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.........
Well done, sounds like things are going well, did you actually see the queen, is she marked ( makes it easier to find her when colony gets really big). We live about 16 miles from any big town in any direction and we still get quite a range of different pollen so it’s not just a town thing! ;o)
ReplyDeleteMost of our honey comes from spring flows, Blackthorn, Hawthorn, Dandelion, Sycamore and of course orchard fruit. There are quite a lot of beekeepers on twitter of all levels of experience, from beginners to larger scale beekeepers. I will tweet you some good people to follow ;o)
Bernie (thechoirboy & also somersetbeeman)