2020 Beekeeping

             Not the traditional start to my season nor the usual time, it will be another month at least before I would normally consider opening my hives for the first time.  But this week I have had two calls to remove bee colonies, the first from a garden shed, the bees had been there from last summer but unfortunately the shed had been crushed by a tree that had blown over during one of our recent storms. It was out of my area but was able to put them in touch with a nearby beekeeper, so hopefully that all worked out.

The second call, just yesterday, was to a colony that had taken residence in a little owl nest box last summer.  Its the second time I have removed colonies from this box, the last was five years ago.  On both occasions there were fertile little owl eggs in the nest.  Not much a pair of owls can do if bees decide to take over their nest site.

With the front of the box removed you can see the amount of comb and bees.  The box is about a  300mm cube.  There is capped honey and larvae, and eggs.  Cutouts are not my favorite job with bees, its extremely messy and usually causes lots of damage to the colony.  All of the comb in use was moved into a nuc, Some of the comb was empty so that will be melted down.  I strapped the nuc down to a tall pair of steps and left them for a few hours. On returning all but a small number of bees had moved into the nuc which I closed up and moved to one of my apiaries.

The owl box was cleaned up  and the front replaced, hopefully the owls will  return and raise a family.

Just a quick update on the owl box colony from yesterday, this is them today, very active despite its only 10C.  They will move into the hive they are sitting on once the weather improves and they have increased their numbers.