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.