Tuesday 28 April 2015

First Spring Inspection

Yes, it's OK to check our colonies by watching their comings and goings.
Lots of pollen, various colours, being brought in, vast quantities.  A good sign that the Q is laying - lots of little mouths to feed!
However, we've had some very warm days (eg.20C) so I took the opportunity, when they were all
too busy to notice me, to go through each colony in turn. I  changed
the floor, varroa tray, porch lift and any other lifts that need a coat of paint.  I have 5 colonies, all looking strong -  3 Green queens,
(marked) (2014) and 2 Red queens (marked) (2013). That's the good news as young, marked queens make life a whole lot easier for the hard-pressed beekeeper!***
The bad news is that every Q decided, in her regal wisdom, to lay her eggs in  the stores super.  What to do?  First I judged that each colony was strong and had enough bees to cover the brood in the super. Then I found each Q*** and moved her into the deep brood box, plonked a Q. excluder on top, and put the super with its stores and mini-brood nest on top of that.
Now, unfortunately, that hot spell has become arctic.  It would be a very bad idea to open the hives again to see the result of my ("clever manoeuvre") so now I'll just have to wait until it stops snowing and blowing. Oh dear!!


This is a flowering cherry called, ironically, "Snow in Spring".
The honeybees and bumblebees love it, but its blossom is short-lived.
Honeybees much prefer the gooseberry flowers and soon abandon the cherry when the goosegogs bloom! 

We planted this tree in memory of my sister in March 2009.
When this awful cold weather develops into a 'proper' Spring I'll let you know what has happened in my hives.
QBzzzzzzzzzzzz

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