Just in time?

Wednesday was always going to be quite a busy day.

Our local roofing company turned up promptly at eight o'clock,  and spent most of the day giving the roof a touch of remedial attention.  The main job was to replace the cement flashing at the base of the chimney with lead flashing.  They also attended to the cement haunching around the pot, and repointed parts of the chimney.  The chaps advised that the job was definitely overdue.  They also attended to a few loose and cracked tiles, and a couple of dodgy ridge tiles.  

We are aware that we will need to have the cottage re-roofed at some point, but this remedial work will keep us watertight for a while longer yet.

Mid-morning saw me head out for a walk with Hobson and TB.  We took our normal route along the lanes to Pete's house, before returning through the fields.  

TB is now quite happy about the footbridge, and both he and Hobson charged across and headed right along the hedge line at full speed.  I followed behind and looked to the left, our normal direction of travel.  The idiot dogs had totally failed to see a group of six or eight Fallow bucks about sixty yards away.* I called the dogs to me, and they still hadn't noticed the deer.  I soon had them back on their leads and watched as the deer jumped through a gap in the hedge and headed off.  The rest of the walk was uneventful, as I selected a route that headed in the opposite direction to the one chosen by the deer.

Today was forecast to be warm and sunny, perfect conditions for my first inspection of the hives.  In the early afternoon I put on my bee suit, lit my smoker and headed up to the orchard with a trolley laden with queen excluders and supers.

I started with hive #1 and was delighted to see that it was filled with bees. There were at least eight frames with brood at various stages of development and I even managed to locate the queen.  There seemed to be some nectar being stored and I was surprised by the large amounts of pollen being packed away too.  I added a queen excluder and super to the hive and returned the crown board and the roof.  This hive had not seemed to be as active as the other colonies, so I was expecting something similar, or perhaps more impressive from the other hives.

I moved to hive #2 and gave them a good puff of smoke before opening up the colony.  It was filled to bursting with bees. There were so many, considering that many would be flying on such a fine day, that it was difficult to check the frames for brood, disease or signs of possible swarming.  I inspected as carefully as I could and soon saw signs that the colony was preparing to swarm. I saw a few queen cups, and encountered open queen cells as my inspection progressed.

I didn't want a strong colony to swarm so I replaced the crown board and headed back to the store room to collect a nucleus box and some spare brood frames. I had made the decision to perform a split of the colony, and planned to relocate the queen, a couple of frames of brood and plenty of nurse bees to the nucleus box.  The only problem with that plan was that it entailed locating the queen in a hive that was filled to overflowing with bees.  Fortunately the God of Beekeeping** smiled down on me and I managed to find her ... at the second attempt.

I assembled the nut with a couple of frames of brood, a frame of stores and a couple of frames of foundation. I shook in a couple of frames of nurse bees and moved it about six feet away from its parent hive. I'll add a feeder tomorrow and give them a couple of litres of sugar syrup. That should encourage the workers to start building comb on the sheets of foundation.

The parent hive will now be left for at least four weeks in the hope that a new queen will hatch, mate and start to lay ... I just hope that the weather stays fine and that there are sufficient drones in the area.

Hive #3 was similar to the previous hive, but not quite as advanced in the development of swarm cells.  This was fortunate as I do have another nucleus box, but I had no spare brood frames available.  I continued with my inspection and was very happy with the state of this colony too. I'm just well aware that it will need to be split next week, unless the buggers swarm beforehand. 

I spent an hour in the workshop this evening assembling a batch of brood frames and can also report that I have made contact with a Beekeeper in Studley, who may have a couple of buckets of honey available ... watch this space.

So, in case it isn't clear, the title of today's Journal entry comes from the fact that a) we seem to have had the chimney repaired, b) I managed to restrain the dogs, and c) I inspected the hives just in time.

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* They were originally a hunting dog. My two obviously didn't get that memo!

** Apparently it's Aristaeus.