July2000
John in full kit poses with a "dummy" hive in early July.
There was little for us to do with the bees at the beginning of July
except to keep an eye on the number of queen cells being produced and
to just watch them getting on with their business - gathering nectar and
pollen to make honey. Meanwhile, the counting of queen cells continued.
Our hive inspection on 8th July took place once again under a dull, cloudy
sky.
Queen cells, queen cells
Hive 1 revealed 30 queen cells. A slight drop in the number of cells being
produced; numbers seem to have stabilised, perhaps we are over the worst.
We even saw the productive queen herself.
Lots & lots of Queen cells
We found 14 queen cells in hive 3 and the bee colony was spreading into their new box at the top of the hive. It appears the extra food we gave the bees has done some good. They are now quite active!
As for our problem with hive 2 the newsgroup said that it was unlikely the bees would move down into the empty lower box and suggested we swapped the boxes over putting the large brood box on top. We waited till early July (9th July was the next convenient day) to do this.
Diagrams of swapping boxes on Hive 2
a busy hive two after we had swapped the boxes over! (lots
of bees clambering over the outside).
To our relief everything seemed to go well, I hope we have found the key to this problem! We also found 17 queen cells in this hive.
Regular, weekly examinations of hive 2 throughout the rest of July saw the number of queen cells stabilise and by the 28th a gradual fall in their numbers could be seen within the colony. Could it be that we at last soon stop worrying about Queen cells?
It worked and Hive 3 is now a very powerful colony. We have now put a honey Super on it and we may even get some honey from our little swarm hive this year.