Well, its all nice and quiet, too quiet really. This weather has been a little too cold and wet for the last two weeks now. We have had more rain which is good but were missng the heat. No bees around any swarm traps and a few swarms emerging from managed hives at the glimse of a bit of sunshine, clasially typical of this kind of weather!! Theres enough food around but not a huge flow, a sort of calmer period or "Mini Dearth" before the big nectar flow starts.
Phacellia begining to flower, giving purple polen in the frames!
After all my artificial swarms were created , with the valued help of my good friend Alan, most of my hives ( 10 framed hives) have returned to the home apiary about 400 meters from their original location. Lots of forraging bees thus returning home, to find queen gone and a hugely reduced colony.
I looked through all the reciever nucs last saturday and was pleasantly suprised to find at least 9 of the 13 seem to be queen right. There is the possibility that there could be another one of these may be qeenright but its often difficult to be sure until that queen has begun to lay eggs. So overall I am very happy with these results despite the crappy weather for the nuptual flights, we have laying queens in over 75% of nucs, so thats very encouraging>
I will be doing another load of artificial swarming at the end of the main nectar flow arond the second week of july. this should produce the best queens of the year, when the weather should allow longer mating flights, with more mature males around.
Virgin queen, just emerged!
I had a couple of swarms from my apiary, but none of them huge. one was from a Nuc that was full of bees, out comes first queen and decided the shes good to leave, well stocked with aditonal unopened queen cells, so thats now a good laying colony.
Second larger swarm that i have risked putting straight in to a large 10 framed hive. This was a little more of a difficult extraction, as most of the colony was within the hedge, but I did the old box trick and they were soon on their way!
All hives going to be moved to the summer forraging ground next week. The chestnut trees are begining to show the first few flower stalks. flowering in about another 3 weeks!
I will be double supering straight away to give that queen lots of room in the hive and hope reduce the risk of swarming just at the critical time in the necta calender. bring it on!!
have you ever heard of the 7p`s..... Perfect Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Perormance!!
Well what a busy busy month its been. Not even time to do any blogging! Still here i am to report back on what has been an excellent April.
I mentioned my new pollen trap in my March posting, well i used it for a few days and have harvested more than I need,although i am thinking that I might stick it back on my hives and just harvest a bit more, a its easy to freeze it down until needed.
I intend to use it mainly during queen cell production. I hope to have my first attempt in about 3 weeks. There will be a small gap then before i move the majority of my hives for the main nectar flow of the summer.
Spring honey and swarming.
I have been asked many times this spring when will you have your first honey? well this year i will have virtually none. Only one of my hives (of the three) had any appreciable ammount in the super, so on the other two, the supers were removed and they were artificially swarmed. There was queen cells in a packed brood nest of ten frames. This is good, as they were going to swarm early. So, as far as I am concerned, I am controling the swarming and its going to be at least another 6 weeks before we need the bee numbers high again.
Its been an odd start as well as a good one. Plenty of food around for the bees, a very strong flow indeed. I must remark on how the relacement frames from artificial swarming 4 days previously, were already drawn up! and mrs queen laying in to the majority! the question will I will be wanting to know, is should i reduce the numbers of bees still further to avoid the bees having another go at swarming. I had masses of unhatched brood in the hives, an i think this spring is so strong that it might be necessary in another couple of weeks. However i am going to monitor my hives very closely and i am expecting much reduced flow after next week, when the majority of the oil seed rape ha finished flowering and the apple blossom has nearly finished, so i might not have to many problems. I want my numbers high but not too high to enduce swarming again! I may add the first super in about 3 weeks, just to make the queen entirely happy shes got space, but i would dearly love to be able to do this after i have moved my hives but its probably not going to be possible to move them until the 1st week of june!! its all a juggling act.
One of my strongest hives was full of really good sized, accessible queen cells so i cut the majority out and inserted them in to my nucs( with queen cell protectors) for good measure. some had only made one or two queen cells, so i didnt want to miss the opportunity and waste good cells, (made under the swarming response, under deal conditions, by the bees in their own time) possible giving me the best made queens!! Its always something to remember. Thanks to Alan for helping me cut those out and then artificially swarm the hive, the insert all those queen cells!
Its also a point to note that eventhough i keep saying "you can never have enough nucs", artificially swarming 10 nucs plus does have its practical difficulties. I have been making more nucs sincelast november, and ive made about another 20 since then, but they soon get used up!
I have also incorporated a ventilated base and also some ventilation in the roof space.
After the last very wet winter and my desire to become more sutainable and create some nuc banks for brood production I have tweeked my nucs a little and this should help against winter humidity and help spring build up.
I remove the feet after marking, cut out the middle section and place in the mesh. It could be blocked off, if need be,to create a sealed box for use as a trap.
I have also cut out a 30m hole in each end of the roof section. Its closed with mesh too. I really think this will help with ventilation problems.
First very early Swarms
First swarm of this year, caught on the 19th April, about a month early, and my earliest yet, hadnt even finished putting out all my traps. Lovely to see. This is the afternoon, following arrival late morning, so I am led to believe. Classic trap senario with nothing two days before, a build up the day before, then swarm arrival mid morning on a lovely warm sunny day.
Close up of the front landing strip, showing bees fanning and generally dancing around the front of the hive.
In total I now have 3 swarms, they all came within the first week, and since then the weather has gone off a little but i am still very pleased. All 3 have good strong laying queens( now marked), that have layed extremely well following arrival, So should give me honey this year. Two of them can go in to full sized hives next week.
Asian Hornet
Well Its finally appeared at my apiary, but luckily this one was trapped in my special, beer, white wine and blackcurrant mix. so thats one laying qeen dead. I have doubled the number of traps arond here to try and keep their numbers down. It all depends if one makes a nest near my bees or not.
One can only try.
Good times with good strong hives. long may it continue!!
Richard
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