August Swarm

I was asked to help a fellow bee keeper with a swarm.
When I arrived there was two separate clusters in his neighbours garden. One was 20ft up in a tree and the other was on the side of the climbing frame. We decided to have quick look inside his hives first to see which of them had swarmed, during which time the cluster in the tree combined with the other cluster thankfully as this made collecting them so much easier as I only had one nuc. Once I'd collect over 85-90% of the swarm I left them alone and returned again after 19:30 hrs.


Evening
As soon as I approached the nuc I could clearly hear two different pitches of piping. I think each of the original clusters had its own queen. My guess is one is the parent queen the other is one of her daughter queens (princess). At some point they will fight to the death and more often than not the younger and more nimble queen will survive. Over the next few weeks she will need to fly out and mate and then will hopefully start laying before the end of the season when the weather turns cold and the colony start to cluster to keep warm for Winter.

July Swarm

Small swarm 29th July 2011.

I was called to collect a small swarm which had moved into a compost bin two days earlier. Once I'd removed the front cover I spotted the queen in the middle of the comb laying an egg, so I decided to wait until she had finished before shaking her into the nuc. I almost made the mistake of shaking the bees off the panel with the comb upside down. 
This year I haven't used my smoker much but I had to use a fair amount to drive them out of the bin as I didn't want to move it in case the top two thirds which was full with old grass cuttings collapsed down. All in all it was very simple to collect most of the colony by brushing them on to a frame and dumping them over the nuc once enough of them were fanning attracting the fliers and I covered the bin entrance with the frame which stopped them from flying straight back inside the bin again. 

I returned at 9pm and found they had all left the bin and were happily clustered in the nuc covering 2.5 frames, so I strapped them up and waited another 10 mins just to be sure I had them all before moving them to my apiary.

July 19th - Inspection

Poly Langstroth deep and medium
The brood chamber has 5 excellent deep frames with large patches of brood and 2 good frames of eggs, larvae & pollen the end frames are full of mostly capped stores. The medium chamber above (see picture) has been mostly drawn out apart from the end frames 2 each side which are still being worked on all be it slowly, these part drawn frames will be staggered and moved inwards on my next inspection as the colony size continues to increases. The central frames have a nice arc of capped honey across the top, 6 frames in all with a nice patch of sealed brood, plus more recently a patch of 3-4 day old larvae extending the brood area backwards across 3/4's of the frames on 4 of the frames.

Picture - Sealed brood within the green circle, to the right 2" more of larvae extending the brood nest area across the frame. (slightly darker yellow comb)

This colony is off to the heather at the end of the month provided the weather improves although the long range forecast for August is still likely to be unsettled.

June 30th - Almost taller than me

2010 Queen, the colony are showing no signs of wanting to swarm but since the last time I opened them up they have filled a super and capped it. So I've added another BS National chamber instead.



Super - full capped.
Super - full capped.
14x12 - half full of uncapped honey.
BS National - Added today (plastic foundation).
14x12 - 8 frames of brood, 2 frames of stores, 6 frames of the 8 brood frames are wall to wall with brood in all stages.

June 25th - Bee Sting and Drugs

Long story which I won't bore you with, but just to say I visited my hives yesterday just to get some fresh air after being stuck in doors for almost 2 weeks after my back op. I noticed a swarm had made a home in an old nuc I use for rubbish, I thought the entrance was blocked off with foam but its disappeared.

Today I went to transfer them into another nuc with frames and in the process got stung on the forehead, long story short they are still in the same nuc. On the way home I started to feel hot and sweaty, my ears were bright red and I could feel my forehead starting to swell, lips felt puffy and my whole body start feeling hot and sweaty. Fortunately I only live a few minutes away as by the time I got home I knew I was reacting really badly to being stung. Since my back op I've been on a cocktail of drugs, currently I'm still taking Dihydrocodeine, Etoricoxib and Paracetamol. I think the combination of drugs and the sting reacted badly. 10 minutes later my whole body was covered in blisters. (picture of my upper arm)

Each of them felt like a small burning sensation and sore. My suit was peppered with hundreds of stings sacs but I'm positive this reaction was only from the one sting. The wife got the piriton tablets out and got me bowl of cool water and a cloth to help cool me down again.

Despite some peoples thoughts of leather gauntlets I am so glad I was wearing them today. Two hours later thankfully I felt fine again. A sure fire way to remind yourself how nasty bee stings can be, more so if your body is recovering from major surgery and full of pain killers and anti-inflammatories.

May 28th Swarm

Paul a friend of mine gave me a small swarm from one of his colonies. They settled high up in a tree in his garden for two days before flying off. The next day they returned again and settled in another tree where he was able to collect them and put them in a box.

I decided to put them into the Polish mini hive I bought along with about 2 pints of 1:1 syrup, each frame is about half the size of a BS National so with the two brood chambers of 6 frames each its about the same as a 6 frame National nuc. The next time I will open them up will be some time in July or August.

May 15th

Last weekend I extracted 3 national supers, let it settle in a warm room for most of the week before skimming off the tiny bits of wax and air bubbles. Yesterday skimmed off the last few bits before stirring it thoroughly using an electric drill and then gently warming it up again in the airing cupboard over night.


Today I sterilized 60 jars before stirring the honey again thoroughly again and filling 53 whole jars with OSR honey.

Very Nice