Mid May 2020

Its the 17th May and been a really nice day.  A good day to go through a few hives. The oil seed rape is nearly over around here so time to be taking a good look in the supers. Oil seed rape sets remarkably quickly and by set I mean fondant hard set.

This is a small apiary of mine, only two colonies here at the moment, both very busy.  One has three supers and the other just one.  Two colonies in the same location, starting at about the same strength at the beginning of the season and yet one has three nearly full supers and the other barely started on its first.
The third hive you can see is empty and will be used for artificial swarming if either colony starts to produce queen cells, I keep an empty hive in every apiary for this reason.  I use nucs to collect swarms, so there is always at least one available wherever I am, just in case.