Bees and Hives

 Bees in the garden foraging on marjoram

This is the entrance to Connie hive with a reduced entrance block to prevent robbing from wasps and other bees.

Here you can see all three hives Adele on the far
left, Beatrice on the right and Connie at the back.

The other photos show activity at the entrance to Adele hive.

Crazy chinese bee men

Check this out - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/photos/china-s-bee-cloaking-competition-1310998950-slideshow/beekeeper-lv-waves-stands-bees-partially-covering-body-photo-074348094.html

Colours of pollen

I have been watching the bees going in the hive today - lots of bright yellow pollen (probably Himalayan Balsam)  but also white or very pale grey pollen - quite small amounts.  I was not sure what plant this pollen was from and it did not figure on my pollen colour chart.  I have found a great page on Wikipedia all about pollen colours http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen_source it's really helpful.

We looked into Connie hive on Sunday and saw eggs so all is well in there and the strange collection of bees on the front of Adele hive have now gone - I was beginning to have all sorts of fantasies about losing the queen and the queen being stuck on the entrance to the hive but all seems well.

More news - my next door neighbours have been away and their brother and sister in law have been staying.  Apparently the brother got pursued by bees while trying to mow at the end of the garden and said he thought there was a swarm in one of the trees!  But they never said anything to us and if there was a swarm in their garden it has gone now - shame!

Routine inspection

So this morning Sue (my mentee) and I looked through Adele and Beatrice hives.  The plan was to
a/ Do a routine inspection - eggs, larvae, brood, stores, health and space etc.
b/ clean up all the drone brood brace comb at the bottoms of brood frames
c/ Dust with icing sugar (a varroa preventative measure)
Also to put a reduced entrance block on Adele hive.  I have already put them on Beatrice and Connie hives.

Adele Hive - Bees were very agitated, clouds of them and pinging off our veils plus the smoker took a long time to get going so we didn't have much smoke.  Just got on and did what we needed to do.  Not many eggs, some larvae and lots of capped over brood but the hive is very full and the super is very heavy and it can be usual for the queen to reduce laying at this time of year, so hopefully that is alright.

Cleaned off the drone brood and uncapped some didn't see any varroa on the brood but did see a mite actually on a drone.  Another oops moment as I was removing brace comb the frame slipped and I shook a load of bees onto the ground.  I think I need to join Bill Turnbull's bad beekeepers club.  So by the time we had shut the hive up and I wanted to put on the entrance block the front of the hive was covered with bees trying to get back in.  Just really hope the Queen wasn't one of them!

Dusted with icing sugar before shutting up the hive.

Beatrice - Much calmer, super feels quite heavy.  Bees covering up to 10 frames now.  Shuffled some of the frames to encourage bees to draw out the wax. 

Saw loads of eggs, larvae and capped over brood.  All looking really healthy.  Dusted with icing sugar.

So on Sunday we are hosting a members apiary visit.  We are saving looking in the Connie hive until then - hope some people turn up.

A brilliant idea - oops a big mistake!

I was sorting out some beekeeping stuff and looked into the nuc box we had bought - there was a frame of old wax in there, some pollen and now some wax moth.   I took it out to deal with it and stop the wax moth from spreading. 

Some bees arrived to check the frame out - apparently I hadn't realised there were some stores (honey) on this frame.  Then I had my brilliant idea - I put the frame in the greenhouse then bees would be attracted into the greenhouse and pollinate my tomato plants.  A couple of hours later I saw loads of bees around the back door a couple in the house and loads of bees in the greenhouse.  They sounded like a small swarm!  Apparently there was considerably more honey on this frame than I had realised and it was not very pleasant going out of the back door or being in the garden.  Oops this was my big mistake.

So I put on my bee suit and took the frame up the garden and put it near the hives where I would collect it later after the bees bedtime.  However the bees took alot of convincing and started turning there attention to the plastic chest where the nuc box was.  I still had bees in the green house too and it took them the rest of the day and the next morning to convince themselves that the food source had gone.

Note to self - don't do that again!!