A good turn out of beekeepers and interested observers, young and not so quite so young, was had at the latest apiary visit on Sunday.
After a glorious week of sunshine followed by a soaking, the rain just about held off. The bees were flying but it wasn’t very good conditions for inspections so we concentrated on assessing the food stores in all the hives.
Hive 7 had a feeder on but was now overcrowded with bees spilling into the feeder area. A super was added to these.
In Hive 6 the bees were doing a good job in drawing out the super frames and making stores. Similarly in Hive 8 where the bees had starting capping some of the honey.
Hives 6, 7 and 8 are ready to move to their new home in Broughton shortly so these were made ready with hive straps and travelling screens ready to hand.
A quick whizz through the supers in Hives 1 to 5 next.
Hive 1 had stores on about 5 frames in the lower super, the 2nd super wasn’t being used. A clearer board was put under the top super ready to remove.
Hive 2 was similar to hive 1 with the stores just starting to be capped in the lower super. Again a clearer board was put under the top super.
Hive 3 is the smallest colony and there is still only brood on about 4 frames, 2 of which are super frames with natural comb built in the gap underneath. The plan for this one is to put it in a poly nuc to overwinter.
Hive 4 had most of the super frames drawn and a mix of sealed and unsealed honey, some pollen over the brood nest and some stores eaten and now refilled.
Hive 5 has always been the strongest hive and despite splits and swarms has the most honey. One super is pretty well full with a couple of lovely sealed frames. The second super also has a few good frames of honey. An optimistic 3rd super was empty so again a clearer board was put under this one. This hive should get us some honey to pay the apiary rent this year.
This gives us a good idea of how the colonies are doing and we will make a plan for settling the hives down for the autumn, the feeding regime and varroa monitoring.
Plenty to discuss at our next meetings.