Monday 31 March 2014

New Foundation

I left all brood and one stores frame each side in the bottom box, while adding frames of stores from below and frames with fresh foundation into the top box. Given a feed of light syrup, 1 to 1.

Saturday 29 March 2014

end of March

First full inspection today, all look good. The colony in the poly hive only occupies half the box, there were lots of slugs in the other half. Two colonies have a little sealed drone cells, this seems far too early.

Monday 17 March 2014

spring 2014

Bees have had several flights this year so far. On the monitoring boards there is a pattern on each of the 4, an area of dark wax droppings and an area of light wax droppings. The dark is the brood area and the light is the stores area. I checked tonight that they all have some stores and could tell from the wax bits around areas of empty cells that they are using stores at the moment and not storing nectar. This tells me to be careful they don't starve. In a couple of weeks I need to consider shook swarming 3 of the hives.