31st August Checked the food level

All hives checked today.  Almost all the syrup has been taken down into the hives.  I am out of sugar so will buy some more at Bookers tomorrow and I will return on Thursday and feed them some more.

We did well at the Honey show over the weekend.  Won 10 first places, and 9 second places.  We are very pleased with the results.

29th August Feeding of the hives

Nicola and I fed all the hives a sugar syrup.

Feeding hive 3

Feeding Hive 5

19th August Treated the hives for varroa.

A couple of operations carried out today. 

The empty super was returned to hive 1 so the bees could clean it out. 

Hive 3 (the colony from Houghton Grange) was found to be queenless.  There were 3 emergency queen cells.  One of these was transfered to hive 5 in exchange for a frame of stores.

Hive 5 The queen has turned drone layer.  This means the queen has run out of sperm and the bees did not react to it in time.  A Queen cell has been transfered from hive 3.

Hives Hives 1 and 2 have been treated for varroa.  3 and 5 have been left alone until after the queen has been born and mated.

Hive 4 is still a very weak colony and has not been treated.  There is no natural mite drop so again I am going to leave them alone for now.

12th August Honey Harvest

Today we took the honey super off Hive 1.  When extracted there was 11 pound of clear light honey.

Here you can see the 10 frames in the extractor.  When the handle is turned the honey flyes out and drains to the bottom of the extractor.

Here you can see the honey draining out of the extractor into a honey bucket.  It is then put in a warming cabinet, when warm it will be filtered and put in jars.  Half will go to the staff at Wood Green, the other half I will keep to put in the Honey show, then sell to pay for some of the costs of the wax, sugar and drugs used in the hives this year.

6th August 2010 Collect New Residents

Houghton Grange

I have been busy over the last couple of weeks and been a bit slow in updating.  Judith and I were asked to remove some bees from inside the roof at Houghton Grange, near St. Ives.  It is a listed building that is about to have some work done on it.  But they needed the bees removing first.  Luckily, there is scffolding all over the building so we had relatively easy access.  Although we could see the bees from inside, they could not be reached so we had the assisance of a couple of builders to remove the roof.

Removing the tiles.  All the tiles had to be kept to be replaced as this is a grade 2 listed building.

Sawing throught the planks below the tiles.

And here is the colony ready to be cut out of the roof.  Unfortunately there are no pictures of the actual operation as I was up to my neck in honey, wax and bees.  It took a couple of hours to cut the comb out and crimp it into a Hive 3 (empty since the last colony died out).

This was the roof space after the bees had been removed, just before the planks were replaced.

And finally the hive on the roof.  It was left there for a couple of days for the bees to get used to the new home before it was moved on the Sunday evening to Wood Green Animal Shelter.

Inspection 1st Aug

Did a short inspection of the hives with my daughter Nicky Jane. 

Hive 1 has still not moved into the super. 
Hive 2 has still got about a frames worth of space (one side of two frames are still to be drawn). 
Hive 3 is now empty other than a couple of wasps.  The frames have all been cleaned out. 
Did not look at Hive 4. 
Hive 5 moved closer to the hive stand.  Still not moved into the super.