Busy bees

Temperature: 17C
Weather: Warm
Stings: None (but it was a close-run thing)

Four days ago I put a couple of undrawn frames into the top brood box and today they had been pretty much fully drawn. Strangely enough some frames in the lower brood box remain undrawn. So I swapped them over as that will give the queen down below a lot more space in which to lay. I'm hoping that the frames I put upstairs will be drawn by next week as that will give me a good base on which to do my swarm preparation. I'll go the usual route of moving and re-uniting as its worked very well in the past. Image by steveburt1947 via Flickr

I'm not sure why but the bees were a bit restive and lots started flying once I began doing the manipulations. They did soon settle and there was only one that was really annoyed and followed me around a bit. By and large they were as well tempered as ever. They were also annoyed by me having to swap the floor. I realised that I'd put it in the wrong way up.

I saw quite a few drones here and there with a bit of brood too. Nothing too excessive so I don't think I have to worry about anything just yet. I do need to think about changing the queen as her wings are clipped and she's not going to be able to go on a mating flight. I don't want to do it before the main flow (approx 20 June - 3 July) gets under way because their recovery from a change in management could harm their preparation and mean they don't get much out of it.

One way round that is to let the bees raise their new queen during swarm prevention. Then I could use that one as the queen for the whole colony when I re-unite. It's risky though and given the troubles I had with bees for the last few years I'm tempted to avoid it.