Swarm !!

Part 1...
What a bee keeping week! I thought the first thing I would be writing about this week would be the initial spring inspection of the hive. It will be, but the events of this week have certainly meant I am not going to take the bees for granted!!

Last Wednesday the day was lovely and sunny- just right for a first look in the hive this year. I knew that there would be brace comb from the Apiguard eke, because we had already seen this when we had used Apiguard to check the Varroa spring drop. When the hive was opened there was not just stores in the brace comb but also lots of capped brood attached to the crown board. The brood box was very full of bees, larvae, eggs and stores. We also saw some queen cups- play cups we thought- not unusual and we certainly didn't think it could be a sign of an imminent swarm- it was only the 8th of April after all!!!

Thinking of the talk the NBKA had just had I turned over the crown board put an empty super over it and then placed a super with frames and foundation on top of a queen excluder and sought some advice.The advice was to remove the brace comb and replace the excluder, super with frames, crown board and roof. The next day we opened the hive up again and this was done. The stores in the brace comb had all been cleared by the bees, we also removed the obvious queen cups which were all empty. It appeared the hive was busy, full and hopefully ready to get busy with the business of making honey!

However this was to be just the begining of our weekend of beekeeping.............................................