Well spring is
definitely here, today on the April 3rd the temperature was
hovering around fifteen degrees early afternoon. So it was time for a
full inspection at the Cornerfield Apiary .
But a couple of days
earlier I had had my first look in the “Matilda “ Colony which
as you will remember is the surviving one down on our Breeze Hill
Allotments.
They where all happy,
they still had a smidging of Candy Pollen synthetic food left. But
with plenty of sealed brood and grubs , Matilda had been very busy
and maybe I should have looked a little earlier! Any way we found
her trapped her under crown of thorns and marked here with the
white colour of last years queens ( 2016). One down three to go!
The first Colony we
looked at on the Cornerfield site was Queen Anne's, she had been very
busy and again I had been a little late because as you will recall we
leave the queen excluder off for the winter so the queen can get to
the stores in the “Super”, she had taken full advantage of it and started laying in the super instead of down in the Brood box where she lives in the summer. But
no big problem because what she had laid will all mature and the
workers will clean out the cells and fill them with honey. In fact
they had already started on one and it had a full one side of honey,
some already sealed!
When we we then looked in the brood box , for only the third time in five years ( this is the start of my six year) Georgina and I found the her , trapped her under the crown thorns and marked her with white for 2016.
The next colony was
“Victoria” or it should have been, except there was no Victoria!
Before we discovered that however we could see that the colony was
quote small with very little activity in the “Super” and very
little of the food I had put on on my last visit eaten.
But as soon as we
started looking in the brood box we came across a charged queen cell.
So obviously for unknown reasons the resident queen had been “lost”
and because there was some grubs and sealed brood . The colony had
started on the road of producing an “emergency” queen. They do
this by choosing one of the worker bee grubs and feed it with extra
Nectar and Pollen, it then transforms by a minor miracle into
another queen . The queen is dead, long live the queen!
The is does mean
however that we should not disturb the hive for a month. This will
give the new Victoria time to emerge spread here wings and go
a get mated and start laying this years brood.
The last hive we looked
in was Queen “Elizabeth”, she was a 2015 ( marked blue) queen
from a swarm that I had captured from our hosts apple tree.
Incredibly this was the largest and most vibrant with about ten
frames of busy girls , lots of sealed brood, grubs and some honey
being collected. We found our Elizabeth up in the super, so we had to
brush he off into the brood box before putting on the excluder. I
think this colony will be the first to swarm.
So with this in mind I
have set a Bait box a small hive box called a “Nuc” with some
food in it so if they do swarm when I am not there they might ( big
might!) go in the bait box.
But hopefully I will
pre-empt this , spot what they are going to do and carry out an
artificial swarm. Then use in the bait box/ Nuc to transport them
back to Breeze Hill where we do need another colony.
We that's about it for
now I will write again soon Freddie.
