Summer 2006
Our first attempt at breeding queen bees resulted in 3 new queens being reared. These were expanded into nucleus boxes to help them form new colonies. It is still too early to tell whether any of these will turn out to be nice bees but hopefully we shall have some docile bees next year.
A mating box with a mated queen (note the queen catcher and white marking paint and then into a neuclus box
A second attempt at the mating apiary had too many eggs so we brought some back to Monk Avenue and hurriedly made a “finishing” colony, a queen-less colony where the bees would hopefully accept and “bring on” the eggs. The result of this was 4 new queen cells. These four cells were then transferred to mini nucleus boxes to hopefully hatch out, mate and start new colonies. Unfortunately only one hatched and none developed into colonies.
Cups containing eggs are glued with wax to a frame
Once in a queenless colony with no eggs the bees have drawn out four queen cells
One queen cell was placed in each of these mating boxes
Another batch at the “mating apiary” resulted in 4 more nucleus boxes, two of which were taken to Flaxton to develop new colonies, a third box was brought back to the Monk Avenue apiary to a nucleus box. The fourth is still quite small so it was left on site.
Back at Monk Avenue, as our two main hives have both swarmed early in the year so we doubt if we will get much honey. We have kept one of these swarms at Monk Av. , the other has been moved to Paul’s house and both seem well established in single brood boxes. We now have lots of small colonies so we shall be able to select the best in Spring next year.
We extracted a small amount of summer Oil seed rape honey from Flaxton. This was first mixed with some fine honey to cream it so that it wouldn't go hard in the jars.
