More Bees

Today we did another inspection, and just as well - a day later and we could have lost half of one hive! They were really swarmy.

The hives in our main apiary are doing well. We didn't look at those that we split from the swarmy hive a while ago. Their new queens should be out and making practice flights by now, so we left them in peace. If all goes to plan by next weekend they should have mated and hopefully our inspection will reveal some eggs!

Apiary site

We did look in the artificial swarm and our chalkbroody hive. Glad to report that both have lots of stores, building populations, very little sign of disease. Looking good. The chalkbroody one is working in 2 SUPERS! And even the artificial swarm is working on its first super. So fingers crossed it's a good year and they keep up the hard work.

When we went to the association apiary however we were in for a surprise. Paul, the new beekeeper that Dad is mentoring, came along, but poor bloke found himself in the middle of a very indepth discussion about the merits of artificial swarms and multiple splits and not having enough nucs.

They were so ready to swarm, there were queen cells close to capping everywhere. It would have been an easy decision to choose to do an artificial swarm - except that we couldn't find the queen. After a few years we've got much quicker at finding queens (it's often one of the things that takes newbies a little longer) but today she was determined not to be found. We didn't know if she'd died, was still there but we were just too blind to see... Eventually however, we breathed a sigh of relief when we found her, and carried out the artificial swarm.

After a visit to the Hampshire Green Fair at the Sustainability Centre this afternoon (really cool event - we got there when it was already winding down, but still really busy, loads to look at (a yurt!), live music, woodland crafts...hope it happens again next year!) we came back and after collecting another nuc split the split again, so that in the association apiary we now have an artificial swarm and 2 nucs.

Unfortunately the mating nuc didn't work - the queen cell died and the bees flew off.

But still, we now have 3 colonies in full sized hives and 4 nucs, which is pretty healthy. Hoping to capture some more swarms though, possibly do another split or two and make more nucs for selling on. The most important thing however is the health and happiness of our bees, and luckily they're looking pretty OK right now ^^.

I leave you with a pic of yesterday's salad harvest: radishes, overwintered carrots, and Lollo Rossa and Little Gem lettuces.