The bees are not doing too well this year.  Up until a couple of weeks ago we were still feeding them.  Judith and Jason picked up a swarm just outside the appiary when the weather turned fine.  Jason saw the marked queen as they were putting the swarm in a hive.  She was the wrong colour to be one of out queens swarming so they must have flown in.  A couple of days later one of our colonies did swarm.  I picked them up and moved them out to Stukeley.

We are back to 5 colonies in the apiary but only the swarm appears to be queenright.  Not very good for training.  We had a training session last Monday, we ended up moving to Stukeley so the students could see breeding bees.  We have another session scheduled for tomorrow but the weather does not look too good, that might have to be called off.  I aim to get a super on the swarm in the morning if the waether is fine enough.

Spring 2012

Well the season has started well.  We had one colony die on us before Christmas but all the others came through OK.  We managed to inspect then in the week of good weather at the end of March.  The colony in hive one that I did not expect to survive is the strongest in the apiary.  Just goes to show you can't predict these things.

Weather is too cold this week to inspect, so will leave them until after Easter.  I have a new colony ready to replace the one that died over winter, but need to get the hive cleaned and disinfected first.  The new colony is not very strong yet so I might leave it at its winter home for a few more weeks,  It is right beside a field of oil seed rape.  I hope that will help it build up.

I did not get the change to update this site much last year, I intend to keep things up to date this year.

Chris