Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 7100 Location: Morecambe, Lancashire
Posted: Tue Jun 07, 16 6:44 am Post subject: Bee diary - 07/06/2016
Had a very busy weekend being social so wasn't able to get into the bees. I needed to move the nuc into a full sized colony and thin out the Queen cells in the main colony.
I also needed to make up some more foundation frames, no wonder people prefer TBH's no faffing with frame pins and foundation that doesn't want to go in its nice little slots!
I'd got everything done last night and was just about to go start bee-wrangling when there was an almighty crack of thunder and the atmosphere went electric, so I decided to leave them until this morning as thundery weather = very grumpy bees as I've discovered from past experience. I also thought that it would be much cooler and fresher this morning considering we were hitting nearly 26 degree's yesterday evening.
So I've just been down, I'm very hot and clammy now as it's already very warm. I think that I'd more or less timed it with them starting to fly so there was alot of bees about.
The nuc now has a full sized brood chamber to play in and I saw eggs and the Queen working.
The main colony has so much honey on it, it's going to need a couple of supers as soon as the new Queen is laying properly. I broke down the vast amount of Queen cells to two nice big fat ones drawn out in the centre of the comb.
As I'm going away tomorrow until next Monday, I've also weakened them slightly again by pulling off another nuc with Queen cells, there was a superb looking one and a smaller one. If that doesn't do anything I'll just reunite the bee's with one of the other colonies.
I'll put some Ambrosia in the nuc this evening but they've also got a full frame of sealed honey and plenty of pollen. So that should last them.
I'm a little concerned about leaving them closed up in a poly hive for 3 days as it's so warm but I've nowhere to move them that's more than flying distance, they are more than 3ft away from the main colony but near enough to find it. They are in a nice shady spot so I think when I open them up tonight to add Ambrosia, I'll have to open the entrance hole and take the risk.
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