Royal Welsh Show 2011

We had a great day at the Royal Welsh Show, in Builth Wells yesterday, it is a few years since we have been and it has changed so much. The show is just growing and growing in size and stature, apparently it is one of the best shows in Europe.

I had gone down primarily to show my rabbits, but I also had another agenda! I wanted to have a look at the Honey classes and the competition that I will have next year if I get my way!

Honey Exhibits at the Royal Welsh Show 2011

Whilst looking at the fabulous honey, mead, candle and polish exhibits we also watched a demonstration of how to make your own beeswax polish. I will be trying this my self in the near future if I can get hold of any turpentine.

More exhibits - Well done all !

There was also an exhibition hive for the general public to see the insides of a working hive, this is a great way to see what goes on inside with the eggs laid, brood at all stages and the honey and pollen coming in. I am not sure if everyone understands the complexity of the honey bee but even for beekeepers it is great to watch.

Winner of a frame of Honey, doesn't it look good- Well Done

Well done and congratulations to everyone who entered the show and especially to the winners of each class, as I know only to well how hard it is to get a red card at the Royal Welsh.
From my experience it takes months of planning and weeks of preparation just to enter a show and I am talking about livestock

Tonight we opened up a few hives to see how they are getting along, and we were nicely surprised.

Hive #2 last week, was thought to be queen less, now although we haven't seen the queen nor was there any eggs we now believe her to be there but just not mated. The reason for this is the frame of brood that was placed in the hive last week, should have had an emergency queen cell built on it if there was no queen there, and it didn't.

We have made a decision tonight to move the hives from this apiary as there seems to be a problem with the queens mating there for some unknown reason. So they will be moved the the field apiary as soon as we can do it/

Hive # 4 was also checked and I am pleased to say it was the same result as #2.

In the field apiary we checked #12 the latest acquisition, this was the last swarm collected, with a virgin queen and already she has eggs and capped brood in her hive and is doing well.

Transfer of Bees from Nuc to Hive

Well today's Job was pretty straight forward, but it is getting a bit of a headache trying to remember which hive is which, so we have had to go around and physically number each hive.
I wanted to name them as I thought it would be lovely "Primrose Hive" has a nice sound to it, dont you think? but for simplicity sake I know its more sensible to just number them so I gave in.

It is extremely important to keep hive records especially when you have more than 2 hives, I am disciplined enough to do that and since being involved with all aspects of beekeeping I set up my own log book. There are unfortunately no records from last year, say no more..

So for record keeping sake only, I have named them as well numbering, hopefully you can then follow a little easier what I am doing in the future.

Number 1 ( Dahlia) hive is the problem Nuc which is queen less
Number 2 ( Dandelion) hive is the one which we saw the queen emerge from this week
Number 3 (Lavender) hive is the one with the honey flow and going well
Number 4 (Primrose) is my hive also with a new emerged queen this week
Number 5 (Daisy) is from an artificial swarm out of number 2 hive

All above hives are in one apiary on the mountain

Number 6  (Poppy) hive is the swarm caught in Deganwy today transferred from a Nuc box into a full hive and on 5 full frames with room to expand
Number 7 (Geranium) hive is a swarm caught in Llanbedr this hive was transferred from a full hive into a Nuc box only on 3 frames and we needed the hive for hive # 6
Number 8 (Buttercup) hive is from an artificial swarm from hive #4 and was also transferred from a Nuc into a full hive to give them more room as this was struggling for space
Number 9 (Honeysuckle) hive is from a swarm caught in Mochdre
Number 10 (Cowslip) hive is from a swarm caught in Llanrwst
Number 11 (Cosmos) hive is from a swarm caught in Llanbedr again, this week

All the above hives are in the apiary in the field

Now I can get on with some housework which has been a little neglected because of the bees!!