Bee Update

Before I get into this post, let me make a promise to all my readers (yes, all two of you! :))

This is not going to become a bee-dominated blog.

I still intend on keeping this a general allotment/veg growing blog, but it's just that at the moment a lot of our time has been spent on the bees, so it is only natural that the blog updates will reflect that.

Preparing to open the hive

 Last night was an important stage in our beekeeping journey as it was the first inspection of the swarm since they had been put in the hive.

We had hoped to do this on day 7, but the weather was against us with heavy rain and even thunderstorms so it wasn't until day 10 that the conditions were good enough to open the box.

Removing the empty feeder

The sugar syrup which we had given them on day 3 was virtually all gone which was a good first sign that we should see some decent comb production.

First sight of the bees

The crown board was lifted and put to one side and we got our first sighting of the bees.

They had clustered around frames 3, 4 and 5 and looked quite busy.

Starting the inspection

 The inspection had three aims.

Firstly to make sure that the bees were still in the hive and were making comb.

Additional comb made due to wonky foundation

It was obvious from the first frame that Angela lifted that comb was being made.  The large lump of comb you can see on the picture above, and what you will see on subsequent pictures is not a problem with the bees but a problem with the bee keepers.

The frames we used had been stored over winter and had also been bashed around a bit when we had tried to catch a swarm the previous year, and as a result the wax foundation which the bees use to build the comb upon was no longer straight.

Bees will fill any space bigger than 6-9mm with comb, so all they are doing is correcting our mistake.

Checking for stores

 The second goal of the inspection was to check that the bees were laying down stores of pollen and nectar.

Several of the cells had been filled with a reddish pollen, but there wasn't much evidence of nectar as yet, but as this was a very new swarm it's not too much of a concern at the moment.

Looking for the Queen

 The third and most important part of the inspection was to look for evidence of the Queen.

More strange comb

 We were looking for signs that the Queen was laying eggs, but if we managed to see her as well that would have been a bonus.

Still no sign of the queen

Unfortunately we didn't spot her, nor could we see any evidence of her laying eggs in any of the empty cells.

Although this was a bit of a set back there could be a few explanations - the Queen could be a virgin Queen who has yet to be mated - as long as she rises to mate before she is 41 days old there will be no problems, and as we have only had the swarm for 10 days we have about 3-4 weeks of that timescale left.

The Queen might be laying on the underside of some of the strange comb formations.

We might have accidentally killed the Queen during the capture of the swarm, or she may have died during the last week.

This is the worst case, but the bees were so docile during the inspection that we felt this to be unlikely.

If we did have no Queen we would then be reliant upon Diane having a spare frame from one of her hives which had brood on.

This frame would be put into our hive, and the workers, recognising that there was no queen present, would select one of the developing brood and extend the cell to make it a queen cell and create their own new Queen.

Adding more syrup

At this point there was no need to keep the hive open any longer so the feeder was put back on top and the bees were given another feed of sugar syrup.

This should be the last time we will need to feed them as they have started to forage for themselves so should now become self sufficient.

We will inspect the hive again this weekend to see if there is any change, and hopefully we will start to see some brood cells which will indicate that the Queen is present and laying.