Sunday July 14th 2024
When you visit your apiary at this time of year you are looking for the following:
*Are there any signs of disease - signs of AFB or EFB or CBPV?
*Are there signs of stress - chalk brood, sac brood?
*Can you see the queen - if not are there signs that she is there i.e. eggs or young larvae?
*Is the laying pattern a healthy one - not 'pepper pot brood'?
*Is there enough space for a colony which may still be expanding?
*Are there any queen cells and if so then what state are they in?
*Are there enough stores if we get a week of wet weather when foragers cannot get out?
*Is there enough space if foragers can get out and they need to store more honey?
and finally
*Is there any capped honey we can consider harvesting?
It is with all these questions in mind that we carried out the inspection at the Association Apiary on Sunday. It was a perfect afternoon where the sun was shining but it was not too hot. Everything looks better on a sunny day and it also helps when you are looking for eggs in the bottom of the cell.
It also helps that the thunder storms of the previous day had long since moved on. One of those present had inspected his bees the previous day and the bees were not happy to be disturbed when there was thunder about. Well let's face it how would you react if your builders turned up to remove your roof when there were storms about?
Anyway kitted up we set to inspecting the hives.
The WBC hives we were advised did not need inspecting and so left them alone. For that we were grateful as inspecting WBC hives is not something any of us had done previously. OK the only difference is the removal of the lifts but it is an extra complication - especially if you have never done it before.
Hive One was inspected first and we were pleased to see that the virgin queen we saw at a previous inspection has been out and was now a fertile queen and there were four frames of brood in all stages. There were plenty of stores and room for more so this colony is doing well. We had wondered last time whether more storage space would be required but the mixed weather we have been having and the mixed weather forecast for the coming week suggested to leave it as it is.
Hive Two was the one that did suffer from Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus at the start of the year but seems to have fully recovered. The queen was seen - that yellow dot again. There were five frames of brood in all stages and again plenty of stores as well as plenty of space. One observation we did make was that the bees were very skittish darting about all over the frames rather than getting on with their chores. This is probably a genetic thing and we will have to consider requeening next year. We actually inspected this last as there is less risk of passing on any lingering disease to the other hives.
The Super box was inspected next . In this one we could not find the queen and there were six frames of brood but mainly drone brood. This you can identify by the cells being more domed when capped as the drones are bigger than the workers. The predominance of drone brood suggests a poorly fertilised queen.
There was one queen cell which was loaded. We decided to leave this as the colony is not in a good state if it is producing drones not workers. We did wonder whether that might be a drone in the queen cell and thus we would get a king instead of a queen! This is something to read up about but in the meantime we will let nature take its course.
At one point one of our members realised that the bee he was watching closely was inside his veil and not outside. When this happens it is not good. Some say squash the bee immediately and others say let it out calmly. In this case we did the latter and all was well.
Hive Three was an easy one to check as was hive Three A. In both hives we saw the queen. A marked queen does make finding her so much easier though a yellow spot is not quite so easy to see when workers are bring in saddlebags of yellow pollen. Both hives had brood in all stages and plenty of stores as well as plenty of space. If only bee keeping was always this easy!
All in all this was a pleasant afternoon with the bees we took about 90 minutes to do the inspections. For those with less experience of bees this is an ideal opportunity to work with experienced beekeepers and get a feel for beekeeping.