The main event this morning was Whiffler's second follow-up appointment at the Vet's. We were seen by the surgeon who performed the operation and he was absolutely amazed by how well Whiffler was healing. We will have a further appointment in four week's time, where the Vet will carry out a digital examination, presumably to see whether the cancer has metastasised. For the moment all we can say is that he seems to be doing remarkably well, and the daily dose of Metacam is doing wonders for his mobility.
Now on to the bees.
I am fairly certain that I am on the record that, as a beekeeper, I spend my time worrying about my colonies. In the winter I am concerned about starvation, Varroa infection and colony collapse. In the summer my concerns switch to swarming, whether they can find enough forage, and whether the colonies are being managed appropriately.
Last week I split one of my colonies and added supers to all of the hives. So, for the past week, I have been wondering whether I have done the right thing. I know that new queens are available to purchase, so I have a back up plan if my new queens fail to hatch or mate. My other concern has been about the availability of local nectar sources for the bees.
In my daily wanderings I make a mental note of what is coming in to flower, so have seen the celandines come and go. The bluebells and cowslips look lovely at the moment, and the blackthorn is already in flower. The damsons are just about over, but I can see that the apples will be flowering within the next few days.
The lingering question is, "is this enough to produce a honey crop?"
This afternoon I wandered up to the orchard to check the hives. The first thing I did was to transfer the nucleus colony, created last week, to a standard National Brood box. The queen appears to be laying, and she now has plenty of room to expand. More syrup was added to the feeder to enable the workers to build out the foundation in to fresh comb.*
I then moved on to Hive #1 and was delighted to see that the workers had already moved up to the super, cleaned out the cells, and had started to store honey there. The super was nowhere near full, but was noticeably heavier than when I added it last week. The colony is doing well and I could see no signs of swarming, so the hive was reassembled and I moved on to hive #2.
Hive #2 was split last week, so it is currently without a queen. It needs to be left for at least four weeks, for the new queen to hatch and start laying, so I did nothing other than check a couple of frames in the super. Again, surplus nectar was being processed, and stored as honey.
Next it was on to hive #3. It was showing early signs of swarming when I inspected it last week, so I was prepared to split the colony, with a nucleus box ready and waiting. I removed the super, noting the presence of stored honey, and started to inspect the brood box. I soon found capped queen cells, and focussed on finding the queen. She was located quite quickly and transferred across to the "nuc" along with three frames of brood, a frame of stores and a couple of frames of foundation. The nuc was relocated to its new position in the apiary and hive #3 was closed up, leaving the swarm cells to develop, and hopefully, produce a new queen for the colony.
Nuc #2 will need to be transferred to a National Brood box in a week's time, so I spent the rest of the afternoon assembling a batch of frames.
This evening I found myself at Redditch College restaurant in the company of 30%, Mummy Sheila, 'Chelle, Tracey and Grubby Sue. It was a Greek themed menu and the food was great. The company was brilliant too, and we had a very amusing evening. I think the prize comment was made by Grubby Sue ... She advised that she had shaved her legs and then noticed that she hadn't made a very good job of it. Apparently her eyesight is so bad that she hadn't noticed that she hadn't removed the safety guard from her razor!
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* The nucleus colony has six frames. The National Brood box has eleven, so the bees have another five frames of foundation to draw out in to comb. This is unlikely to be a rapid process. They need warm weather and a strong colony to do this
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