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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Weather has continued to be very hot – temps around 24°C – 28°C. Cooler temperatures and more changeable conditions are forecast.
Forage: cow parsley and bramble seem to be main flowering crops. Plenty of activity and see no evidence of the June gap. Had to go through Emerald to stock Apideas and was surprised the 3rd super is over half full.
Queen rearing – started on 17th June with Cloake board and grafted larvae from Emerald and put into Denim.
19th June – removed Cloake board – bit concerned that the number of bees flying from Denim dropped off over the next few days.
24th – stocked 2 Apideas with bees from Emerald.
26th June – started to use the queen cells, only to discover swarm cells in 2 colonies I wasn’t expecting to – Flax & Honeydew. So used the queen cells in these colonies.
Split Emerald – left new colony on old site with queen cell. Moved old queen to new spot in apiary.
Will need to check all colonies in 4 days to see if queens have emerged as there was a lot of brace comb on the grafted frame, so not sure if the queens are viable and able to emerge.