Spring 2007
Candy fed to bees early January 2007
Early January Snow
Sadly our experiments at queen rearing failed - only one colony survived - In January all seemed well - we had three small colonies - we insulated them in an outer box, but by 10th March these too failed and none of them had survived - the late frosts must have got them. Only one of the queens in one hive box in the main apiary had survived.
Three Nucleus boxes from our Queen rearing experiment 20th January
Placed in an insulated box
Feb 8th: More snow
10th March Dad check the nucs: Mone had survived
On 12th April - quite late - we did our first inspections of all the hives. Only one of the main large hives and one of the small colonies in the apiary with a queen had survived so we don’t expect to get much honey this year.
April 12th: First inspection
On 28tth April Dad and Paul went to Flaxton to inspect the hives where we had started Winter with six hives but unfortunately they found only two hives seem to have survived - some, seemingly healthy had just dispersed leaving lots of stores. All very strange as we’ve not had any swarms. Was this sudden colony collapse and disorder ?
28th April and first Flaxton inspection
In one colony a family of mice had found a gap in one of the excluders and had killed the whole colony dead. The mice were still nested there and had chewed through the frames. So there were lots of empty hive boxes and frames to bring back home.
Mouse Damage