The swallows have arrived on this wonderful current of hot air that is the start of summer. The bees in the garden continue to forage and on Sunday I will open the hive and check on the queen to make sure she is laying and the brood are thriving. I also need to check for disease and do an icing sugar dusting to get rid of varroa.
At Kenwood apiary yesterday my hive is doing well and we marked the new queen with green dot to help identify her in the hive and remind everyone which year she hatched. Talking of which, I was working on someone else's hive and looked at a couple of odd-shaped queen cells and whilst I was wondering if they were healthy the end flipped off and a new queen emerged for this queenless colony. Good news and also a very rare and special experience. We also made up an apidea for the next emerging queen so that she can build a new colony rather than suffer the fate of being killed by the first queen. Great experience for when I need to re-queen by garden colony.
At Kenwood apiary yesterday my hive is doing well and we marked the new queen with green dot to help identify her in the hive and remind everyone which year she hatched. Talking of which, I was working on someone else's hive and looked at a couple of odd-shaped queen cells and whilst I was wondering if they were healthy the end flipped off and a new queen emerged for this queenless colony. Good news and also a very rare and special experience. We also made up an apidea for the next emerging queen so that she can build a new colony rather than suffer the fate of being killed by the first queen. Great experience for when I need to re-queen by garden colony.