April 2002
Our season was under way and we spent the first few days "cuprinoling" some of the brood boxes to protect them from the elements.
We inspected the remaining hives on April 7th swapping their brood boxes
for new clean ones.
This was a mistake as hive 3 was reluctant to go back into its newly cleaned
hive boxes…. We had only treated the boxes a few days earlier and
the smell of the boxes was probably putting them off going back into the
hive. They had gone back by evening however.
Of poor quality but a picture of Dads first attempt at
Mead making
Spring feeders were not being used up so I guess there is enough food about to leave the bees to their own devices and we took them off.
On April11th we added some new brood frames to hive 4. It was not happy and quite aggressive…. Maybe it needs a new queen.
Saturday 20th Dad and Paul went to the local agricultural auction at
Murton near York…. They came back with two hives, which had cost
them £7 and a box full of bits that included a smoker, and quite
a lot of foundation for £9…. Quite a bargain. There can't have
been any beekeepers at the auction.
John inspects our excellent buy at auction
We reduced our failing hive 2 to a nucleus box, and in contrast hive 6 which is expanding was set-up with a super.
Our final beekeeping exploits for April was a sale of beekeeping equipment on Sunday 28th. An old beekeeper was selling up. As there were lots of canny beekeepers there we could not repeat our earlier bargains, but we did pick up a pile of ready made-up frames for £25.
Not a pile of firewood but 60 ready made frames