Today, inspired by the glorious weather, we completed our first full inspection of 2021.
The temperature of the apiary was 21°C and sunny at the apiary so perfect weather for our first inspection.
First, we went into Kate as Greg has some misgivings about her strength. Straight away we saw she only had 4 seams of bees and there were lots of dead bees (bottom left) on the floor of the hive. While it is not unexpected to lose some bees the amount was disconcerting.
Kate
Weak strength
Quiet temperament
1 brood box - 11 frames
4 seams of bees
3 frames of stores
2 frames of brood (all stages)
6 foundation frames
No signs of varroa
Didn't see the queen
Gave fondant
We noticed that the brood had become isolated from the stores. This may have been because the bee cluster, during winter, was so small that they were unable to generate enough heat to allow them to break formation to collect food from the outer frames. We, therefore, removed the empty frames that separated them and made the brood more central in the hive.
We put the fondant back over the brood to ensure that the bees that are keeping the brood warm can still access food if the weather becomes cold again. As the colony is so small after winter we are considering putting them in a nuc to allow them to stay warmer by removing excess space but this is something we will do in two weeks' time if we decide to go for it.
While we saw all stages of brood - which is great and means the queen is laying - we didn't see her majesty. While this is disappointing, when it gets warmer more regularly we'll take a bit more time to find her but right now we just wanted to quickly assess the health of the colony after winter and check for any preparations the bees are making to swarm (luckily no sign of that!)Then we moved on to Laura, who was looking mighty fine! (top right)
Laura
Strong strength
Quiet temperament
1.5 brood boxes - 9 seams
7 frames of stores
2 frames of brood (all stages)
12 foundation frames
No signs of varroa
Didn't see the queen
Fed sugar syrup
As soon as we took off the roof of the hive we saw just how full she was and the amount of winter brace comb she had (center right) made to access the fondant we had put on over winter. We cleared this away and noticed that this was filled with eggs and brood (bottom right) which was very strange as you'd expect the queen to be laying in the super below.
First, we decided to check the under super to see what was in this as if it was full of brood/stores as this would explain why she was laying in the brace comb. It was however completely empty. This is great as it was full of stores when we put it on and therefore the bees have used all of this up to survive the winter - exactly as we intended.
We then took the super off to inspect the brood box which was full of bees, brood and vast amounts of stores. This made us think that Laura had been laying in the top of the hive because it was much warmer than the super below and she had been running out of space here. We, therefore, put on another brood box above to encourage her to carry on laying and to provide enough room for more brood and stores.
One negative is that as we are relatively new beekeepers we only have a finite amount of drawn-out comb. We've therefore had to put the majority of undrawn frames on top of the brood box so we've fed Laura sugar syrup to encourage her to draw these out for us.
In our next inspection we'll check to see if Laura and her colony are drawing these out otherwise we'll have to remove it as the space will be too large for them to keep warm.
We are hoping that soon Kate will grow in strength and for Laura to fill both brood boxes full of bees as Greg insists he wants to try his hand at queen rearing this year. Joining us this weekend at the new apiary are two over-wintered colonies which should provide us with honey this season - very exciting!
As usual, watch this space for more updates which, now that we've completed our first inspection and the weather is warming up, should be more regular. Really looking forward to getting this new season underway!
Hozzászólások