I took advantage of the fine weather yesterday to go to the branch apiary and do the First inspection of the year. It was both urgently needed and at short notice thing so could not put out a notice to invite others.
I was fully expecting to find some of the colonies at some stage of swarming.
I was wrong, not one had made any preparations so that was good news.
The other good news is that I saw all 7 queens and was able to make sure they were all marked an clipped.
On one of the Sunday meetings, we will show members how to mark and clip queens, but we will practice on Drones.
The 7 colonies were at different stages.
One was doing very well and needed a second super to be added to give it space both for the number of bees and also the amount of nectar coming in.
Three were OK, starting to fill the brood box and getting into the super. They will need a second brood box in a week or two.
One of these colonies has a queen from 2021 – so this is her 3rd year. This queen has a number of good characteristics which would make her a good queen to use for queen rearing.
Two were quite weak, about 7 frames of bees and 4 frames of brood.
The last colony was not only weak but had no stores, so I replaced one of the empty frames with a frame feeder to get some syrup into the hive.
The strong colony (#34) was very agitated at being opened and inspected.
If this behaviour does not disappear in the next two weeks, as the weather gets better, then we will have to requeen the colony using eggs from a different queen – the potential breeding queen mentioned above..
For the time being, we will proceed with caution by:
- Only to be inspected/manipulated by a very experienced beekeeper.
- Inspect at the end of a session when most/all members have left the site.
- Don’t open if adjacent allotments have people on them.
- Certainly not to be used for assessments or demos to students/visitors.
- If you are not sure then ask.
Dave