Poison

The first decent day for weeks, so time for a good look through the hives and nucs.  All the queens have been released by their workers and are already laying, that was the good news.  I arrived at the Surfleet apiary at about mid day and although the air was full of bees I noticed one hive was not flying.  On opening the hive it was obvious it had been poisoned.
I have had a hive killed off before like this and it is a dreadful sight, thousands of dead bees on the floor of the hive.  But I noticed there were a few workers still alive, staggering around, and I saw the queen alive, just.  So i quickly put a clean hive complete with drawn frames in place, and shook all the live bees in, sprayed them with sugar water, and placed a feed on top.  Perhaps 80% of a full hive, dead, its a very upsetting experience.  Not to mention having to burn a near full super of honey and frames with capped brood.

One hour later the bees were flying and bringing in pollen, life goes on.

Queens and jars

Batches of new queens continue to arrive.  Hard to believe that they are sent through the post in a jiffy bag, but they are and arrive in what seems perfect condition, new nucleus hives or nucs as they are more commonly known are being formed around these new queens, hopefully ready for collection around late May.

and at last the new jars have been delivered, 354gm or 3/4Lb and they look to be good quality and I managed to get a really good deal, which is good news for all my customers.

The Queens

The first of this years queens arrived early yesterday afternoon, just as the clouds cleared and the sun decided to show its face.

They are sent through the post in cages sealed in with beeswax and are accompanied by 5 or 6 workers.  The workers have to be removed from the cage before the queen can be introduced into the hive.

As usual they are lovely looking queens from this supplier and if they turn out as good as previous years both my customers and me will be happy.

The queens were put back in the cages and put straight into freshly made nucs.  In about 5 weeks these will be ready for collection, by then all the brood and most of the bees will be of this new queen, and if they follow the pattern of previous years the nucs will be heaving when they leave me.

Tool time

Its been a fairly uneventful week as far as the bees are concerned, only just warm enough to forage, not really warm enough to do a lengthy inspection.
So its back to building kit to fulfill this years orders, hives, nucs, frames.  My wife just loves this time of year, the mess, stacks of beekeeping kit in the house, the smell of pva glue, tools strewn all over the place, sheer heaven.
This years new jars should arrive next week, i have decided to move away from the standard type of jars that are generally used for honey and my customers seemed pleased with the samples i gave them.

If the post office gets its act together the first batch of new queens arrive today, they were posted on Wednesday so fingers crossed.

Strong colonies

Did a quick inspection yesterday, weather was borderline but needs must.  Just as well i did, charged queen cells in a couple of hives, 9&10 frames of brood, 2 supers on and filling, its not like any start of the season i have had before

In the centre of the picture above, nicely marked 2011 Queen, 2011 is white, this years queens will be yellow.  And in the picture to the right it is just possible to make out 3/4 day old larvae in the cells bottom right of the frame.