In July last year I wrote about angry bees and fear. I have the fear again.
Hive E is very cross. I think that it may be low on stores. I tried to take the lid off to feed it. They went for me in full attack mode. Buzzng my head and my hands. My legs had at least a dozen bees attached, all trying to sting me.
The National Bee Unit issues alerts. I received an alert today (15th June) about starvation. I received one last year on 30th June. It's getting to be a habit.
I've been anticipating a nectar flow from the Lime trees next to my out apiary but it now looks like that won't happen. I visited the hives this evening and it looks pretty certain that the two newly established colonies (Hives F and G) have very low stores.
I had a look at the hive floors in the out-apiary this morning. In the order which I looked at them:
Hive G: lots more comb built. Small numbers of dropped Varroa.
Hive F: lots more comb built. Large numbers of dropped Varroa.
Hive D: lots of activity - evidence suggesting a large number of emerged brood. Large numbers of dropped Varroa.
Hive E: quieter than C and D. Some evidence of brood emerging
Hive C: lots of activity - evidence suggesting a large number of emerged brood. Relatively small numbers of dropped Varroa.
I went to the visit the bees at my out-apiary this morning. I took the lids off the hives but left the brood area alone (except for Hive F) because the air temperature was cool. Everything was finished by 0630.
A side effect of looking at hives in the early morning is that all their flying bees are still in the hive. These are the bees which are most likely to defend the colony. As a result the bees seemed noticeably more angry when I opened the hives.
All the hives have plenty of space, with the possible exception of E.
I opened all the hives today to look inside. Apart from the issues caused by queen exclusion, everything seems to be going well.
Hive G is building comb and looks healthy.
Hive F is building comb but still dropping lots of Varroa.
Hives C, D and E have space and show evidence of recent comb building.
They're all going well. I still see no evidence that any of these colonies swarmed to produce Hive G. I assume that it was a coincidence. That means that it has not come from an untreated colony.
Today I sorted out the queen excluder issues in Hive D. It wasn't pretty.
I have made mistakes. A surprising proportion have been to do with the use of queen excluders. This time I had left the excluder out and found brood in the super above the capacious brood box.
A week ago I moved the Queen excluder in Hive D. Yesterday I had a look inside. The Queen appears to be in the lower box now. The sealed brood, including Drone brood has mostly hatched out. Some Drones were milling about above the excluder. Drones are too big to fit through an excluder so they were trapped.
Yesterday I was called to my out-apiary because of a swarm. It had settled in a tree right in front of the building where my elevated hives are kept. The swarm was about 10m up the tree; the hives are at a height of about 20m. There was no way to reach the swarm.
I moved the queen excluded in Hive D yesterday. It is now between the brood box and the supers, where it ought to be.
I moved the frames from the super to a fresh super box, shaking each a little in the hope of moving the queen down. She leaves behind plenty of brood on the super frames, including Drone.
Drone can't fit between the bars of a queen excluder so I'm going to have to release them at some point. I'm not sure how to do that...
I put the a swarm from Helen into Hive F on the evening of 2nd May. I had a look at the entrance and the removable hive floor this morning.
The colony appears to be settling in well, despite the colder May weather. There is shed wax on the removable hive floor; there are bees coming and going. It appears that they've been building comb and orienting themselves to their new area. I didn't look for pollen, but I wouldn't expect to see it this soon anyway.