Droning on

Weather. Cloudy and bright
Temperature: 15C
Stings: None

I managed to do a quick visit and inspection today on a day when the weather was not actually awful. It threatened rain but a drop didn't fall during the day.

I was glad I got a chance to open up the hive as there's been a nagging problem I've needed to solve and now it's done. During the last inspection I put the queen downstairs in a new brood box along with a load of fresh, drawn comb to give them some space to expand into.

I put in a queen excluder to ensure she didn't migrate back upstairs. It was only a quick visit, thanks to the threatening rain, so I didn't have chance to shake the bees into that lower box. That's a problem as all the drone brood was upstairs and the excluder meant that they couldn't get out.

As soon as I lifted the roof I knew it was going to be fun opening up the hive. I've got a glass quilt on the top so as soon as the light hit the comb the drones started clustering under it. There were loads of them. I lifted the quilt and was immediately surrounded by a big cloud of annoyed drones. Really annoyed drones and it was exhilirating to stand in the middle of it as they buzzed around. The noise was incredible. A much deeper tone than the usual beehive hum. 

They took ages to disperse and I used the time to get the old frame the queen was on out of the lower brood box and put it upstairs. When all the brood has gone, I'll swap the frames out for fresh, undrawn comb to get them preparing for next year.

They seem to be doing well at the moment, though I might feed them at the weekend just to make sure. The weather has been so bad that they can't have built up the usual amount of stores they'll have at this time of year.