May 2005
A field of oil seed rape
Our first hive inspection of the month took place on Sunday 1st May.
All our beehive colonies are expanding quite well and the large, aggressive
colony is now very powerful and full of bees - quite worrying!
A week later, on 7th May, Paul took some supers to the bees at Flaxton
where he noted the Oil Seed Rape was already flowering in the fields so
we shall have to watch them.
Flaxton bees with teo early supers
A
field of oil seed rape
On 15th May our inspection of the small hive revealed its queen and a
few drones so this hive seems to be expanding. Good!
A second super was also put on the colony of aggressive bees as they were
already making queen cells and we don't want them to swarm
Paul went back to Flaxton on 21st May to put more supers on the hives
and collect the ones already full of Oil Seed Rape honey. All the hives
at Flaxton are very active and the aggressive bees are thinking about
swarming,
On our next inspection of the colonies here in the Monk Avenue apiary
on 25th revealed a sealed queen cell in Hive 2. We prepared a nucleus
box and placed the frame with the queen cell plus some frames of brood
and worker bees in it. Hopefully they will form a new colony with a docile
queen to superseed the aggressive one.
Sealed queen cell
Finished nucleus box
To round off the month of May a secretary at Paul's work told him her parents were having trouble with a swarm of bees in their tree. Paul and Dad were dispatched to have a look and collect it. Fortunately the swarm was in a small tree so were easy to box up. Hopefully these will be docile bees too!!
A queen bee