It was a very sunny and warm afternoon at the apiary. The thistles are now going over but there were still a lot of insects flying around the patch. We are now down to 6 hives.
What was a Nuke: We shook the bees off the remaining frames left in the super box. This was the remnant of the Nuke where the Queen did not get mated and then subsequently disappeared. There was no point in keeping it going with just the remnants of drone brood. Most of the bees will get taken in by one of the other hives. Much better they boost the numbers of another hive than be just left to die out.
Hives 1, 2, 3 & 3a: are all doing well. Each had 5 frames of brood, all looking healthy and most of the capped brood was a nice biscuit colour. Obviously now it is primarily worker brood but in one of the hives a small amount of drone brood. All had a full super on top of the brood box with another super partially filled.
Main WBC: The main WBC is doing well, again at least 5 frames of good-looking brood. There were 3 supers on this hive. The one immediately above the brood box was left for the bees as usual because of the amount of pollen in it which is important for them. By juggling some frames around in the other 2 boxes we managed to get a full super to take off.
Other WBC: Unfortunately, in the other WBC, which was a split from an artificial swarm, the Queen has unaccountably disappeared. The last time this hive was looked at was 17th July and at that time it was noticeable that it wasn’t doing as well as previously. The Queen wasn’t seen but there were a few eggs and young larvae. Up till then it seemed to be a good result from a ‘split’ in that she had got mated and seemed to be laying well.
We found about 4 emergency queen cells (smaller than normal & slightly stunted) so we have just left it to see what develops but the chances of a good Queen coming out and being mated well at this stage of the season is limited.
It looks as if there is some very warm weather coming our way so by next week we may have a bit more honey to take off. Everything seems a lot later this year. Last year by this time we had extracted the honey, left it to settle for a week and then bottled it up.