Logic prevails. Yay!

Friday brought about enough of a break in the weather to get my 4th hive inspection done. I was a little bit more laid back about finding the queen and getting her marked , being more interested in what they were up to. After the realisation that I had stupidly installed a random mix of drone and worker foundation in my brood box and that it was probably this school girl error that had halted the progress of the drawing out, I was relieved to find on today's inspection that swapping the drone foundation frame with a new worker frame had encouraged the poor little confused gals to start drawing it out and hopefully my fickle queen may deign to lay in this. Having seen that this tactic worked, I swapped out the other end too, am really hoping they get the idea and forgive me for my stupid error but if not I am resigned to not getting any honey this year and just ensuring I get them strong enough to successfully over winter.

The following is a very heavily edited vid of the inspection, the unedited version is 26 minutes long. At 9 minutes it is still interminably dull but I would appreciate the more experienced amongst you (i.e. everyone) to criticise anything you see that I'm doing drastically wrong.

School girl errors

After the disappointment of Wednesdays inspection, I followed the advice I'd been given by various kind souls. Don't panic, leave it for a few days and it'll probably sort itself. So I shut up the hive on Wednesday and ignored it until this evening. What do know, all is not lost after all.

Popped in today, was only going to take off the super frames (still not sure what I was thinking), replace the crown board and feeder and maybe have a quick look. After a few puffs of bee tobacco they went straight down, no fuss no bother. I noticed some young ones about so thought I'd check the state of the empty cells and there they were, fresh eggs, perfectly placed dead centre in the empty and tidily cleaned out cells. So my queen is still there. Read up on @beesinfrance's blog and my bee bible today about laying workers so fairly certain it is the queen and not the workers. So that's good news but why aren't they drawing put the empty frames to make more space for her to lay? Still got 6 virtually untouched frames in the brood box so what's their problem? Plenty of feed and forage, they seem content enough, rather placid in fact, I can only assume that they just don't like the foundation wax in the frames. When I had a closer look at the ones they had drawn and the ones they haven't it dawned on me that the foundation in the untouched frames has larger than normal cell print on it so is in fact drone foundation.This may explain why they are ignoring it, I'll swap these frames for some fresh and keep my fingers crossed that this will kick them into action. Time is marching on and we need to build up the size of the colony for it to have a chance of surviving the winter let alone giving me some honey which is looking extremely unlikely at this juncture. On another matter, the brood box is supposed to be 11 frames, again, not a clue what I was thinking. Am coming to the conclusion that this blog is outing me as a complete idiot! I may have to stop posting all my silly mistakes just to keep some level of respectibility!

Update - Having this morning swapped the offending frames out, I will leave them bee for a while and keep my fingers crossed that they'll get on with it. Next time I go in I will find that queen or possibly die trying!

2nd inspection

I was determined to get into the hive again this week to see what was going on and to make a concerted effort to get the queen marked before all the new bees emerged and the colony increased in size. After talking with Maureen and Jim last night, I was even more determined as they told tales of a couple of their newly hived swarms covering the majority of the brood frames in just a couple of weeks. Forecast for today was sunshine and showers so I was not hopeful I would get the opportunity. At about 12 the weather looked like it would hold for a couple of hours so I took my chances and popped up to the allotment to get in there. I remembered to take the queen marking cage, the marker and the icing sugar shaker along with the special bee tobacco I had been given for the smoker.

All tooled up I went in. They had brace combed up the feeder again so this needed to come off and they had fully propolised the mesh on the open hole on the crown board. I got the crown board off, not too sticky and I remembered to twist gently and lift rather than just yank it off. After checking that there was no queen on the underside, I put it to one side. Well, I have to say I was a little disappointed to see that there had been no further activity in the hive since last inspection, 8 days since. The five central frames that they had drawn out last week were still the only ones drawn. I went through each of the five frames looking for the queen and indeed any activity to signify that she was present. Nada. The majority of the brood that we observed last week has been capped, there are no eggs or young larvae present so I am guessing that she hasn't been around for a good 8 days which coincidentally was when I did my last inspection. This leads me to believe that I must have done something to her during that inspection or that she buggered off before that inspection with the majority of the colony and I didn't notice any reduction in size as it was my first look see last week. BUT there are no queens cells. If they had swarmed before last week's inspection there would have been queen cells. If I had killed the queen last week the workers should be raising one or more of the fertilised eggs as an emergency queen. It's possible I guess that she's gone off the lay as it were but surely the colony wouldn't stand for this and would supercede her. I'm flummoxed but not panicking just yet. I closed the hive back up but instead of putting the crown board on top of the brood box put on the queen excluder and framed up the super. Why I did this I have no idea. I shall have another look in a few days time to see is the situation has changed, by then some of the capped brood may well be emerging which may egg ('scuse the pun) things on a bit.

Have just twigged that I possibly should have 12 frames in my brood box rather than the 11 that are there, this obvious boo boo may explain the amount of brace comb I'm getting in the hive. This along with the upside down crown board error last week would, I guess be violating the 'bee space' rules and therefore encouraging the dears to build comb in appropriate places. My problem is that I am using second hand frames which are a mix of hoffman style and flat sided, I've got those little plastic spacers on them but I don't think the spacing is right. When I inspect again in a few day time I'll be taking my ruler to check if that is indeed the problem. In the meantime, anyone got a spare queen ;-)

A bit of housekeeping

After sitting and watching the bee's flight patterns I was beginning to get a little concerned that they were only getting to about 4ft before making a beeline for the blackberry flowering on a fence three plots over from mine. In the middle of these plots, directly in their path, Bob tends his ever growing sunflower forest. Bob is a good 6ft 6in so was in imminent danger of getting a bee up his nose. The allotment beekeeping guidelines suggest screening the hives to a height of 6 ft in order to force the bees to fly up and out rather than straight over, it seems they will always take the path of least resistance to conserve energy, makes sense. So with this in mind and considering my legendary (in my own head) womble like approach to the whole allotmenting thing i.e. "making good use of the things that we find....." I started rootling around for something suitable to use as screening, I didn't really want to buy anything (see womble like comment) but after seeing Mrs Dobby's allotment beekeeping blog and how they had screened theirs I decided that was the way forward. I'd seen some reed screening in one of the local bargain shops but hadn't checked the price, I assumed it would be out of my price range but scurried off to have a look see. Result! 2 x 6ft x 3m for £18.00. Just ideal to screen off the open side and make the fence side prettier. Back to allotment with my booty, by then it was late afternoon on a very sunny and blustery Saturday, the bees were still flying but I thought I could get in there and get the screening up without protection. I thought wrong. It turns out if you suddenly stick up a screen in front of the hive they get confused and not a little bit cross with the nearest moving big thing (me). With the screen half up I decided to guy-rope like secure the rest of it and beat a hasty retreat to the pub! When I returned the next morning, all was calm and I finished the job off with no drama what so ever. Screening now up and secure I feel happier that Bob won't be inhaling any of my girls. The added benefit is that I can now pick and weed the raspberries and watch the hive entrance through the screening but I can no longer sit on my sofa and watch them coming and going. Ups and downs, the worlds full of them.

1st solo inspection

Despite Maureen's best efforts to dissuade me I undertook my first allotment hive inspection yesterday afternoon going solo. It went well but there is a lot of stuff I missed and after watching the video there are a couple of things I did wrong but nothing critical.

First up was dealing with the brace comb the daft lasses had built through the crown board escape hole into the feeder. It came away easily enough aided by a little leverage with the hive tool but what to do with the bees inside? They refused to come out so I put it to one side on a handy pallet leaving the escape hole free so they could get out if they eventually chose to do so. Next the crown board.

I thought it'd be well stuck down what with their perpencity to building the comb willy nilly but it came off easily giving me my first look at the brood frames. My initial reaction was disappointment, they had only managed to draw the inner 5 frames, leaving the outer 6 untouched. Then I remembered that they had only been at it 12 days and on flat foundation at that so maybe their efforts weren't bad. Next was to look for signs of laying and try and spot the queen. I removed an outer frame and gently slid the inners out to get access to the first drawn frame. This one was drawn on the inner side and was filled with stores and pollen. Judging by the mix of colours they are getting a good range of forage and not just favouring one source. I imagine this is more usual in urban hives where there are no huge fields of one source. Will be interesting to compare with other local but slightly further out of town hives. Well, back to the inspection. No dry cells, so no laying on this frame. Next frame, fully drawn both sides and bingo! Excellent signs of laying, good brood pattern, lots of uncapped larvae both newly hatched and fairly mature yet not capped so under 8/9 days old I guess.

There are probably some eggs in there too but I'm fairly sure with my rubbish 40+ eyesight it'll be a cold day in hell before I spot them! What a relief, the queen is doing her job well and hopefully, within a couple of weeks we'll have lots of new bees. On the next frame we have some capped brood which is pretty amazing considering the timeframe. Now I am impressed! More to follow.........

Bees don't like wind

Nipped up to the allotment this morning for the normal watering and weeding session before breakfast, it was another sunny day but the wind was coming straight off the Pennines, down the valley and smashing into my little plot like the proverbial tempest. We are lucky to have the bottom, corner plot of a fairly exposed south west sloping allotment site. the wind therefore doesn't generally have too much of a serious impact on the plot. The greenhouse does usually get blown two foot down the hill during each winter storm though. First job on the allotment each year has been to re site it back up the hill, I really should stop bothering, it's become a bit of a Sisyphean task. Hmmm.

We'd finished the watering and weeding when the wind really started gusting quite alarmingly. First one pane blew out of the greenhouse, it was already cracked so I wasn't too alarmed. Decided it may be better to close it up to stop the gusts blowing through it. Then all the screening around the bees blew free of its tether, billowing about like something out of the Wreck of the Hesperus, a couple of pallets, cable ties and a good few rocks sorted that out. To complete that task I had to get within a few feet of the entrance to the hive, understandably the bees were a bit pee'd off anyway, to be confronted with a small person chucking big bits of wood and rock about didn't seem to improve their mood any. Got a few warning buzzes in the ear but bless them, they didn't attack which was a relief as I didn't have any protection with me! Note to self, keep a cheap smock and veil in the allotment shed for future mishaps. Just then another pane from the greenhouse blew out with such force I decided it was be better for our health to quickly check the bees feed, top up if necessary and beat a hasty retreat.

Whilst I was in the super, I took a couple of shots of the rapid feeder, something a bit strange is going in there. I don't know if it's something the bees have done or it's just sugar crystals that have formed through the syrup evaporating but the bees seem to be munching on that rather than drinking the syrup. It wasn't there yesterday so I must ask next time I see the bee guys. Anyway, they are still flying well despite the weather so I won't worry too much. Maybe if they do have such a sweet tooth the may like a less dilute solution.

Update: Bumped into the Extrodinary Rooneys into the pub this evening, the white stuff is brace comb, appently one of their colonies had done similar things in one of their feeders.

Nothing to report

Spent a good three hours at the allotment this morning, looked in on the bees, they are still doing whatever it is they are doing inside the hive. A small clump were in the feeder but still not guzzling the syrup. It is beginning to get a bit mouldy around the bit that's exposed to the air so may whip it out at some point soon, give it a good clean, recharge it and replace. Not sure how to get the bees out of it first though, that could be fun. May be it's better left, will ask. They are still going mad for the blackberry flowers, as the picture above shows. Yes! that's one of my little ladies, say hello!

Well as it's only been a week I shouldn't delve in too deep into the hive to have a look, I may wait for a sunny afternoon next week, get me suit on and have a very quick shifty, just to make sure they are drawing the comb at the very least. If I can spot any signs of laying, and/or spot the queen that would be a bonus but I think that'll be a goal for the following week. I still haven't got my queen spotting eye in, I even have a spot of bother spotting the ones that are clearly marked but I'm told that comes with practice, must get a pair of bifocals, that would probably help.