Bees by the front door

Posted by Jon on Aug 2, 2010 in Swarms & Nests | 0 comments

My third bee adventure last week found me heading out to Tom and Helen who had returned to their second home to find that bees had taken up residence close to their front door. They had been there for a few weeks, entering and leaving by a hole in the rendering.

This bee removal really bought home to me the beauty of my Heath Robinson beevac.

Aarrggh! We’re losing a colony…

Posted by Jon on Jul 16, 2010 in Hive problems | 7 comments

Whilst our other colonies are loving the sunshine and making the most of the ample nectar flow around, one of our colonies has been causing us concern. The big, healthy colonies rumble in this weather with the bees coming and going, and the others fanning to keep the hive cool, but this little one barely manages a murmur. Watching the entrance has revealed that fewer and fewer bees are entering and leaving so we bit the bullet last night and had a look inside.

My spaghetti hive…

Posted by Jon on Jul 12, 2010 in Beekeeping, Hive management, Swarms & Nests | 6 comments

When cutting out colonies, one of the difficulties is how to suspend the comb in the new hive so that the bees can use it and not lose their stores, wax and brood. Having brought the colony home, time is of the essences to get the whole lot back inside a hive and set up in their new environment. As I tend to cut out colonies in the evening (as it’s cooler and the foragers have hopefully returned), it is often very late by the time I get home so I wanted to find a quick way of doing this which can be done by one person if there is no-one else to help.

Combined hives – 2 weeks on

Posted by Jon on Jul 3, 2010 in Beekeeping, Hive management | 0 comments

I’ve been watching the hive entrance of the new hive I created by combining two poor colonies a couple of weeks ago and have been pleased with the amount of activity I’ve seen. One colony had no queen but was large in numbers and the other had had a healthy queen but very few workers so I hoped the combination would lead to a healthy colony.

Much as I don’t like disturbing our bees, it was time for an inspection

Emerging brood

Posted by Jon on Jun 24, 2010 in Bee behaviour, Beekeeping | 0 comments

Having cut out the comb when removing the colony the other night, I took it home to place in the new hive. As it was late at night, I prepared the hive in the kitchen (I have an understanding wife!) and watched fascinated as bees started to emerge from the capped cells. Whilst speed was of the essence to get this new colony re-homed (the bees in the beevac box were getting increasingly angry!) we did manage to get a few shots of the next generation of bees making their way into the world.