The weather forecast for today was not pleasant reading. After a mediocre start, rain was expected to arrive by lunchtime and stick around for the rest of the afternoon.
This is far from perfect beekeeping weather, but my hives were due for an inspection. At this time of year they need to be checked once a week. The inspections are for a variety of reasons including swarm control, disease, and, surprisingly at this time of year, starvation.
I have just taken a honey harvest, which has removed stored food from the hives. We are also about to enter a period in the British beekeeping year known as the June gap. Basically June is surprisingly short on nectar bearing flowers. We have had the flush of fruit blossom and oilseed rape in the Spring, and now there is an interval before the Summer flowers make an appearance in July. It is, therefore, vital that the bees are checked to ensure they have sufficient food to keep them going.
I wandered up to the hives after breakfast and judged that they were sufficiently active to allow an inspection. I then headed back to the store room and gathered my equipment. This included some brood frames packed with stores, and the six supers that had been extracted on Sunday.
The frames in these supers are still sticky with a film of honey that cannot be mechanically extracted. But the bees will collect every last sip, if the supers are placed atop the hives' crown boards ... this was my primary objective for today.
Hive #1 is currently my only hive with a laying queen. I quickly removed the two supers, noting that the lower one had a reasonable amount of stores. I then took a quick look through the brood box. I didn't see the queen, but did spot a few larvae, so am reasonably happy that all is well. I also replaced a couple of empty brood frames with two filled with capped honey.
The hive was then reassembled with three wet supers on top of the crown board. These will be left on the hive for a few days and the bees will clean them up.
Hive #2 had a swarm cell when inspected on 6th May. There is little point in carrying out an inspection for another week, or so. At that point I will be looking for signs that the queen has hatched, mated and started laying. I am also aware that the colony's demand for food will have reduced, as there have been no fresh brood for three weeks, and the number of mature workers will have dropped too. I did, however, give them three wet supers to clean up.
I was about to finish up when my eyes fell on hive #3, and I thought "Sod it, I'll have a look, it's probably not going to come to anything anyway." This hive contained a shook swarm; taken from hive #2 on 6th May. A subsequent inspection had shown that the queen had disappeared and a supersedure cell was found on one of the frames. The colony had then been left for nature to take its course.
I flicked through the frames, noting that there was plenty of food, but no sign of brood or eggs. As I reached the last couple of frames I spotted a very pretty queen wandering across the cells ... Fingers crossed that she will start laying in the next week or two.
The rest of the day was spent continuing the clean up of the extraction equipment and a repair to the woodwork of one of the supers.
I also had a call from the hospital regarding the results from my MRI scan. The news is good. There is no sign of prostate cancer and no further tests are needed at this time. There will be a follow up appointment in six months time, and I will need to have a PSA test completed at that time. If the PSA is normal I will be discharged.
This is obviously good news. I hadn't become overly worried in the past couple of weeks, and had just got on with my life. There was little point in worrying when I hadn't even had a diagnosis. I'll admit there were moments when I did think about a future that involved cancer treatment, but these were few, and I need to get on with other shit anyway.
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