In the name of God, go

Just a short visit yesterday to put on a crown board with two Porter bee escapes in. In a few days that'll clear all the bees out so I can take the supers off and start extracting. Then I can get on with the shook swarm maneouvre and help them tackle their varroa infestation.

Shaken and stirred

Good and bad news about my bees. The regional bee inspector visited again today to see if the EFB has been eradicated. It hasn't. He found two more cases. Thankfully my hive does not have it. But he said it is suffering a serious varroa infestation. Eeeek. It's probably only survived so long because it is so strong. The infestation is causing quite a few cases of deformed wing virus turning up which are just going to proliferate as the colony winds down for the winter. Poor creatures. Anyway the recommended treatment is "EFBshook swarm" which means moving them to fresh comb and destroying the old. Bugger. It means all my careful preparation has almost been for nothing. I need to get on with it too or they will not be strong enough to survive the winter. Poor, poor creatures. I need to get on and order the bee gear so I can do this. The timing is going to be tricky though.

Hot, hot, hot

I paid the colony a visit yesterday and, even though I left it until late in the day, it was still scorching hot. About 30 degrees if the gauge in the car is to be believed.

The bees seem to be doing fine at the moment though the nectar flow has clearly slowed. During the peak times they managed to fill two supers in two weeks but in the last week or so have only half-drawn two brood frames. It does mean that I'm well set up for next year though as they have put away plenty of stores and drawn new comb that I can use to get them going after the winter lull.

I checked through the supers and the brood and everything seems fine. The amount of laying has dropped and there is not as much new brood to come out - a sign that the season is reaching its end. For the next few weeks I'll be doing various manipulations to get the bees off the supers and in to the main brood box so I can extract in August some time.

I'll also be replacing my queen in August but I'll be sorry to lose this one as she has done so well this year - even though she did give me a scare late last year.

Summer season

The first visit for three weeks thanks to holidays, bad weather and general fecklessness. As always I was worried about what they might have got up to. Too little space and they might have swarmed, too much and they might wear themselves out trying to draw too much comb or they might have made queen cells and I'd face difficult decisions about which one to keep.

My fears about what might have happened were compounded by the fact that the three weeks that I've not been to see them were those in which nectar flow, in previous years, has been at its peak. I gave them another super before I went away and added a couple more brood frames just to cope with the expansion and I'm pleased to say that preparation paid off - pretty much.

Both the supers are now full and I've got a brood box pretty full of newly drawn comb much of which has honey in it too. All the frames in that would have been drawn if I'd not been stupid enough to leave the dummy frame in front of the undrawn frames I added just before going away.

I did have a good look this week right down to the base brood box and the colony is incredibly healthy. There is lots of fresh brood ready to come out and all the caps are a lovely amber colour. That seems a bit odd for this time of year - I'd have thought the queen would be scaling back a bit given that all the workers are out foraging but that's not the case. It has to be said that the summer weather has not been great. Sunny days have been matched by cloudy, wet and windy ones. Today there is a lots of grey cloud cover though, so far, the rain has stayed away.

I saw a couple of blind queen cells as I went through the bottom box but didn't have time to look at them because my smoke ran out and the bees were starting to get a bit annoyed.

I also saw a bit more of that muck on the frames. I'll try to take a snap so I can post it here for future reference - I think it might be a relic of the bad weather but I'm not sure. And I saw something running about on the frames - braula I'm guessing because, as far as I know, varroa mites don't do that.

So my plans for the next few weeks.
- Let the bees draw those brood frames and add another so I've got fresh drawn comb ready for next year.
- Add in some more undrawn super frames just to see what happens. They might draw and fill them and, if nothing else, will use some of their honey to make wax.
- Re-queening. A controversial decision this one. The queen I have at the moment has been very good for me but she is getting on a bit (this will be her second year in charge) and next year she could become swarmy or barren early on. Re-queening soon will solve those problems.

Kit I need to order
- brood frames.
- Porter bee escapes.
- covers.

Hot stuff

Another visit today - just to check on them and make sure they are okay and not about to swarm. And, to my untutored eyes, they look okay. The weather in the last week has been changeable to say the least. On a couple of days we have had heavy rain and on others good temperatures. Then on Saturday and Sunday (today) the temperature was in the high 20s. Heaven knows that that is doing to pollen production.

Anyhoo, I checked a few of the frames in the main brood chamber and most of those in the one above the queen excluder. I did see a couple of small queen cells that had been created but none were highly polished inside and all were empty. They do tend to turn up as the bees go about their daily business so I might take a chance and not do those anti-swarm methods as they seem pretty happy at the moment.

I did have a bit of a look around and I saw eggs that had been newly laid. So the queen is still there and laying pretty heavily. There are loads of bees about to emerge. It's such a strong colony. Though on one corner I did see the start of a lump of propolis again. Not sure why that is turning up. These bees have always been keen propolisers but I need to keep an eye on that as the queen avoids the areas where it is thickest. To be honest I'm not sure what it is. I'll try to take a snap and add it to this for future reference.

As you were

So there I was all ready to take some anti-swarm precautions and, it turns out, I need not have worried.

I went along today fully expecting to have to take swift action to stop them swarming and, to my eyes at least, they looked pretty happy. I was worried before looking through the frames for a few reasons. First, my queen is in her second year and the older they get the more likely they are to swarm. Plus she is the daughter I raised myself and offspring, rather than new blood, can be rather more swarmy. And I was a bit late noticing that they did not have much room to expand into. All of which I thought would add up to a recipe for swarming.

But looking through the brood chamber today and I only found three queen cells none of which had an egg in. Plus the bees looked pretty happy - I did mess them around today and they didn't get too upset.

What I did notice was, again, lots of sealed brood. This queen is an absolute stellar layer of eggs. They really seem to be gearing up for the flow in a few weeks time. I did find her this time too and she is below the queen extractor so the mistake I made has not caught me out.

So I didn't have to separate brood from flying bees to trick them that they have swarmed. Of course, doubtless, they will now swarm and catch me out completely.

Having said all this there were a few things I was worried about. I didn't see too many eggs or very young brood. There was some but not a lot. Plus I was not sure that all the brood was entirely healthy. There was one cell in which the larva looked a bit blobby. Finally, they have stashed away a huge amount of pollen - for what I do not know. But it does mean that on some of the frames the brood was a bit spotty. It remains to be seen whether that will cause me any problems.

The queen downstairs

It looks like I got away with it. I went back to see the bees this weekend and it does not look like the queen had chance to get into the super to start laying eggs. I was worried she would have moved up as I forgot to put the queen excluder on when I added that super last week. I checked all the frames in the super and there was no sign of any eggs.

I've now added another brood box between super and main brood box so they should have plenty of room to expand into. I am worried about swarming though - following a chat with a beekeeping friend - and the check this weekend might make me take more action.

Last time I had a good check there was one queen cell with nothing in it but where there is one there could be more. Perhaps the surprise they are going to spring is to up and leave .

Sticky excluders

I popped in to the apiary on Tuesday to put a super on the colony just to give them some space to move in to. My hope is that the bees will move some of their full brood frames of stores in to the super and give the queen more room to lay down below.

And that would have been a fine idea if I had not forgotten to put the queen excluder between super and brood box. What a berk. I went back a few hours later to rectify the mistake but haven't yet had time to see if queenie is trapped above the fold as it were.

I'm planning another visit this weekend to have a look and put on a brood box to give them plenty of room so I can check then. More anon.

Hot stuff

I visited my bees yesterday full of trepidation as the colony did not have the greatest start to the year. It was very light on stores in February and, though I fed them, I wasn't sure if I'd done it quickly enough. Then the weather was very bad, snow at Easter, and I wondered if that had meant they had not had time to get out and forage for the baby bees being born. Finally we've had a report of EFB at the apiary and I feared they might fall victim to that.

Of course, the bees have confounded all my fears. I had a good look yesterday following a week or so of good hot weather and found a colony in rude health. Of the 11 frames, 2.5 were all stores and the rest were brood - most of it capped. I'm going to have to give them lots more space to head off swarming as soon there will be no room for the new emerging brood.

Plus my queen is in her second year so is more prone to swarming than last year - I think I might have to dust off my other gear and start those anti-swarm measures. Initially I think what I'll do is put in a super and let them clean that up and fill it. Then, once I've ordered more gear, I'll put in a fresh box of brood comb. I'm thinking about next year and I need to build up my stocks of that as I had to bin quite a bit of it this year because of wax moth infestation. I'm also thinking that what I don't really need is lots of honey - I have trouble getting rid of it every year so letting them use it to draw comb will use up some of it.

The main flow typically occurs over Wimbledon fortnight which is 23 June - 6 July. If I get them going now they should be well set up to handle that boom in nectar.

A quick visit

this week just to see how they are getting on. The weather continues to be changeable - that's probably the kindest description I can give. For every one day of good, warm weather we have three or four of torrential rain, low temperatures and overcast skies. If I were a bee I'd be getting a bit hacked off with it all.

I did visit this week, on Wednesday, just to remove the empty feeder and slot in a couple more undrawn frames. I managed to pick the five minutes in the day when it wasn't raining but my bees were still pretty hacked off when I opened up the roof and plucked off the feeder.

When I arrived I was a bit worried as they were all lined up in the entrance and at first I thought they had all starved to death. As it turns out they were just waiting for the rain to stop. Given that it rained cats and dogs all day they probably had a long wait.

From what I could see though they look pretty healthy - in that numbers don't look like they are dwindling. Thanks to the bank holiday this weekend is longer than usual so I should have chance to go and have a good look at what they are doing.

Getting going

It is often said that "bees do nothing invariably" which is one way of saying prepare for surprises.

And the first visit to the bees after winter is often the time when they spring one of those surprises. You can take every precaution to set them up well but there are no guarantees that the colony will have made it through the dark days of winter.

I'm glad to report that my bees did make it and look fairly healthy. There were quite a few flying, there were bees on about four or five frames and new brood had been laid. What they did need though was lots of food, they had pretty much used up all their stores. So I started the job of moving them to fresh comb and gave them some stores I'd laid down for them. I hope that'll be enough to keep them going while the weather improves.

Except that the weather has not improved. If anything it has got worse. The year started cold and it has continued. We had snow at Easter, albeit an early Easter, and very low temperatures for days before and afterwards. So on the next visit I gave them some sugar syrup - my stores of honey-filled comb being depleted. If I do nothing this year I need to get more stores ready so they can get going well early next year.

To be honest I'm a bit worried about my bees, I have a horrid feeling that they are on the verge of collapsing and that the bad weather will push them over the edge. They should be out foraging for nectar by now, dining well on all the blossom that is out but high wind, heavy rain and low temperatures will conspire to keep them cooped up. I only hope they have enough to survive this and to feed the colony as its numbers build up. Poor creatures.

I'll feed them again by topping up the syrup feeder and try to have a closer look at them if there is time. At the moment I do not have them on a full spread of combs - I'm missing a couple which is probably no bad thing as I don't want them to spread themselves too thinly as they build up. I'll order the bits I need this week so they are ready for when they start to prosper (fingers crossed).

Other things to do: fumigate the old comb that are left from last year though some of it is so dark that it might be worth burning it and getting them to start again.

I've fed them again. The weather has been lousy- very cold, wet and windy so they have had no chance to get going. I visited today (15 April) and there is a ring of wax around the mesh on the feeder and that is a good sign. I was worried that all the bees were so young that they would not have the ability to produce wax yet.

If the weather is better this weekend I'll do a much more in-depth inspection to see how they are faring. I'm worried that they are not very healthy and labouring to build up their numbers. A friend has lost one colony this year which seemed to be winning its battle to survive and then just died out in a couple of days. Admittedly that was a nuc rather than a full colony but the danger remains.

The start of 2008 stands in sharp contrast to 2007. The early months of last year were warm, dry and not very windy. This year has been the complete opposite.