Inspection

Talk about learning as you go along! there is nothing quite like hands on experience, now dont get me wrong I am all for reading about the subject of bees but nothing quite makes sense until you actually experience it.

My bedtime reading at the moment is bees, bees and more bees and if it isnt a book, it is the Beecraft magazine which has lots of useful information for all beekeepers including the novice like me.

Normally we inspect the hives at the weekend but when I got home last night Mel was eager to have a look at the ones that were queenless, to see what was happening in them. So before dinner we donned our suits and went to the apiary on the mountain. I am happy to report that all hives were doing well except for one, the Nuc!



12 frame National Bee hive



5 frame Nuc Box



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Nuc, if you remember is the hive that we swapped from a full hive last weekend into a Nuc box as we thought it had so few bees and no queen, I can confirm this is definitely the case, I will update on this later.

The two other hives that were queen less on the last inspection have now got new virgin queens, in fact one emerged right in front of us.  It was fascinating to watch her pull her self out of the cell, a lovely black queen. In fact I couldnt quite beleive what I was seeing as Mel had taken out this particular queen cell to check if it was dead inside, and there she was in his hand!! they dont tell you to do that in a text book.

In the other hive we didn't actually spot the new queen but we are pretty sure she is there albeit a vigin (hence no eggs) as the remaining queen cells were all dead. I hadnt quite understood that the new queen or shall I say the first queen to emerge runs around the hive looking for queen cells in order to kill them. She wants to rule! so she kills each of them by inserting her sting into the cell before they hatch.

Another little snippet I learnt last night was the queen has multiple stings, unlike a worker bee who only has one and then dies when it has been used, she can sting lots of times and obviously lives to carry on.

The main hives from last year are now well and truly in a honey flow and bringing in the nectar. The 2 strongest hives  have almost filled a super it just needs to be capped so we we have put a new supers on each of them ready for them to fill them as well.

Fingers crossed for a bumper 2 months