Weekly Inspection 12th April

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Weather: very warm for early April. Temperatures between 16°C – 20°C and set to continue. Still chilly in the evening but bees are making the best of it. Lots of foragers out flying.

Forage: Qunice, pear, laurel and blackthorn.

Will need to decide on splits in the next 2 weeks, especially with the 3 new queens arriving in May. As I want to increase the number of colonies I think I’ll do a vertical split on one of the colonies and nuc splits on at least one other colony.

Put the bait hive out earlier in the week and heard today, 12th April, of the first swarm callout in the area.

Colony Updates Over Winter In 2025

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Winter Snowdrops Out

I’ll post updates to the intermittent activity I undertake with the colonies over Winter. The main items will be feeding with fondant and checking for woodpeckers that have visited in the past.

The weather in November and December was mild and the bees were flying on the warmer days until mid-November. January has started off very cold and wet.

  • 16th January – hefted the hives and lifted the crownboards. Looks like Honeydew & Indigo are both  small, Indigo just 2 seams of bees, and would be surprised to see it survive despite having plenty of stores. Decided to feed 0.5Kg slabs of Ambrosia fondant to 4 of the 7. Blue, Flax, Honeydew and Indigo.
  • 25th January – Checked a week later and see that Flax has already finished the Ambrosia, while Blue hasn’t touched theirs.
  • 31st January – added 300g more fondant to Flax.
  • 2nd February – Looked at Honeydew and Indigo & only Indigo has touched the Ambrosia.

  • 4th February – Temperatures slightly higher 8ºC – 9ºC and bees are flying and bringing in pollen (crocus?). Jade is a dead out, seems to have dwindled with the remaining bees dead on floor and frame, no brood so could be due to poorly mated queen. Hive activity rankings: Flax, Cyan, Blue and then Aqua
  • 25th February – Weather warming up to 9ºC – 11ºC but very rainy. Fed all colonies: Flax, Cyan, Blue with 1Kg of Ambrosia, Honeydew & Indigo with 1/2Kg Ambrosia and Aqua with fondant.

Honey Packaged Up for Sale

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Weekly Inspection 4th August

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Weather: very warm with temperatures 22°C to 26°C. Set to continue fine.

Forage: Rosebay Willowherb finishing, golden rod, hibiscus, Himalayan Balsam and Rubeckia

Activity looks to be slowing down, not much new stores coming into the supers. Will start to inspect fortnightly rather than weekly.

Apidea has a queen but no eggs and very  few bees.

 

 

Weekly Inspection – 27th July

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weather: temperatures between 20°C – 22°C. Much warmer and sunnier. Set to continue for the next 10 days.

Forage: continues with Ragwort, Himalayan Balsam,  Rosebay Willowherb and Veronica

Colonies seem to be doing much better and there is still nectar coming in. The frames in the supers are starting to be capped, but I need to rearrange the frames to ensure that all get drawn out.

The Apidea that I made up from Flax has a queen that has emerged but very few bees. So decided to top up with more bees from Flax. They have drawn two of the frames and stored some nectar, Probably too early for the Queen to have mated

 

 

Weekly Inspection – 18th July

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Weather: Temperatures 17ºC -22ºC but with lots of rain and heavy showers most days. Set to improve.

Forage: Ragwort, Buddleia, Rosebay Willowherb, Himalayan Balsam, and Golden Rod just starting.

Not sure what’s happening with the Flax colony. There were sealed QCs, torn down QCs and 1 charged cell. But there also appears to be eggs and larvae. The sealed QCs don’t look to be viable – candled one and it had a small undeveloped larva. However, decided to make up and Apidea with the other one. Left bees in for 2 days, but most have left and probably returned back to Flax. So perhaps the Buckfast queen is still present but took time to come into lay?

Supers being worked and starting to get filled up.

Weekly inspection – 10th July

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Weather: changeable with showers, temperatures 17°C to 20°C.

Forage: Buddleia, Ragwort, Rosebay Willowherb and privet

The quen from Flax that I banked and stored in cyan  perished. Not sure if she starved or was killed, but from the state of her looks to have happened early on..

Weekly Inspection 30th June

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Weather: temperatures have been between 20°C – 22°C. Bees very busy, but the forecast is for much more changeable weather with quite a few showers. Temperatures set to go down into the late teens.

Forage: Buddleia, Privet just starting, Ragwort, RoseBay Willowherb, bramble looks to be finishing.

Most of the colonies seem to be bringing in plenty of stores . New Buckfast queens arrived on 2nd July and so some of the colonies were manipulated to potentially accommodate being re-queened. I couldn’t find a queen in the Indigo colony and so decided to leave alone. This meant that I changed plan and removed the queen from Flax and banked her before introducing one of the new Buckfast queens. If indigo doesn’t have a queen I’ll put the old queen (now banked) back.

Bees at home are very aggressive at the moment and starting to come at me even when not close to the hives. Hopefully this behaviour settles down otherwise I’ll remove colonies to the river Mole apiary.

Weekly Inspection – 24th June

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Weather: really improved with temperatures climbing to 20°C – 23°C. Set to continue with a mini heatwave forecast for the coming week.

Forage: Bramble, rosebay Willowherb, Ragwort and Buddleia just beginning. Checking my forage notes from last year season looks to be about 10 days ahead.

Main flow has really started with the main colonies adding a super in just a week. Not sure how long it will last with the forage being 10 days in advance of last year.

Flax colony looks to have hatched out a Queen but there were still 2 sealed Queen cells, so squished one and put one in an Apidea with Bees also from Flax.

Thursday, 27th – inspected River Mole colonies. Queen cells in Indigo so needed to make a nuc split (now called Jade) with queen from Indigo.

Weekly Inspection – June 16th

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Visiting Thyme

Weather: some heavy showers, with temperatures between 16°C to 18°C. Forecast is for fine weather and temperatures to rise in the coming week.

Forage: bramble, elderflower, cow parsley, and lime.

Looks like the Bees in the river Mole apiary are bringing in some stores, but still slow in the home apiary colonies. Decided that the swarm I caught in the bait hive was queenless with no sign of a queen or eggs after two weeks. So united on the 18th with the original queen from Flax, which was in a nuc – Indigo.

Looks like the Buckfast Queens I’ve ordered will be delayed for three weeks because of bad weather so will need to reassess which colonies I re-queen and whether I still go for a split with Aqua..