Bees and Carrots

Tuesday started with a dog walk.  Hobson and Dog #4, aka The Rat were my canine companions.

Although Whiffler is much improved, we're avoiding walking him at the moment. Part of the Three Miler requires him to be on a lead, and that might aggravate his neck injury.

Next on my virtual list was to weed and dig over the raised beds in the vegetable garden. That little job took me through until lunchtime and they are both now ready for planting.

The afternoon saw me head up to the orchard and carry out this week's inspection of the hives.

I started by looking at the shook swarm that I established last week, Hive #3. 

There were plenty of bees in the hive and ample quantities of capped brood cells. However, I was disappointed to see no sign of the queen, and I think that she may well have died. The reason for this assumption is that she did look rather scruffy when I found her last week. This is often a sign that she is at the end of her life.

 On a more positive note there was a capped supersedure queen cell in the colony, so I shut up the hive and will leave it alone for two or three weeks. That should allow her sufficient time to hatch and, hopefully, have a successful mating flight.

Hive #2 was not inspected as I know it is queenless.  Last week's inspection identified swarm cells, so it will also be left to let nature run its course.

Hive #1 was inspected and seems to be going really well.  The honey in the supers is being capped off and there was plenty of brood, at various stages, visible. I didn't manage to spot the queen, but the sight of young larvae indicates that she is present and still laying.

After finishing with the bees I returned to the veg patch and planted a few rows of carrots in the larger of the two raised beds.  I used some seed that was left over from last year. It had been kicking around in the greenhouse and I am slightly concerned that the heat may have damaged the seed ... I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens over the next couple of weeks.

Last little job of the day was to assemble and fit a new hose reel that arrived in the post this morning.  All was going swimmingly until I noticed that a component did not seem to be present in the box. It's a small spring that is used to prevent the hose collapsing or kinking inside the reel. 

It looks like I'll be calling customer services tomorrow ... or should I just go and buy one?