hatched queens and assement day 2 - manic

Sheer exhaustion of beekeeping is now kicking in, I do have a couple of great photos and things but will post them maybe later in the week...but need to clear my memory to allow a few more thoughts in.

Thursday 24th June

For once a fairly quiet evening. The most memorable event was at the end of the evening, (no not the beer) but the apidea's, a certain unnamed person was getting so excited everytime that I was watching how high the job was and then I knew the outcome. Five out of the 6 queen's hatched successful which is brilliant as we droped the 6th queen cell so that was no surprise.  Elsewhere in the apiary many attempts where being made to find, and then mark and clip our newly laying queens, although we really should leave them lay for a couple of months before marking and clipping them but then everybody has then own ideas... that is after all beekeepiing.  Also the other main event was the hiving up of the nucs  but this was done in such a way as to prepare the collonies to be ready to run two queens simultaneously, one in the bottom then 3 suppers and then one on the top, will try and explain more later on.

Assessment Week Two

Now I arrived just after 10, and by about 11.30 three swarms had emerged from various hives. Not what you want when the assessor is on the bees. There was an huge swarms from what I think was hive 14 they were just coming out when I arrived and settled beautiful at the bottom of the hawthorn tree. We thought great they will be there for a couple of hours.... oh how wrong you can bee!  Only 1.25 hours after they where out they were off over the fields and into the woods. Oh POOH  all that honey to the pooh bear. At the same time that swarm went out, I vaguely noticed another swarm, just out side the fence, not sure where they came from but think they were a cast swarm from hive 14.  It is a testament to how much noise the first and second swarm made that did not notice them come out.   How the 2nd swarm was from hive two which was a queen which was clipped and marked last Thursday. so all the bees did not go far, they did not as normal, group under the floor and on the ground, she has managed to crawl back in which we confirmed later when we went through them. The surprise was that in hive 2 there were only queen cups with eggs in no royal jelly, NOT ACCORDING TO THE BOOK again.

Anyback to hive 14.. after the assesor has gone home we had some fun going through the hive. We heard and saw 2 queens pipping.. and running loose. Wonderful noise they were also checking out all the other queen cells which were about to hatch.  We managed to help hatch SIX virgin queens into butler queen cages.  It looked to me that the 7 day check was forgotton and the hive was riddled with queen cells, and would most likely have swarmed out, let count the queens

2 swarms

2 virgin queens seen running around and left in there

6 queens harvested

4-5 viable queen cells destroyed

I make that 24 or 25 viable queens.  Wow.... don't know why I bother queen rearing.

Anyway what happened to the harvested queens

1)- run into baby nuc one where the queen had not hatched on Thursday

2&3) -  Our swarm guru took them away with him to use some how

3 & 4) I brought home and made up small nucs and put newspaper over the butler cage now hoping they will go out and mate

5) gave to my beekeeping neighbour who did the same as me.

Whilst at the apiary we briefly checked the babynucs (apedea) one had absconded.. another was all on the front.. maybe waiting the return of the queen. the other seemed happy will wait till Thursday to see if they have mated and are laying. fingers crossed.


UPDATE 
Here are some of the images and videos I promised.

1) successful hatched queens

Queen rearing natures way. How cool in that!

The Huge swarm that go away!

Tintern Apiary: Oxalic Acid

Hi All
Here we go with my first Blog, this hopefully will be a fun way of keeping you all informed of stuff which is happening in the my bee world. Well today was the day for the oxalic acid at my home apiary at Tintern. The important thing with doing the acid is the weather and after an early frost this morning a lovely sunny day, with the temperature at 5 degrees celicus was perfect. So firstly after working out wheather to use the syringe or the tricle bottle off we went with both methods in hand to give it ago.

The acid is to only be used once a year and when there is no brood in the hive, temperature has to be between 3 and 7 and you give 5ml per seem of bees. The aim is to kill the rest of the varroa whist it is on the bees and not hiding in the brood. Interestingly the is only a small percentage of acid the rest is sugar and water, so really just feeding the hive. Read more at this website. Well the first hive would have to be the most powerful of the 8 hives we did today, with an incredible 8 seems of bees to do. should of choose a weaker hive to start. A few came out to say hello, they were eating their candy nicely.

Well all went well and all the hives where done in no time. Somehow or another a bee managed to get up the back and my suit and sting me, that will teach me for not putting on the full suit and only the half suit. A few more bees where flying than I expected.