THURSDAY 10TH JUNE
Weekly Inspections
This was a horrid evening, but not wet, just cold. So the choice was given to the leaders as to whether the hives where opened or not and the decision was to open only hives we really needed to check. The outcome was that to my surprise we did four splits. Hives 14, 8, 4, & 20. The Split on 8 was moved to a new site because it is a little high to work when there is a double brood and two supers.
Queen Rearing
First job is to set up the receiving rearing colony, which is hive 1; arriving as early as possible we go through the collony and knock down any queen cells, insert the cloake board and open the rear entrance, and leave a gap in the top middle of the hive where we will insert our prospective queen cells later.
The Second job was to check the jenter cage from hive 10 hoping that the queen had stayed and laid some eggs, so at the same time the weekly inspection was done. Unfortunately the queen had not laid in the jenter, but this was not unexpected; due to the trial nature that was used the previous Sunday. So undaunted, we temporarily stole a frame of eggs, and lave, so that we could have a go at grafting with the Chinese grafting tool. What we were looking for as the smallest lava possible, so that you can almost only see them with a manginfy glass, with lots of royal jelly and just in the "c" shape. Once we have selected a possible cell, we carefully slide under the back edge of the "c" of the lave making sure we do not roll the lave and put it on the tool; (not that easy). Sometimes we found it eaiser to cut away the edge of the cell to allow better access. This done we careful place the lave on the cup of the jenter and put it together with the other three parts. Repeat 10 times... allowing other to have ago. Then insert into hive 1. Finally return the frame of eggs to hive 10 as we are sentimental and don't like to kill bee babies.
Sunday 13th June
General work
Today was mainly another training day, for those taking their Basic Assessment in the following weeks. However we did take the opportunity to do a couple of jobs. All hives which were split were given their initially check and knocked down all but one queen cell. (hopefully the one we decided to leave last Thursday) This is a slight change from our normal methods as following a consultation with "snelgrove" book, he suggests checking the hive after 5 & 10 days for queen cells after a split, previously we had only done 7 days. Also some feeding was done; on the new nucs, and topped up on the swarms.
Queen rearing
Just to build the tention to an extreme level we left checking the queen cells until last. I was feeling almost so nervous that I was glad in the end when J. said he would look. What a relief we had SIX accepted and I was over the moon. As one of the cell had fallen down, I think we had 6 out of 9 which I make 66% not bad at all for a first effort. That discovered we let the get on with it. But we did make the colony queen right again by removing the cloake board.
Thursday 17th June
Weekly inspections
Well in complete contrast to the previous Thursday the weather was almost perfect, well for me as a beekeeper it was because I would not swelter in the heat, and it was warm enough for the bees as well.
The session began with a surprise when one of the members turned up saying "I just caught a swarm which is in the back of the car" So this was the first job, to hive a swarm... I did not really see what was going on, but I got the impression that they were walked into the hive. This is done by putting a board in front of the hive sloping up to the entrance and then dumping all the bees on the board and they all just walked calmly into the hive. An absolutely fascinating watch, well worth doing just for the sheer amazing seen.
Today was the day to check some of the hives that were split almost a month ago to see if their new queens were laying. Well I think out of the 5 original splits 2 have perfect laying queens, 2 we need to leave for one more week, and finally we come to hive 6 which is a slight mystery as for the pasts couple of weeks eggs had been found but nothing much was developing into lava and capped brood. Well this week I saw that there were lava (not sure about capped was not there). But I was told that there were queen cells in the centre as well so the theory is that the bees don't like their boss and there for are going to supersede her.
The Langstroth now has a laying queen, which is unmarked so it looks like the new queen has ruled the roost. An effort was made to find her so she could be marked, but this failed. I did actually see her the Sunday before but at that time there were no eggs, so she was not ready to be marked. We will nab her soon and mark her. Hive 2 which has already supersesed now has a laying queen called "Alice" and she was marked and clipped.
Queen Rearing
Today we added the hair rollers or queen guards if you prefer. The aim of this is a precaution against one queen hatching early and then going and killing all the other queens. This was done quickly with just one minor miss-hap of the one queen cell not wanting to stick back to the frame so if fell of a couple of times, which just may have been enough to dislodge the queen lava from it food let hope not.
Well that enough for now, off to do some more bee-keeping today & tomorrow.
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