So on Thursday afternoon we found a small window of no rain and attempted to complete our Bailey Comb change on Adele hive.
It has been so wet that the hive was full of bees and no bees out foraging at all so we put the new brood box on a clean floor on the new hive stand and removed the old brood box and old hive stand and replaced the new hive back in its original position because you can only move a bee hive less that a foot or more than a mile. The old hive was full of bees so because every where was so wet and too wet for the bees to fly we decided to shake and brush them onto the crown board of the hive.
We didn't want to leave the old hive out and encourage robbing or for it to start raining and the bees not manage to get into the new hive but I'm not sure now that was the right thing to do because I popped down to the hive tonight to feed them and found loads of bees clinging to the roof of the hive and all in the eke above the crown board.
If think I need to put a super on to give these bees somewhere to go. Perhaps there is not enough space in the one brood box for them all. Perhaps they have been rejected by the other bees as not a part of the hive because they did not enter through the entrance but appeared on the crown board although surely they will have the same smell?
The trouble is the books don't actually tell you how to manage the manipulations they just give you the basic principle and of course things are always much more complicated especially when you are trying to do hive manipulations in these weather conditions.
I am feeding bees in May while the rapeseed is in flower - how bonkers is that??
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