Another great inspection this week with lots of good news to report.
In the national hive, the bees have made good progress at 'drawing out' comb on the new super I added last week.
The queen is still laying well, with lots of eggs visible.
Meanwhile the new colony inside the WBC in the nuc box is also establishing nicely. There are more fresh eggs that have been recently laid, and the bees are bringing in good stores. They are building comb on the new frames and in a week or two we will transfer them into a full brood box.
While doing the inspection, I also noticed a lot of bright orange pollen being brought back to the hive. You can see the bee in this picture with its bright orange pollen sacks. If anyone knows what plant this is likely to be from then please let us know!
The sainfoin in the field beside the apiary is helping to keep the bees happy and busy! It’s now flowering for the second time after being cut, and the bees are loving it. I walked through the crop and there were honeybees everywhere!
We’ve been back to check on how the Honeydale apiary is faring following its demolition by sheep. I took Jack, our work experience lad, to inspect the new nuc in the WBC hive and the big National hive. It was hot work during this heatwave, but very cheering.
The Nuc box now has a mated queen and she is laying well (if you remember we got this box started by spitting one of Chris' hives when the queen was still a larvae.) We'll locate and mark her at the next inspection.
The big white National hive is doing amazingly well. It has now filled the second super we added on the last inspection (pic above) and we have added a third for the bees to fill. (pic below) This is very encouraging considering we lost two hives over the cold winter and we were surprised to see it doing so well when the weather is now so hot and dry.
Plants need water to produce nectar, so the bees must have located plants nearby, with plenty of nectar flowing. We suspect this is thanks to the very deep-rooted sainfoin which we have growing in the field adjacent to the apiary, proving how great sainfoin is for bees and beekeepers. Not only does it produce amazing honey, but it’s very drought resistant.
I received a call mid morning from Ian to say there had been and 'incident' at the farm involving sheep and the apiary. On arrival it looked like a bomb had been dropped. Six hives had been knocked over and the stands had been thrown several metres away. This had been done by a flock of sheep which had run amok during a planned movement between fields. There were lots of bees buzzing around - obviously disturbed and a bit angry!
Luckily most of the hives, though upside-down on the ground, were in one piece so it was a case of very carefully lifting and turning them back over. This was particularly difficult because the hives are made of lots of separate parts which are not fixed together and are also quite heavy, so reconstructing the stands and putting the hives back in place without getting stung was challenging. Two hives had fallen apart when they were knocked over, so I needed to reconstruct them, hoping the queens were still inside.
Unfortunately the sheep had also hit the WBC hive containing the new nucleus of bees we had split from one of the other hives on the previous inspection. (pic) Miraculously, although the lid was off the nuc box was still upright and undamaged. Thank goodness it was inside the WBC when the sheep descended or it would have been smashed to pieces!
Fortunately for us our large white national hive with the thriving colony was close enough to the fence to avoid the stampede.
Soon after I had reconstructed the hives Chris arrived so that we could inspect them and make sure the queens had not been lost. The good news is that all the colonies seem to be ok, even the split colony in the nuc box was doing well, and the bees had sealed the queen cup we had placed there for them. Not only this, they’d started a second queen cup complete with larvae and royal jelly, so we are hoping one of these queens will survive and the colony will fully develop over the coming weeks.
I think it's fair to say that we've learnt our lesson regarding sheep at Honeydale - in the future we'll make sure they are not herded anywhere near the apiary!
We’re very pleased to report that our bees seem to have survived the Siberian blizzards and subzero temperatures that stuck the Cotswolds, as well as much of the rest of the country, earlier this month. We won’t be carrying out any proper inspections for a few weeks yet, but there’s evidence of activity in all the hives in our apiary.
It’s not a huge surprise, since bees are actually well equipped to survive cold weather. Adopting similar behaviour to penguins, they huddle together in a ball and rotate their position, taking it in turns to spend time on the colder outer edges of the ball and then warming up in the centre, where they create heat by vibrating and buzzing around the queen. During the winter, they feed on the stores of honey in the hives - we left a full super in one hive and fondant in another - so they only need to venture outside for water and toilet breaks!
We’re looking forward to seeing them out and about collecting nectar in the spring sunshine soon.
Finally, we found, clipped and marked the elusive queen in our healthy WBC hive. She has been playing very hard to get! She's laying eggs and looking healthy, but the laying has slowed down now that summer is at an end. The national hive is also healthy and the bees are still flying well.
 |
| See if you can spot the queen in this image |
As we are approaching the end of the season now, Chris removed all of the full supers from his hives but we are a bit disappointed with honey yield. The bees have been feeding on it during the changeable weather over the last few weeks. Chris says it’s also likely that they’ve been finding it hard to draw out honeycomb on the frames. We'll have an accurate idea of yield once the honey has been extracted.
We took a super off each of our hives (both the WBC and national) which will be stored and extracted in due course but we have left some supers on both hives in the hope that we might get a final flush over the next few weeks if the weather is favourable.
As part of our 8 year rotation at Honeydale, we have a large wild bird plot which contains lots of sunflowers. As you can see from the photo, these are now all coming into flower which is great because the bees love them. It will be plants like this that will contribute to any late honey-flow if we get one and the weather behaves itself!
At Paul’s inspection this week, the surviving WBC was observed to be doing well, with lots of eggs and brood present. He still couldn't find the queen but the quantity of visible eggs prove that she must be in there somewhere. The bees have almost filled their second super so a third has been added. As you can see from the photo, it’s looking very tall!
It’s nicely balanced in size by the national hive which is also performing so well that it has received a third super too. Plenty of eggs and brood were present in this hive, and the queen was easy to spot here, which is great.
We now appear to have a colony of wasps in WBC2. We thought we had sealed up the hive after the bee colony had been lost to wasps, but the invaders have been managing to squeeze in and out of the breather holes at the top of the hive. To combat this Paul has sealed up the holes and put out some wasp traps, so hopefully this nest will die off and we can get it emptied and sterilised, ready for a new bee colony.
This is our only troublesome hive, and the good news is that all of the others are busy and there were lots of bees out and about taking advantage of the good weather.
Sad news this week. On our last inspection there were eggs and brood in WBC Hive 2 but we had to close down the hive entrance to help against wasp attack, as well as putting out some wasp traps. Unfortunately these precautions were not enough to save the colony, which has now been lost. There were more wasps than bees in this hive and the honeycomb has been ransacked of all of its brood. There’s nothing more we could have done, so it’s just one of those things. One consolation is that the wasps hadn't fully emptied the super so we have rescued this and will add it to another hive when the time is right over the coming few months. We have fully closed down the hive now and will wait for the wasps to die off before potentially starting a new colony in this hive.
 |
| WBC hive 2 looking a little sorry for itself and full of wasps |
Thankfully, WBC Hive 1 still has lots of eggs and brood and is doing well. This hive has almost filled another super so we might be adding another on our next visit. There are now lots of flowering species on the farm, so this should improve the honey flow over the coming weeks.
 |
| Here you can see our bumblebird plot in the foreground and the sainfoin beyond |
Despite finding the queen on my last inspection we could not find her again this time, even with Chris and his eagle-eye, so she still remains unmarked and unclipped. We are hoping to find her next time around.
The National hive is doing well, with eggs and brood present, and we were able to locate the queen which is great.
 |
| Our National hive standing tall |
This hive has also almost filled it's second super, so we expect to be adding another super to this hive on our next visit as well.
Our latest bee inspection took place under conditions which were comfortably cooler and calmer than last time.
We have some excellent news from the first WBC hive. The polished brood cells we observed a week ago now appear to have eggs laid in them, which means we were right in predicting that another queen was soon to start laying. Below you can see one of the queen cells that the new queen will have emerged from. Notice the rough edges where the queen has nibbled her way out of the cell. Next time I open this hive I'll search for the new queen, clip her wings and mark her up.
The second WBC is looking very quiet however, with plenty of stores but no brood or eggs visible. I’ll be relying on Chris’s advice about what to do with this hive and it may be that we have to introduce a new queen to rescue the colony.
The donated National hive is still doing well though. The queen was present and laying lots of eggs with plenty of brood visible. Since they have almost filled their first super I have added a new one for them to get to work on.
 |
| Notice the additional super that has been added |
The bait hive containing the old honey filled comb from the donated hive is also alive with bees still, which are no doubt still in the process of extracting the honey and transferring it back to the other hives.
So all in all, a good report.
During our last inspection, the first WBC hive we looked at (on the right in the photo below) was missing its queen but fortuitously we found her on the ground. Sadly this was not such a happy ending, as even though we introduced her, she’s gone walkabout again. This hive did contain lots of stores and polished brood cells though, suggesting there is a queen either being mated or in the hive somewhere, preparing to start laying. This theory is backed up by the fact that there are two emerged queen cells, one of which had a clear puncture mark suggesting one queen has hatched and killed the other. Let’s hope this queen is successfully mated and lasts longer than the previous one! One of the supers on this hive is full, while the other which I added last week still has plenty of space for the bees to work on.
In the second WBC hive (in the middle of the photo above) we were hoping we would find a new queen and eggs, but instead the hive was very quiet with the majority of the brood frames were filled with pollen and nectar, with no brood or eggs visible. This suggests there is still no mated queen present. However, we did find two large and developed queen cells so hopefully these will hatch and we should have a new queen soon. There is only one super on this hive which is being filled slowly.
We have now completed the bailey comb change on the donated hive by removing the old brood boxes (see before and after pics).
 |
| Note the use of straps to secure the hives in the recent high winds |
These boxes do contain a fair amount of honey, but this is mainly early season rape honey and due to the nature of the comb it will be difficult to extract. So we decided to put these frames in our bait hive for now, so that the bees can harvest this and re-deposit it back into the main hive, hopefully in a much tidier fashion! The frames in the bait hive will be more likely to attract any swarms which enter the apiary.
 |
| Bait hive temporarily housing honey-filled frames from donated hive |
Back in the main hive brood box, the inspection revealed a healthy queen, lots of eggs & brood and well-drawn frames - the perfect result from our bailey comb change. This hive now appears to be our healthiest, on the grounds that it has a queen and is not trying to swarm!
 |
| Notice the nice new brood pattern on these brood frames |
Chris also inspected his hives. One has swarmed but the others seem to be doing well with most now having supers on them. It was hot again today, but after having to call ambulance assistance last time, we but we tried to be as efficient as possible, stayed hydrated and took no risks when it comes to avoiding stings!
.png)
