{"id":19589,"date":"2015-07-02T09:07:27","date_gmt":"2015-07-02T08:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=19589"},"modified":"2015-06-30T09:13:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T08:13:59","slug":"busy-bees-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2015\/07\/busy-bees-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Busy Bees"},"content":{"rendered":"

With summer in full swing, the bees are getting busy. I had a phone call the other day about a swarm in Borth so went off to collect it. Catching swarms is one of my favourite things in beekeeping. Not only do I get free bees, but it’s always quite exciting and the onlookers have a good time too, so I hurriedly headed to the location of the swarm<\/p>\n

The Mystery Swarm<\/h2>\n

Unfortunately when I got there, despite looking promising with bees coming and going from a hole in a shed roof, there was nothing to be seen. No swarm, no colony just a few bees coming and going from a hole in shed roof. Weird. I thought that maybe they had congregated there and had since left leaving just a few stragglers.<\/p>\n

As I was about to leave however I was informed by a neighbour that there were now ‘thousands of bees’ in an old caravan. Excitement once again and when I checked it out, there were indeed quite a number of bees coming and going from a broken window in an old caravan. I ventured inside where there was probably a hundred bees buzzing around. I went through every cupboard though and looked in every cibby holes and under the caravan but there was no sign of a swarm. I have no idea what the bees were up to. They were definitely up to something, but there was no swarm for me to catch so I had to leave empty handed.<\/p>\n

Honey Flow<\/h2>\n

I checked on our bees on Monday though and the ones at our house were doing well. I spotted the queen and she is looking good. There was loads of brood, lots of eggs and for the first time ever here at Ynyslas where we are ‘beekeeping on the edge’ we had a properly heavy, difficult to left super of honey.<\/p>\n

\"Another<\/a>

Another Super<\/p><\/div>\n

There were\u00a0also a few queen cups though. There was nothing in them but we’ll have to keep an eye on that as they might be thinking of swarming soon. Swarming is good in one way as we can make increase from it, but with it being almost July it’s getting a little late really:<\/p>\n

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A swarm in May is worth a load of hay<\/strong><\/div>\n
A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon<\/strong><\/div>\n
A swarm in July ain’t worth a fly<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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I put another Super on. closed them up and left them to it. Hopefully if there is a good honey flow at the moment they’ll soon fill that one as well.<\/div>\n
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A Queen Conundrum<\/h2>\n
Things weren’t quite so rosy in our out apiary where really the bees should be doing better. We had split the colony here earlier in the year so had the original colony and a new colony with what should have been a newly mated queen. I checked on them last week with the bee inspector as there has been an outbreak of European Foul Brood in the vicinity so they were checking all bees in the area. This was the first time we’d looked in on the newly re-queened colony and I was pleased to see eggs which should mean that the queen had hatched, was indeed present, had mated and had started laying. The bee inspector agreed that all was looking good. Unfortunately though, a week later and there was no sign of the queen, the brood seemed to be all drone brood and there\u00a0didn’t seem to be any sign of new eggs. Did we have a drone laying queen, had she been killed, had she swarmed and left the hive queenless, or was she just taking a while to get going properly? I\u00a0didn’t have a clue and had no ideas on what to do either. There weren’t any queen cells though and with no eggs I\u00a0didn’t know what the colony would do next. I did think about giving them a frame of eggs from the original colony to see if they would build queen cells on it, but the original colony\u00a0didn’t have any suitable frames.<\/div>\n
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It was all a bit of a conundrum so I closed the hice up and did nothing. probably not the best option as it seems as though they need some intervention but it gives me time to decide what is best, and gives the bees time to maybe sort it out themselves.<\/div>\n
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Battling Varroa<\/h2>\n
The original colony in our out apiary was looking OK though. It had previously been having an issue with a varroa infestation so I had treated it with Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS). This seems to have done the trick. There were lots of dead bees in and around the hive but I think these were ones that had been suffering from the varroa infestation. I removed the MAQS and the\u00a0bees that were there looked healthier than before. They had built up in number\u00a0as well, but still weren’t a massive colony. I didn’t see the queen but I did see eggs and at least one nice full frame of sealed brood that will hatch soon and should further bolster the numbers in the hive. They had some stores as well, but nothing in the super. Essentially it was looking OK and like a fully functioning colony just recovering from a varroa infestation really.<\/div>\n
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