May 2000
Paul & John start investigating the hives on a rare sunny day. (photographed
at a safe distance by dad!).
The cold, wet weather continued to prove a problem for us in May - wet, cold and unpredictable.
Spring cleaning, note new floor and hive boxes, and very
smokey smoker! (actually hive one taken in late April).
We did however manage to inspect the second of our hives - Hive 2. Conditions were found to be just as bad as in Hive 1 infact we had to put 5 new frames in to replace the mouldy ones.
The Queen and the worker bees had moved up crowding into the top brood box to escape the dampness. Worried about our little hive colony (No.3) prompted us send a message to the "Beekeeping" newsgroup who suggested replacing the Queen to encourage the bees to increase their numbers. Either she must have been listening or the bees must have thought they'd better start to work and the colony began to slowly expand.
Hive 3: Our
small swarm hive, nestled under a fence
Hive
3 opened-up, Note the tops of two Bayvarol stips freshly added to fend
off the dreaded Varroa mite. You will also note that the bees are all
congregated on the middle few frames as this is only a small colony.
This must have been the start of an improvement and we slowly became happier about the survival of our bees. The hard work on hive number 1 was worthwhile and it now has lots of brood, so much infact that a "super" had to be added to divide it at the end of May!