summer end

I've removed and jarred 116lb of honey then added the apigaurd. Number 3 has a very high incidence of varroa. I need to give them all some feed as none are very heavy.
Number 4 has been very slow to build but it had a bad season start. |I removed some frames for starting queens, it then swarmed, then lost it's queen.

they don't behave

My first colony was split 8 days ago when I found queen cells. The queen and flying bees below. Check today and the queen has gone and left several QC.
My second has a new queen laying in the bottom, I could not find. I took the qc's from the top box and made 4 small nucs. All failed.
The third was a bit lively but I added another super.
The forth had my best queen in, but she has now left making a small colony smaller. This is the colony I've been taking frames of eggs from for queen rearing. The queen has also absconded before the qc's were sealed! I've split this into 2 colonies on the same site with QC's in both
The fifth has a good queen in the bottom and I saw a queen hatch in the top so I took down all the other qc's.

Things move quick

Wednesday night found all qc destroyed,  had missed 2 other qc which had emerged.  Shook all bees into box and placed comb under excluder, added fresh eggs to bottom box. Now switched boxes and added splitter board.. tonight seen new qc being built.  2 other colonies have qc so made splits with each.

Starting Queens

Check my new QC last night, will try to split into 6 nucs next wed/thur.

First Shook Swarm

Colony 5 had drawn a lot of the foundation out, so I removed all the old brood and gave it to colony 4 in preparation for queen rearing.  Colony 5 now has a queen excluder underneath the brood box which I will remove after our break in Majorca. It has a couple of frames of old stores and I have given a little syrup. Tomorrow I will treat with "Hive Clean" and then add a super when we return from our hols.
Hive 3  seems a little slow to build up, that was the colony I shook swarmed in July and then overwintered in  a poly hive!
In 10 days I'll remove the brood from colony 1, moving it too colony 4, as above.

2 queens

Quick check to see if they are building on the new foundation when colony on position 4 had a surprise. It superseded last September and still has both queens, nick suggested getting a photo, will try !

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.

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.

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.