After all the excitement of re-capturing the swarm that had run away from Metropolis, I had to check the 'Other' hive, later that same day. Needed a cup of tea after all that.. I last checked at the start of winter, end of May, at which time it had just been fed with 8 kilos of sugar to get it through winter, having been on the edge of stravation where they had been in Buxton.
I left them with 2 boxes, and had taken out the queen excluder. There was probably only one box worth of bees there at most, over the two boxes. Now it was filling up.
Metropolis on the left, having just swarmed. Very quiet, I'm not going to open it for a while, or at least until I get a good day for it, I want to see if there is a new queen in there or not...
The 'Other'
The lid was glued down with lots of burr comb, need to get a hive mat. I scraped all this out and have been snacking on honeycomb nectar, none of it is close to being capped honey yet, still very tasty, not as sweet.
Top of the lid.... they're freestylin in there....
I didn't take any photos for the rest of the inspection, as things got very sticky. Lots of healthy bees. No sign of disease. No sign of swarm cells. Top box is very heavy, full of mostly honey with some brood mixed through it. Hard to lift the top box, it was so unexpectedly heavy.
The bottom box also had some honey and lots of brood and grubs. I didn't see the queen, and I didn't really look hard enough for eggs, but I was in a rush, it was cooling down and the bees were a bit tetchy, having not seen me for a while. Put it back together with a queen excluder, not 100% that the queen is in the bottom, I need to check this next time .
The yard after a long day playing with bees...
The 'Other' girls getting their house back in order after my interruption.
No comments:
Post a Comment