Hive City!!

Well, Thursday the weather held off enough for us to inspect Hive 3 at Cordwood- and yes there were swarm cells- some lovely cells with royal jelly and larvae, fairly well developed. So back into artificial swarm mode we went- we are getting fairly slick at this now. I am so pleased we took the time to get equipment ready during the winter and early spring. As the weather held off long enough we also went through the brood hive we had moved to Cordwood and knocked down all but one sealed queen cell. This frame we marked with a drawing pin to make it easy to keep track of. I have also realised just how important record keeping is- the more hives you have it's not so easy to remember what you have done, it needs to be written down.



Hive City- six hives and a nuc at Cordwood!

 So now we have seven hives to look after and the tiny nuc which amazingly is feeding and were flying well on Thursday. Since then weather has been awful- there has been an email from FERA to warn about bees starving because they can't get out to forage.
The weather looks fair for Monday and jobs for that day will include-
* a check on the garden hive to see if the queen is laying and they are getting on OK.
* going through the old brood of Hive 1 (1B)to knock down any emergency queen cells the bees have made since the artificial swarm.
* a quick look in the now Hive 1A to see if the old queen in there is laying and the bees are getting on OK.
Also possibly going through Hive 3- the old brood and the box with the original queen in- this is where timings get crucial. This artificial swarm was done on Thursday- the queen cell is open (egg and larvae) for 8 days then sealed for 8 days so when to check and knock off extra cells is important. If you check too soon the bees could still try to make a queen cell from an  egg or larvae that in theory is too old. Hopefully in this case though, the successful queen will destroy these when she hatches, but there is just the possibility that the bees will decide to swarm with her instead. Decisions, decisions!!
In the back ground of the picture you may be able to make out the diggers which have now moved in and made a serious start on the preparations for the building at Corwood- you can follow the progress on Rob's blog at http://sustainablegarden.blogspot.co.uk/
Exciting times all round!