What a week

Been a bit of an up and down week, mostly down, but that leaves a lot of upside.

Had a call from a friends wife, he had been taken to hospital and was worrying about his six colonies.  I had to wait for a decent day, but managed to go through them last weekend. One dead, starvation by the looks of it, two drone layers and three very small colonies. This was their first inspection of the year, so I put them into summer mode for him and left his wife with the notes.

The following Monday/Tuesday a batch of Queens was due to turn up, but didn't, nor Wednesday or any other day.  This was my first order with this supplier and on contacting him to find out what was happening was told,   'Take it up with your local postman or post office distribution depot.'   I have generally found the beekeeping community to be really nice people.  Lesson learned.  As a pensioner, the total loss of a batch of Queens is a big hit for me.  Luckily they were to improve my own stock and were not intended for any of my customers.

Then this weekend, only just warm enough for an inspection, seven days after the last one, Swarm cells in my strongest hive, one of them an enormous thing, already capped.  The Queen was still there though, I would guess just waiting for the weather to improve.  It took me by surprise, and I closed up quickly while I had a think about what to do next.  Although there are capped drone cells in most of my colonies I have not yet seen a drone.  Bees do some maddening things at times.  I was going to breed from this colony this year.  It was my strongest colony last year and produced more honey than any of my others.  I didn't want to waste any early opportunity so in the end I decided it was worth the risk to remove the largest Queen cell along with a few bees and put them in a mini nuc.  All the other Queen cells I broke down and will revisit this colony in a couple of days.  Hopefully with a couple of new frames to work they will settle down.

You spend all Winter worrying about your bees and longing for Spring, and then all hell breaks loose.