bad weather delays things - queen rearing started

Well the last two Thursdays have been something of a wash out / freeze out with it being to cold to do our full inspections.  I am almost certain those bees are all busy building queen cells...I wonder how many sealed cells there will be when we finally get in ? Anyway the focus has moved on to hive 8 our queen rearing hive.

Jim and Lee did the following work last Tuesday 4th May

hive #8 - rearranged the colony in readiness for cell raising into new boxes, with the open brood in the top box, the queen in the bottom, and the cloake board (without insert) between the boxes. The entrance to the bottom box is closed, and the bees use the entrance in the cloake board. Contact feeder put on.

Today 6th May, I decided on Hive 6 to be the grandmother colony, as it is a good strong queen. Therefore we have put the Jenter (image right in two parts) in ready for the bees to clean, and on Sunday we will pop the queen in there to lay us some nice eggs. When popping in the jenter i noticed, on the only frame of brood which was taken out, that there was a queen cell.... so that had to be destroyed shame as it would be good to split them, but they will build more.



So when the weather final improves we will be doing lots of things, shook swarms, splits, queen rearing, clean boxes,...plus plus.... and and by the way apparently Nuc A  (the third) is doing well, so the queen from no. 7 may not be a dud then.... also about the merge, again quote from Jim

merging of hive#2 & hive#7 didn't really go to plan. The top box #7 has so few bees they stayed put. We have reduced the colony to one new box and clean floor as #2.