still, some rosebay willow herb. However, the level of activity from the hives has dropped off.
For once no major issues with any of the colonies, now I need to start thinking about Winter preparations and adding in missing frames from some of the colonies prior to assessing stores in the brood boxes.
Apidea: queen high size, but couldn’t see any eggs. If eggs present next inspection, then will create a nuc with frames from E&C.
Weekly Inspection July 15th
Weather: Temperatures have dropped- 18°C – 22°C, some quite prolonged showers; foraging activity noticeably quieter.
Forage: Rosebay Willowherb, Veronica, Ragwort, Buddleia and Golden Rod starting to show.
- Wanted to check on Emerald as they had been very active & clustering on front of the hive earlier in the week and hadn’t inspected them the previous week
Managed to paint some of the brood boxes as well as repair and paint one of the gabled roofs – given they are 20 years old they are in good condition but the plywood roof liners were rotten and were the only parts that needed replacing.
Apidea – queen has hatched out and nice size. No eggs yet – after inspecting looks like I may need a queen for Honeydew as it looks to be queenless.
Weekly Inspection 9th July
Weather: slightly cooler than previous week – temperatures 20°C – 24°C. Some heavy rain showers.
Forage: Rosebay Willowherb, sweet Chesnut, St John’s Wort and golden rod just starting. Plenty of activity with the bees., bringing in lots of pollen.
Need to start to look at which colonies need strengthening for Winter and if I want to try and over-winter a couple of nucs as insurance.
Mixed results so far with queen rearing, Apidea has got one sealed QC rather than a queen.
Will also start to sort out equipment- painting some boxes, repairing the gabled roofs as well as making up dummy boards.
Managed to use the repaired boiling tank to clean up 60 frames and a few queen excluders. They really do come up well but does take a couple of days to clean and rinse them.
Weekly Inspection 3rd July
Weather: continues to be good with temperatures mid 20s. Couple of spells of rain with some heavy showers. Stop forecast is similar temperatures but more changeable weather.
continues to be good with temperatures mid 20s. Couple of spells of rain with some heavy showers. Stop forecast is similar temperatures but more changeable weather.
Forage: rosebay, willow herb, Buddleia , St John’s wort, sweet chestnut,. Bees have been very active, so plenty of pollen and nectar being brought in.
Looks like all the Queen cells have hatched out. However, too early to tell if they are viable as no eggs detected and only saw one queen in the Apidea and even then couldn’t spot her when I looked again. Consolidated the 2 Apideas with the virgin queen left and put the queen from Green back with the Nuc after finding 8 sealed QCs.
Added 2 supers, so still plenty of honey being produced.