I'm taking advantage of the decent weather and painting a load of new poly mating nucs so I think it's time that I tidy up the stands for them too - 'insect friendly' paint being used, of course. I also have some new Maisemore's 6 frame poly nucs to paint. I use Valspar "Oxford Blue' … Continue reading End of season work
Looking good
I inspected all my garden hives and nucs today, and merged some of the mating nucs to make larger colonies for over-wintering. I have to say, I am very happy with the queens I have produced this year, they have all come on really strong, have lovely brood patterns and are very calm. I got … Continue reading Looking good
Planning ahead
After a bit of hive husbandry and swapping frames between a couple of hives and nucs, shaking in some nurse bees etc I have done what I think will be the last grafts for this year. 20 grafts gone into a starter colony, with a frame of soon to emerge brood and some nurse bees … Continue reading Planning ahead
New Queen, New Palace
I moved the nucleus colony with my new breeder queen into a full-sized hive today, it was too hot to wear a bee suit or jacket, so I wore just a hat and face veil. I'm pleased to say that even though my smoker was lit, and on standby, I did not have to use … Continue reading New Queen, New Palace
New Breeder Queen
I had a phone call last week, from Marco Melo of Api-Bees in Kent, offering me a new breeder queen, with a colony of bees in a poly nuc. I was very happy to accept Marco's offer, and we arranged a time for me to collect the nuc from Marco's home in Kent. I tied … Continue reading New Breeder Queen
Queens All Doing Well
I inspected all the hives and nucs in my garden apiary today, all looking good I'm happy to say. The queens from my own queen rearing programme are all doing very well, with nice solid, healthy looking brood pattern. I also introduced 2 new virgin queens into nucs, hopefully they'll be out on their mating … Continue reading Queens All Doing Well
Good all round
I inspected the hives at my out apiaries today, all in good order and the new queens are laying well. I found a new queen in one of the hives at Friars Green and marked her. One of the new queens that I placed into a hive two weeks ago is laying up a storm, … Continue reading Good all round
New Batch of Queens
My latest batch of queens are emerging today - I must've got the timings spot on, as they are emerging within minutes of each other. Some nice lookers in this batch too. They'll all be going into nucs for overwintering.
Introducing Queens
Whenever a new queen is introduced to an existing colony, there is always a chance your worker bees will not accept her, and the result of this could be the death of your new queen - no matter which method of introduction you use. The main things you need to be sure of when introducing … Continue reading Introducing Queens
More Grafting
As well as checking all my out apiaries today, I did the first grafts since my incubator packed up and killed all my queen cells. I brought a frame of young brood home, wrapped in a damp tea towel to keep it from drying out, and chose day old larvae to graft into cell cups. … Continue reading More Grafting