It has been a busy week. Last Saturday we moved a hive from Wyke to the apiary. It could not have gone better. I closed the hive up with sticky tape the night before the move and made certain that it was all secure using two ratchet traps.
On the Saturday morning there was a frost on top of the hive - no risk the bees would want to fly. We put two lengths of timber under the ratchet straps and carried the hive to the van in the same way as they used to carry sedan chairs.
Once we go to the Apiary we took the straps off then opened the entrance and the sun was shining on the hive and within minutes they were flying.
On Wednesday a group of us went to the apiary to do a big clean up. It was a misty day but I kept warm as I scorched all the empty hive boxes. I was careful to scorch all the corners and joins where there may be eggs of the wax moth.
As the mornbing went on the sun burnt through the mist and fog and by the afternoon we were able to do a full inspection of the hives.
One hive was in a WBC and that is not the easiest for beginners to manipulate so we moved that to a National Hive. There was brood present so we can assume it is queen right.
One hive was not very full and there was no sign of a queen or brood in any stages. It is likely that this colony is doomed. Without a queen there is no hope - unless there is very young brood. The bees were foraging and were taking back pollen. Had we missed a queen or are workers with pollen not necessarily a sign of a laying Queen. Time will tell.
The final hive we looked into was the one we had moved in from Wyke. That was very busy and had a lot of brood. We did a complete box change. The brood box at the bottom had the brood in. Above that was a super and that had no brood in it so we can assume the queen was in the bottom brood box. We put a queen excluder between the brood box and the super.
Above that was a brood box which only contained stores. We put that above a crown board so the bees will probably empty the stores and carry them down to below the crown board. That assumes the bees have read the same manual as we have!
There was one frame of drone comb. We removed that. If there is varroa in the hive then they are most likely to be in the capped drone cells. They prefer drone cells as there is more space in the bigger cells. The removal of the drone comb will kill the drones but it may well remove the varroa from the hive.
And if all that has made you think of keeping bees then do not forget the beginners course starting on the 11th March
And if you are already a beekeeper then do not forget our For Sale page where I have added a poly hive.