Yesterday we brought our inspection forward a day so that my mum, who was up visiting, could come and see the little buzzers. She was very excited! We got her sorted with a smoker and she even had a go at taking out a couple of frames, identifying different stages of brood and the difference between drones and workers.
My stepdad, Tim, doesn't really like bees that much but he did bring his camera with a super long lens to take some professional photos for us at a distance. The majority of the photos in this post are taken by him and you can find his other work here.
First, we inspected the nuc and saw ...
Eggs! Horray!
Nuc
Weak strength
Quiet temperament
1 brood box - 6 frames
4 frames of bees
2 frames of brood (eggs)
2 frames of stores
2 foundation frames
Actions Taken: Next time we inspect we need to treat the colony (and all the others) for Varroa and try to find and mark the queen.
We are thrilled that we've managed to requeen the nuc. We have named her FeeBee in honor of my mum who was there when we discovered it had been successfully re-queened. Next, we inspected Kate to see how she was getting on.
Kate
Weak-moderate strength
Calm temperament
1 brood box - 11 frames
6 frames of bees
3 frames of brood (all stages)
2 frames of stores
4 foundation frames
Actions Taken: We saw Kate but her mark had been cleaned off by the workers, as we were too eager to put her back in the hive during the last inspection. Next time we need to mark her and give her a couple of minutes to dry before we put her back in to avoid the mark being cleaned off.
Also, there were a few wasps flying around. This is problematic as they can attack the hive as they want access to the honey. One or two wasps isn't really a problem for a strong hive as they will just ball, kill or fight off the wasps. (Balling is when workers surround the intruder and increase its body temperature so that it cooks the intruder alive! Tasty!)
That being said, if Kate doesn't grow in strength soon and more wasps come the wasps could kill all the guard bees and steal their precious winter stores. (Guard bees are the workers that stand watch at the entrance to the hive, they are the ones that are likely to fly out and sting any approaching 'threats'/beekeepers). There's not much we can do about it at the moment other than lay some traps (see opposite) which we intend to do soon.
On the subject of increasing Kate's honey stores for over winter, even though we had put a feeder on last week there was no sign of any bees using it ... we'll keep an eye on this as we really want her to build up her stores ready for winter. Greg has some plans which include moving some foundation frames from the edges into the centre to encourage them to be drawn and filled. At this stage I think a super is unlikely but Greg is ever the optimist. If I am right and the colony does not build up enough for a super, we will have to continue feeding them every couple of weeks over winter as they won't have enough stores to last them. This isn't ideal as we will have to open the roof to do this, letting out any heat the bees have built up to stay warm. They will have to use even more energy to bring the hive back up to 32°C which is their preferred temperature.
Finally, Laura:
Laura
Strong strength
Calm temperament
1.5 brood box - 11 + 11 frames
Didn't see Laura
20 frames of bees
10 frames of brood (all stages)
5 frames of stores
4 foundation frames in the super (some beginning to be drawn)
Actions Taken: N/A All in all, we're thrilled that we've managed to get all three colonies queenright ready for winter. (Queenright is the term used for a colony that has a successfully laying queen.) The main aim of the game now is to get them all properly treated for Varroa, keep on top of any diseases and build them up ready for winter.
Greg and I would just like to take the opportunity to say thank you to everybody who is reading, returning to the blog every week and supporting us along the way. Although we find everything super interesting it is hard to know what to go into more detail about. If you'd like more information on anything like diseases, overwintering, feeding, equipment or have any other topics you'd like us to delve into please do let us know in the comments or via other social media. We'd love to hear from you and find out what you think.
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