Still alive :)

Well its been a couple of days......ok so i lie lol its just that i get easily distracted with things :) (ask Kim she says i do all the time...) any way lets see whats been happening; because of the mild weather the bee's are still out foraging, hive 1 which is the more aggressive of the hives surprisingly does not have as many bees as hive 2 but there are times when it is certainly the busiest of the 2 hives. Hive 2 I took a super out as the bee's were not really doing much except filling brood with stores now in their readiness for winter, i took out the sugar syrup as well, as a lot of time it was going mouldy which is all i need; bee's with runny bottoms lol. It looks as though the drones have been kicked out of both hives but with the darker nights the bees are leaving it later to get back to the hives, which means i'm ending up with a few bee's sharing the lean to with the rabbits and chickens every evening :) which makes it fun when i'm feeding the rabbits and i'm getting bee's buzzing around me. Anyway i will leave the hives now until january when they may get some mite preventative (speaking to one of our club bee keepers) i will check once more b4 then to put mouse guards in and make sure stores are ok.

October has been a little quiet, though Kim and myself went to the London Championship show which was a nice day out....London Championship Show? whats that Steve? i hear you say :) well let me explain
back in 1999 Kim and myself went to a rabbit show in a little village hall near Colchester and became fascinated with the variety and colours you could get....we looked at maybe showing and breeding ourselves and started up with the minilop. Over the next few years we became very involved with 'the fancy' we had other breeds entering our shed, making up our own web site http://www.taraxstud.20m.com/  both of us becoming judges (Kim for the National Miniature Lop Club, and myself for the Rare Varieties Rabbit Club) We even ran our own local club with Kim being secretary and myself as show manager. We won a few best in shows, travelled around the country making an enormous amount of friends along the way. When Kim became disabled it basically all stopped  and the last 5 years we sort of dissapeared from the show scene. Well even though we got rid of all our equipement and stock we still kept 6 rabbits as pets, then when i saw an advert for the 2 day London Show i managed to persuade Kim to come along....at 1st Kim admitted she was very nervous about going and yet it turned out to be a fantastic day meeting lots of old friends, we had people asking advice on their stock, asking Kim about colour genetics (thats another story lol) and asking when are we both coming back into the fancy.

The  shows are not just about rabbits but also other small mammals such as rats, mice etc. for me it was the Thrianta rabbit as thats what i used to show, and what was great was that the Thriantas have broken away from the Rare Varieties Club to start their own club up now.

Kim ended up talking with everyone lol (this is Karen Malcolm of the Rare Varieties Club)

We even stayed to see the best in show being judged before we had to shoot off home.

Well by the time we got home we both decided we are going back into showing and breeding again but that will be next year as i need to clear the garage, order some eqipement as well as some new stock...so even more stuff for me to do lol.

So thats it for the moment the only other thing thats happened is we had a halloween party but i'll save that for the next instalment :) until then l8rs

Time flies....and so do the bee's..

Cannot believe i left this so long....loads to do obviously lol. Anyway not much to report on the hives, we did a thorough check on both hives last week before the cooler weather set in (not that we had any warm weather mind you) Hive 1 which had the dry swarms had definitely swarmed and our worry was that no uncapped brood was seen at all. Luckily we spotted uncapped and capped brood which lets us know there is definitely a queen on board :) 1 super has stores, the second has drawn wax and there are stores in the brood box as well, this hive all though not as busy should be ok for the coming months. The bee's in this hive are quieter than hive 2 and a lot lighter in colour so definitely buckfast strain.
Hive 2 is very different to hive 1, very busy, lots of stores (though not as much as hive 1) a lot more aggressive and a lot darker in colour which will be interesting in how they compare to the other hive for next year. No queen cells but still a few drones in both hives so they have not been kicked out quite yet lol. I reckon i will get 1 or 2 hive checks done over next few weeks depending on weather then that will be it until march. Not sure on winter checking i will need to read up but obviously i will keep the sugar syrup going so they don't starve.

Oh well....

We had a busy weekend this bank holiday what with family and friends over so it took longer than i had hoped to check the hives. As the last time we had seen any activity with the hives was on friday, nothing else was noticed to make us think anything was wrong. A friend and his partner had come to visit and steves partner Kym was very interested in the bee's so we lent her Kims suit so she could look at the hives with me. Hive 1 had drawn out supers some with stores but nothing capped, when we checked the brood box there was a lot of stores but also capped and uncapped brood as well as eggs. Though the hive was small it showed lots of activity with all the right signs of being ok for the winter (though i will have to keep feeding them as well).
Hive 2 which was the hive that had the dry swarms was ok or so it seemed, capped and uncapped stores in the supers but when we got to the brood box it was just stores....no eggs and no brood...capped or uncapped this of course is a massive worry as it means that the queen has left the hive that either she left with some of the workers or we had another swarm that we missed. If there is another queen she was not seen as we wanted to check for  brood mainly, this obviously means we need to check to ensure the hive will be ok b4 the winter sets in.

and again...

They swarmed again on Friday....theres me painting (still..) when at 12:33 i hear the bee's getting louder when i looked there at it again swarming above the hive, at 12:46 they all disappeared yet i still have flying bee's going in and out of the hive still so it looks as though we had another dry swarm again? may have to ring one of our mentors to find out whats going on, will check  on the hives Sunday to see how every thing is and let you know whats going on then :)

I think i have a headache.....

This bee's ness with the bee's (grin) is getting confusing lol...well since the last inspection of the hives i have been pottering around the garden, we still have a wasp problem so i decided to empty and refill some of the wasp traps when i got to one of them i saw two of the bigest wasps i have ever seen. 'Are they hornets' says Kim 'naa' says me. They were both alive so i decided to put them in a sealed container then take their picture in the morning once they had died to show how big they were. Well when i opened the container the next morning 2 enormous and very angry hornets (yes they were hornets) shot out and flew around the garden dive bombing me into the bargain b4 flying off, i didn't get any pictures but the traps are still up so who knows :) We checked the hive with the queen cells in on monday evening and by the 4th frame i suddenly saw a queen (not marked) shoot down to the bottom of the frame, luckily Kim saw it as well which showed that the queen from the queen cell i had put back was definetly alive.....after checking the rest of the frames definetly no other queen but 3 queen cells found which i destroyed. We put syrup feeders in and closed the hive back up it looked as though a new queen was taking up residence.
Then today happened :) just before i went to pick Kim up from work there was a lot of activity around the hives....and i mean a lot of activity lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR1ywS1y5sE i have given up trying to put video clips on here so you guys can see this on youtube from now on.

Well as you can see the hive has swarmed and disappeared off....except when i checked the hive tonight theres still the same amount of bee's present as there was yesterday??? so have they all come back? it may be a dry swarm meaning they all swarmed expecting a queen to come with them but she didn't, it could be a practise which i doubt...so as you can imagine its very confusing whats going on in this hive....i quickly checked hive no.1 and they seem to be ok, theres capped and uncapped brood but not much...lots of stores though so i put a super on to see if that will help oh and i did find a queen cell (grrr) which i got rid of and thats where we are at the moment. So i will keep an eye on them tomorrow to see if they swarm again though this recent swarm only took around 15 mins so i may miss them...at least i got it on video lol anyway until the next time l8rs :)

Never runs smoothly lol

Well it just goes to show if you dont keep on top of things, something is bound to happen.....last weekend we checked both hives and everything seemed to be ok plenty of activity in both hives though number one hive still not producing lots of stores to warrent a super yet so i am still feeding them a sugar solution to kick start them off. Hive number 2 has had no problems in fact the super we put on has slowly filled with honey and lots of the frames are starting to be capped, we therefore put a second super on but as of yesterday there was no sign of drawn comb yet. At the back of my mind i was aware that we had not checked hive two for over a week and also i noted that the front of the hive was not as busy as usual. Then when we checked we found over half a dozen capped queen cells......not a good sign usually means the hive is about to swarm, we demolished some of the cells but kim said leave the others as we still had not come across the queen yet....in fact we checked all the frames twice and still no sign of her. Kim wanted the last cople of queen cells left and i brought 2 whole ones indoors to photo.....except one of the cells was moving in my hand and buzzing lol....we could see that a queen was starting to break out of her cell!! I rang one of our mentors who said we could put her back in the hive or destroy her...kim wanted her put back, which i did as she had already taken the cap off by that time.
We obviously have a problem here because a number of scenarios put themselves foward
1. The old queen has died somehow and new queens have been made to compensate
2. The hive has already swarmed and the old queen has gone
3. We missed the old queen, she is still there and may kill the other queens
4. The hive is going to swarm again......
Reading up, its not unusual for hives to swarm in august due to weather and nectar flow....which judging by the weather the last few weeks may explain why the hive is doing this, i am upset as she is a young queen so should have no reason to do this plus we got her for the low tendancy to swarm....but she is a woman and you cannot always know what there thinking (boy am i going to get a clout for that comment lol) a possible awnser would be to do an artificial swarm but we dont have the equipment or experience for that. Until i can get my head around this and until we check the hive on saturday we may just have to let the bee's get on with it :( i have ordered some more feeders to see if that helps. The books say that one way to stop this happening is to provide an artificial swarm which means minipulating the hive to seperate itself without flying off. In the book it seems simple but i need to make sure the old queen is still alive first and as i said we need spare equipment as well. I may need to ring one of our mentors first and see what they suggest. Anyway enough of our dilema until the weekend i will talk to all later :)

Still no video clips but.....

More pictures!! :)
well its been a week since our last visit to the hives hive 1 still very busy and hive 2...well...its ok :) went down and checked on them around 6:45 Opened hive 2 first...all sugar syrup finished so made another batch up and put that aside ready for them. The first thing we noticed was that there is still not much production going on where the brood box is concerned, there is brood evident but also lots of stores

the next picture does not really show it that well (even though i took a few pictures) was when we saw a bee breaking out of its cell...1st the bee made  a tiny hole which got bigger and bigger as she chewed the cap before she pulled herself through (left hand top 4 down 7 across...under a bee)

the next picture shows lots of stores and honey

finally we came across some uncapped brood (top right)

we found 1 queen cell which we got rid of then i saw this on the right hand side of the another frame its whats called a queen cup (looks like an acorn cup) its the bee's practising but we will keep an eye on it for next week incase they take it further

Kim was like a whippet after a rabbit with the next hive as she had already opened it and was checking the supers before i had even got the roof on the 1st hive lol

the good thing though is that already over half the frames have been filled with honey...so my job tomorrow evening is to put a second super on for the bee's to start working on :) The next picture sows a frame with lots of capped brood on...

The last picture shows a mix of brrood and stores but also the odd drone cell dotted about...you cant miss them as they have slightly raised white caps..

we didn't go through all the frames ,so did not look for the queen as it was fairly obvious they are both prodcing brood , monday i will put a second super into hive 1 and i will also check the bottom trays for mite....which i will explain about on the next blog :) so again thanks for reading and until the next time l8rs

argghh

No i haven't been stung lol, i've been trying since last week to put up some video clips of the hives as well as Kim in her suit and opening a hive up to check it but to no avail (grrr). Hive 2 is very busy now with constant tooing and frowing (are they real words??)  i sit and watch both hives and there is a marked difference between the two in the amount of activity. Sunday had us both checking on the hives hive 1 had lots of stores but not much else even the queen could not be spotted. Most of the sugar feed had gone but there was also mould on the feed so i took it out and washed it before putting some new syrup on. Hive 2 as i said was very busy we only checked a few frames as kim was getting a bit tired but at least the supers are being drawn and theres stores present so honey at last if not a decent amount :) one thing i have noticed is the amount of dead wasps on the floor out side both hives, often i have seen 1 or 2 wasps flying arounf the hives crawling over the roof and sides looking for a way in, obviously the bee's are keeping them out at the moment as when i watched a wasp get attacked by a lone bee before the both stung each other the wasp flew off and the bee after a couple of minutes returned to the hive. There is evidence of a lot of wasps as the oak tree seems to be covered in them....i know wasps are the best pest exterminators in the garden but i still dont like them lol especially when its autumn and they get drunk....then there just nasty lol. Anyway i will have to keep an eye on them depending on the 2 hives...sorry no photos will take some this weekend, i will keep plugging away with the 2 videos i took but at the moment they still wont download onto my blog...until then...l8rs :)

First video of the bee's

heres a video i took yesterday of the bee's entering the busier of the 2 hives...not great but i will try and do another one soon :)

this next one is with out a running commentary lol



Woo Hoo!! :)

I know this is a couple of days early but had to let everyone know the news lol. Quick recap on last post........
Queen missing from hive 1 so new queen ordered....when checking for new queen there was no sign of her so sent e-mail out to local beekeepers club and one person contacted me who worried that second queen may of been killed and there was a possibility that a drone laying worker was in the house instead.
 Well since then we had an e-mail from a very knowledgable lady who is the chair person of our club offered to come over on friday to see what was going on with the hive. Well she turned up tonight dressed in her beekeepers suit and came down with myself and Kim to check the hive. She went through each frame and noted that there were eggs and uncapped brood and said there is definetly a queen in here....then straight away said 'there she is' talk about a sigh of relief from me and Kim lol and then we both saw her....no white paint on her but she was definetly a queen :) Jean gave us advice on making sure we keep feeding the  bee's so i quickly made up 2 litres of solution and put it in the hive before closing it up.
Jean also checked hive number 2 and noted we had put supers on there, she said we didn't need to have them on as the bee's were still not drawing out but judging by the amount of bee's we had said she understood why we did it....she moved some of the brood frames around a bit to help speed up the drawing of wax on the combs and then closed the hive up. Then she shot off lol took all of 20 minutes to come down check the hives and go, i think both Kim and myself are just pleased that both hives are ok i just need to keep feeding them now.

Week 3 with da bee's

I tried putting this blog up saturday but the site would not let me get pictures up so hopefully today i will be more successful :)
Well we decided to check both hives saturday instead of sunday due to the fact sunday was so busy....Kim and myself got changed and went down to check on the most important hive first no. 1 hive with the possible missing queen. I took the lid off and saw plenty of bee's around the queen excluder

we took out the 1st couple of frames and noticed that they were still drawing comb...a good sign

plenty of bee's and capped brood still

we even found uncapped brood as well as eggs.....trouble was that the 1st lot of eggs we came across, kim said that they were near the top of the cells which to be honest is not good as it still points to a drone laying worker.

Whats confusing is that we then came across some cells with eggs on the bottom of some cells

Anyway still no queen found......we quickly checked hive 2 and every thing there is alright with lots of bee's :)

it got to a point a couple of times where we had to puff smoke as they were buzzing around quite a bit lol

Anyway once both hives were closed up i decided to send an e-mail to 2 of our emergency mentors...within 1/2 an hour one rang me up and i told him the story of where we were at this point. Richard was very understanding but agreed that it seems the hive may still be queenless and that the workers had attacked and killed the new queen...the trouble was that we have so much conflicting evidence that makes it 100% sure that there is no queen. Richard mentioned that we could take a brood frame with eggs and brood on from our stronger hive and put it into the weaker hive....if the bee's build queen cells it means the hive is definetly queenless which is still not much help as we have left the hive so long and that something else is laying eggs namely the drone laying worker. All that does is provide me with  few altenatives
1) leave the hive to carry on producing male bee's only and will there for get smaller and smaller till the hive collapses then order a new nucleus for next year.
2) Get another queen...though how to get rid of the other egg laying worker is beyond me at the moment
3) shout and scream and stomp round the garden till i feel better.
Richard was at a loss what to suggest here so told me to contact another member of our local society which i have though as of yet i have had no reply :( we will of course be checking the hives next week so will leave the blog on bee's until then unless i hear from any of our fellow members....anyway thats it for now....thanks all for listening and until next week dont forget to tune in on the next exciting episode of BEE'S IN SPACEEEE....sorry i mean 'the warren apiary notes....diary of 2 beekeepers' :)

day 12 with the bee's

Well today is the day to check on hive 1 and see if the queen has established herself within the hive, we left it late in the day to check and soon got kitted up :)

Once the roof was off kim took out the empty syrup feeder then we removed each frame to check for the queen

wew were really pleased to find the cage, the candy plug was gone and the cage was empty which meant the queen was out :)

we checked each frame at one point kim thought she found some eggs though if they were eggs it was a little worrying as the eggs were near the top of each cell meaning it might not be a queen laying them...but as we were not sure they were eggs we left them. After checking the frames twice we still had not come across the new queen :( there were a lot of pollen stores and honey stores but no brood and for the moment no sign of the queen. We closed the hive up and checked on number 2....well what a difference! Kim had to sit down to go through these frames as they were heavy with stores and bee's

when we checked the frames we were pleasantly suprised lots of brood not yet capped

If you look at the picture above at the top middle of the picture you can see three different size larvae (click on the picture then again at the top middle of the same picture)

In this picture you can still spot larvae, but some of the holes have been blocked...this is called capped brood which means the larvae have gone into a pupae stage meaning they will turn into bee's then force them selves out to become one with the hive :)
So hive 2 is very well established just hive 1 we still have problems with...i will leave the hives till next weekend so we will know for sure if  hive 1 is ok, if not we may have to think of something drastic anyway thank you for reading the blog and until next week....l8rs :)

Day 10 (well 11 now) :)

An interesting day sorry i did not get it down last night but both grandchildren here and i can never get anything done when that happens lol anyway where to begin....i rang the suppliers up and told them no queen turned up wednesday, when they checked tracking records their computer said that the item had been delivered but no electronic signature was received....OK...i had to go to the post office anyway so i got the tracking number and shot off to the post office. On the way there i saw the post van so stopped to ask the postman if he had tried to deliver a small parcel wednesday, but it was a different postman so he could not help....as i got back into the car he called me back saying he would ring our other postman which he did....and we found out he had tried to deliver a parcel but because no awnser (even though we left a message on door to knock loudly) so he took it back to the depot. He did not leave a card because he knew we would be picking up our other parcel from the day before....(i was not happy to say the least) anyway i shot off and collected the box opened it in the car and was pleased to see that there was 6 bee's in a small plastic cage attached to the side of the box.
One bee was dead but i could see the queen at least so i shot off home where kim was waiting and because of the time (had to pick alfie up) i got changed into my bee suit while kim sat in the shed with the bee's. The instruction say that we have to put the queen into the hive but we have to leave her in the cage....the bee's that are in the cage have to be removed leaving the queen by herself, the way to do this is to put the cage in a plastic bag empty them all out then coax the queen back into the cage and close it up....which kim managed to brilliantly :)
The next stage is to put the new queen into the hive....the cage has a small tube filled with candy/sugar which the bee's start to eat, this should take a day or 2 for them to get through to where the queen is, because she is giving off pheramones, by the time the bee's get to her they are used to her smell and will accept her as their queen.
The cage is wedged between two of the brood frames which i did (she ended up with honey over the cage) and put back into the hive where we have to leave it for a couple of days before checking that she has got her self free, if not we are to open the cage and let her out so sunday will be when we find out how everything is. One note to point out which i was very impressed about was that kim came over to the hives with me in just PJ's and marigolds whilst i was doing this....she's a braver person than me lol but as she pointed out 'I would not of done it if they were not so docile' :) i forgot to take pictures as so caught up in the moment but will get some later....talk to you all soon l8rs
Couple of pictures b4 i finish this particular post

As you can see here we have workers still going in to the hive bringing pollen with them what was interesting was all pollen going into hive 1 (the above picture) was white, i will have to see if this shows in the stores when we look tomorrow. The next picture made me grin as i kept seeing this happen when so many bee's were flying around...

lots fall over or go head over heels...this one looks tired and has decided to have a sit down lol

Day 9 not so beesy :(

Well i got home today all excited thinking is she here? did she get through her journey ok? has she rested? has Kim made sure she is ok?......only to find out she has not turned up! grrr So still no queen yet :( so I'm sorry folks no news as of yet. I did ring up to find out whats happened as I was more concerned on her welfare as I did not want her being left in her cage with her attendants (5 or 6 worker bee's lol) for to long. The supplier could not help me as it was a different person who spoke to me so i have to ring tomorrow and find out whats going on, so nothing to report at the moment people

Day 8 'a beesy day'

Well things certainly change sometimes lol....no we did not find the queen (we did look again though) but i contacted the queen suppliers who were very apologetic and again said they will provide us with a new queen, the problem was that because their queen came from Greece?? (i never new that lol) and because of the problems with strikes etc. we may not get a new queen until possibly the 11th july....i had no choice obviously and mentioned that because we were new to beekeeping do we just keep an eye on the hive as it has no eggs or brood present....the gentleman went quiet then said if i could hold on he would speak to their main beekeeper. Minutes later i was informed that a queen would be sent special overnight delivery to arrive tomorrow (they pinched a queen that was to be given to someone else lol) to say kim and myself were happy is definetly an under statement :)
I am hoping this will work as Kim and myself opened the queenless hive and have seen that all capped brood has gone now (bee's have emerged) and no new eggs/larvae can be seen. Our new queen will certainly have a busy time ahead of her.
We checked the other hive as well

the metal plate you see here is what is called a queen excluder, it stops the queen from getting to the level above which is called a super, only the worker bee's are small enough to get through the holes which means only honey can be made in the wax combs above not eggs or larvae.

On top of the excluder we place the syrup feeder, syrup is poured into the larger area whist the bee's enter from below at the front, they climb a sort of V shaped ramp to get to the solution which helpfeed them until stores are produced. With the worry of the queenless hive not having foragers in time i do have another syrup feeder which cover the entire top of the excluder and holds a lot more so should help this colony till they forage again.
So until tomorrow when the new queen arrives i will leave you with one last photo

Here we have Steve sporting the very latest seasions fashion outfit, you will notice the khaki top with its wide collar and matching hood, brilliant for those less than sunny afternoons, the veil comes as standard with a variety of sizes for the disconcerning gentleman. Gloves come in a soft and supple goatskin leather with the added bonus of elasticated cuff. Trousers though not matching can be worn with any top and has the added benifit of being able to be tucked into wellies (green being this years black) whether on a street corner, a field or your back garden you can be sure you will always look.....'a plonker' :) l8rs

Day 7 the bee's :)

OK a short post here :) i contacted the suppliers today informing them that we had checked both hives and that we still had not seen one of the queens. The gentleman i spoke to was absolutely fine about it all saying the queen would be relaced but if i could check one more time which i had already said i would do by tomorrow. The only problem we have is that they do not have any queens this week as they will be turning up next week instead....which obviously causes a problem as the longer we leave it the smaller the hive will be as there will be a gap betwen the last lot of workers pupaeting and the new ones that will emerge when the new queen lays her eggs i am off tomorrow so once we come back from the hospital I will have another go at hive 1 before ringing the suppliers up.

Day 6 with the bee's

And i thought yesterday was hot lol....i was worrying what this heat does to the 2 hives especially as they are south facing so have the heat for most of the day...i saw the odd dead bee on the path going up to the hives so was thinking the worst. I heard that we were due storms so wanted to at least check one of the hives if possible and by 6pm both kim and myself decided we could not leave it any longer and opened the busier of the 2 hives up.

even taking out the first frame we could see that the bee's were drawing the comb which means producing wax onto the wax sheets that are in the wooden frames. In the picture below you can see at the bottom left how the wax looks raised...

the next frame even more so, it even had pollen stores within some of the cells if you look at the frame to the left you can see different colours within the cells (red, green etc.) thats the pollen.

Kim was in her element as you can see lol

the next frame was from the original nucleus we recieved and as you can see ...a lot more bee's

This next picture is my favourite as well because you can see the queen on it...see if you can spot her :)

The syrup i had left was gone and in fact the container held about 20 dead bee's not sure why as the other hive did not have that problem? I was going to leave the other hive till tuesday but Kim said we had time so we opened it up, unfortunetly still no sign that a queen is present. There are not as many bee's as in hive 2, there are a lot of drone bee's (males) we saw that they are bringing in pollen, and nectar but not much evidence of brood (larvae, eggs) though there were some newly hatched bee's present. I will ring our supplier up tomorrow letting them know i will check one last time for the queen when i finish work tuesday which means introducing a queen the colony has never met before and hopefully she will be in time to help the hive build up in time for the winter....but lets see what tomorrow brings :) until then l8rs my friends.

Day 5

well it has certainly been a hot one today definetly a lovely day, it looked lovely around the garden

what ever angle you sat

the main thing was that the activity around both hives were very busy. I sat four feet away watching the bee's going in and out again lots of pollen being collected

which as i said has to be a good sign. Tomorrow we will open hive 2 up to check on the queen etc and i will take some more pictures, hive 1 will be left till tuesday as we need to take our time checking that one until then theres not much more we can do. I have been jumping on the internet looking at the honey process but its the equipement and the cost which is off putting though we will need to start collecting soon. Buckets have been ordered for storage of honey but if the honey flow does start we will need a honey extractor though our local club does loan one out but we will get to that hurdle when it arrives. So again not much more to tell or show you yet but within the next few days i will have more pictures and information soon, until then :) l8rs

Day 4 with the Bee's

Weather not great this morning so not much activity first thing, took Kim to the hairdressers then when we got back i thought i would check on the bee's again but Alfie turned up unexpectedly so decided to leave that idea for the moment lol. What i did notice which may be a good sign is that because the afternoon warmed up considerably there was a lot more activity with both hives having bee's going back and forth from the entrances. Hive 2 is still the busiest but what was interesting is that there is pollen being collected for the smaller hive where we think there is no queen...the books say a good sign that a queen is present is that pollen is being collected.....i will check on the bee syrup tomorrow but not the brood frames until Tuesday or Wednesday. Kim popped down there this evening and mentioned that the activity is still the same but also how non aggressive they seemed but that may be they don't feel threatened in anyway though the queens were bought knowing they are a gentle breed :) that may change next year when the rapeseed fields stop flowering as its known bee's get angry when the rapeseed finishes lol. Anyway got to finish this blog as I'm off to an old biker mates 50th birthday for a couple of hours so until then l8rs my friends :)

Day 3 With the Bee's

Well as all of you have read from day 2 both Kim and myself transferred our bee's into their hives but were concerned that one of the hives may not have one of their queens present. I rang the supplier soon as I dropt Kim off to work and told them of our dilemma but they reassured me if the queen is missing it will be replaced but that we had to be 100% sure the queen is not there before sending us a new one as we don't wont 2 queens present in the hive at the same time, i could see their point so we will check the hive and do the usual checks such as eggs, larvae, uncapped brood etc. by Wednesday.

First thing this morning the bee's seemed confused as to how to get in the hive as they kept flying around the top of the hive instaed of at the bottom

By the afternoon both hives were starting to use the right entrance...although hive 2 is definitely the busier of the 2 hives

At least there is activity from both hives but until we open them up we wont be sure whats going on, the only other thing I've noticed is the amount of bee's about up this end of the garden, found one dead one in the house, 2 on the patio and 1 drinking off a wet plant bulb of all things on our garden table lol we watched the flight paths of the bee's at the moment which seems to be that they are going over the chicken house but also back over the garden to get to the clover which is understandable considering how much we have on the back and front garden

 anyway thats it for now at least until tomorrow so will talk to you all l8r :)

Day 2 with the Bee's

Ok i got home from work today to transfer the bee's from the nucleus to their hives, kim was already home so we both went down to the bottom of the garden to get changed into our suits :)

could not get a picture of myself yet lol...oh and thats a hive tool she's waving around, its used to seperate frames that are stuck together. Anyway we smoked and opened the box before checking each frame for our 1st queen but kim found her on the 4th frame so we new we were ok :) i wanted to get a picture but we needed to get them into their new home as quickly as possible

these 2 pictures show the brood frames in place

the smoke is to help the bee's move down the frames so we can put the queen excluder on. Next we put the sugar syrup in the feeder and closed the hive up.
The second box was quieter than the 1st we checked the frames again...and this is whats worrying ...we have not found evidence that a queen was in the box....no queen cage and as kim said no real proof of brood...lots of workers and a lot of drones. The instructions say to leave them now for 5 days so we closed this hive up after feeding  as well and will check on both in a few days. Whats worrying me as we both could not see a queen so i will ring the suppliers tomorrow and see what they say hopefully this will be sorted as if not we have a queenless colony and i'm not sure what to do about that yet...will let you all know friday, so until then l8rs :)

New Guests staying at The Warren :)

AHHHH bloody blogs and Internet, typed up a blog then lost it all so having to start again....
OK starting a new blog early as we have some new permanent guests at the warren...Bee's :) It started back in march when we went on a bee keepers course and basically it went from there :) We aquired the hives first and set them up at the bottom of the garden, these particular hives are called WBC's.

we cut some of the over head branches away before the next stage as so many branches would block out the bee's flight path and it was hard to work around the hives as well.

Well we ordered 2 queens with 5 frames of brood (eggs, larvae, bee's) and some stores for them (food) which eventually turned up today Wednesday 22nd June. Our postman was the one who turned up with 2 boxes of buzzing bee's lol and after chatting with him about our new hobby i brought them through to the garden. The instructions said i had to place them where the hives would be for 24 hours so that the bee's could forage.

so after taking the roofs off the hives both boxes were placed where they should be

Both boxes had flaps cut into them and taped over, so after getting into my suit i let the bee's out...that was interesting as the 1st box just poured out and climbed up the box then started doing circular flights getting their bearing for their new environment (very interesting watching the ariel display) the second box was a bit quieter but eventually both boxes had bee's flying back and forth. Then it rained so i went back indoors till it stopped...when i got back the bee's were flying further afield but what was interesting was the amount of bee's on the path drinking

Since then I've seen a lot of the bee's already visiting flowers (we have a lot of clover on our lawn) and flying over the fence looking for nectar and pollen, it just shows that the instinct to forage is very strong. I went back down the garden around 9:30 pm and sat and watched one of the boxes...there were a small clump of bee's around the entrance with the odd bee still returning from where ever, tomorrow with the help of Kim we will be opening the nucleus to check on the queen and transfer everything into the hive before leaving them food and closing the hive up till next week. So all in all an interesting day :) i will try and remember to get pictures done as we work tomorrow so you can see what happens next...until then l8rs my friends :)