Bees: June 2013

Friday, 28 June 2013

Friday 28th June 2013 ~ Hive Inspection

Today we decided to make an early hive inspection as we had received a call requesting a bee inspection from Debbie our Bee Inspector; Debbie would like to come on Wednesday so we thought a check today would give them a couple more days to settle before their roof has to come off again..

Just for a change today Shelagh gets to start the inspection while Percy takes the photos

The super is beginning to see a little more action

Off with the Crown Board

A super frame and I think I spot our first, almost capped honey cell on a super frame!

Just to the right of the dark pollen cell???

Queen excluder in place

Our enlarging colony :-)

Frame 3

Frame 8 with the queen

Queen busy on Frame 8 we have seen eggs on other frames so know she is laying

I shook this frame so you can see the many different colours of pollen collected by our bees; we notice they go off in many different directions.

Colours!

Our busy hive entrance half an hour after our inspection.

Tea and Home-made Anzac Cookie after the inspection :-)

Sunday, 23 June 2013

Sunday 23rd June ~ Hive Inspection

Ready to go

An earlier check than usual as we have our youngest granddaughter staying and she is having a nap so we had to take advantage of the moment.

So it is only 10am

Looking down on the brood box ~ looking bigger

Frame 3a which was 4b previously with some capped honey

Frame 4

Play cups

Frame 5

Queenie

Loads-a-bees ~ Frame 6

Lots of capped brood and a few drones

Percy received his first sting today and it turned out the colony was more edgy than usual
Maybe because of the time of day and maybe due to the windy overcast day
The colony has indeed grown and we think the turning round and swapping of frames last week has been successful in encouraging the hive to increase in size. So today we swapped frames 7 & 8 over, with no turning around. Frame 7 is a manky old frame which is not a Hoffman and so we are trying to move it to the edge so we can eventually swap it with a nice new frame.

Saturday, 22 June 2013

Monday 17th June ~ Removal of entrance restrictor

A quick visit to the hive for a little task

Ready for action

Nice wide entrance; just hope it stays warm and there are no robbers

Two honey bees drinking from a broken plant pot

Friday, 21 June 2013

Sunday June 16th ~ Hive Inspection on Father's Day

On our own today and a good inspection

The colony is growing albeit slowly and the queen easily spotted

Frame 4 and we have a little capped honey

Close up of capped honey

The queen is spotted on Frame 5

Queen

I spotted 2 play cups and was going to rub them out as that is what we'd been encouraged to do at the association apiary but Percy wasn't convinced so we had a bee-keepers discussion and they were left for a week. We shall check them next time

Play-cups on the top edge of a frame

Percy also thought he'd seen a few cells with multiple eggs so we must keep a careful watch on what is going on. Maybe our queen is getting on a bit :-( We have no idea how old she is.

We did a little moving of frames around turning frame 3 around and then swapping it with frame 4; we will see what difference that makes next week. The old frames in the middle of the colony are pretty old and gnarled so ideally we would like to gradually move a couple to the outer edge and then swap them for new ones.

After the hive inspection we thought we should have removed the entrance restrictor as the days do finally seem warm enough and we thought it might encourage the colony to make a move outwards.