APRIL 2004
New brood boxes ready to go to the bees
The mild Spring weather continued allowing us to inspect the bees -
hives 1 and 2 being next on our list. In Hive 1 the brood had moved to
the top box so the brood boxes were swapped over so the bees will hopefully
go to the bottom.
Hive 2 seems to be very powerful with quite a few queen cups being found
so we must keep an eye on it to avoid them swarming.
Dad cleans hive 2
New Brood boxes on hive 2... Note the bees walking in
from their old hive box in the front
Both colonies are quite powerful and by mid April we had put a Super on
both these hives.
Hive 3 - As we had found a dead queen in this hive on our last inspection
we decided to leave the colony alone so that they can raise a new one.
Paul took two more brood boxes up to the bees at Flaxton to increas the
size of the existing hives. There are now four hives all with two supers
on them. They all seem to be very strong colonies so we will soon have
to put Supers on these hives as the Oil Seed Rape will soon be flowering
in the fields nearby.
Paul spring cleans at Flaxton: Note the new brood boxes
at the right of the picture
Paul coaxes the bees into their newly cleaned hive using
a soft gooses wing.
The rest of April was spent cleaning the wax from the frames we had removed
from the hives in the Spring clean.