April 2005
April began mild enough for Spring cleaning to begin at Monk Avenue apiary
so on 2nd April Paul, John and Dad donned their protective bee-suits ready
to do the spring clean of our remaining three hives using our freshly
cleaned boxes.
Hive 1's colony was very weak with only a few bees surviving so we reduced
the two chambers (boxes) to 1 to persuade them to increase the strength
of the colony.
Hive 1 being reduced to one brood box
Both Hive 2 and a swarm from last year also seem to have survived winter
quite well and needed new, clean floors and brood boxes - the swarm already
seems to be very strong but aggressive!
Hive 2 is much more docile
unlike the large swarm: The brown mass over the brood
box is a mass of angry bees
Now we have lots more frames of old wax to clean.
John scrapes old wax off a frame while dad boils the old
frames to sterilise them
To calm the big hive Paul put another Super onto it to try to keep them
busy.
On 16th April Paul went to inspect the hives at Flaxton. The Oil Seed
Rape in the area was already in flower so we need to put supers on the
hives there soon.
So, on 23rd April he filled the car with brood boxes and supers and returned
to Flaxton to spring clean them and put supers on the larger colonies.
A car load of boxes
Before & after spring cleaning at Flaxton