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