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

Combining bee colonies

Posted by Jon on Jun 19, 2010 in Beekeeping | 0 comments

As summer has once again disappeared, I’m getting some jobs out of the way that are best done in cooler weather. I’ve recently noticed that two of my colonies were not doing so well – there was little activity in and out of one whilst from the other the bees appeared to leave and then go straight back. On closer inspection I found one very small colony frantically nursing brood but without enough workers to produce honey for the winter and one busy hive without any brood or a queen (and on further inspection, a damaged superseding cell meaning that there was no queen to hatch). Neither would survive over winter unless I was able to combine them to produce one healthy colony with both a queen and brood.