Lime trees

The lime tree next to the shed was in flower today, humming with bees.
Put second super on main hive.

Silver back Bees?

A few of my bees are arriving back looking like this, this bee was just leaving.

Any ideas?

Click image for larger view.

Re Shuffle

The hive I moved was being robbed and only uses a small amount of syrup while it was completely closed. Moved it back to original position and left a small opening. Put a frame of brood and eggs in from main hive.
Sugared main hive, left board in for 3 hours, unable to find any varroa!

Robbed

I'm fairly sure one of the nucs I made is being robbed, I am going to move it and block the entrance and put an empty box with old frames with a little stores. Hopefully this will fool them into thinking the supply has gone. When activity has stopped (hopefully a couple of days) I will replace with a reduced entrance the robbed hive.

Feeding nucs

The 2 nucs are already very different, One is only slowly taking feed while the other is emptying the up and over feeder twice a day? Had my first bit of robbing today, surprised how quick it escalates.

Nucs

Made two nucs up today in national hives (five frames in each), then added queen cell to each.
A day early, I've sealed entrances and will leave for two nights, and feeding syrup.
Put super on doner hive.

Rejoined Hive

Checked for queen cells and checked the queenless hive had started cells. There where 4 maybe 5 QC started not sealed. Next Tuesday will be day 10.

Queen Prep

Put queen to one side tea time, then tried to graft at 7:30pm.

Would find it easier to graft eggs rather than lave, they are covered in royal jelly and harder to see, so cut comb like apiary did. Need to work out how many days now.

Must check Monday maybe Tuesday and destroy any early sealed queen cells. That would mean nucs need to receive cells on a week Tuesday.

Getting Ready

Moved all the brood above excluder last Saterday, new comb with queen in bottom box and fed with 3 frames of stores. Prepared queen starter cells ready for grafting.
Reclaimed the wax from 4 frames of old comb at the weekend, very messy!