It's really important to inspect hives on a weekly basis to avoid the bees swarming - not good as you not only lose the old, laying queen, but you also lose half your bees.
Today was a beautiful day and it was a pleasure to be out with the bees. The two hives I inspected with Vicki, were calm and happy and very productive. The queens in both were laying well in a beautiful ovaloid pattern surrounded by pollen, nectar and capped honey for use in producing the food the developing larvae are dependent on.
We are busy building stock on this site. So, over the last two weeks, we've isolated the productive queens and split them away from the rest of the hive. The two hives that are now queenless by design, will have drawn down queen cells from larvae of the right age by now. One hive is a week ahead of the other, so the virgin queen should have emerged. With the poor weather over the last week, today would have been the first opportunitiy for her to attempt a mating flight so hopefully when we inspect next there should be evidence of eggs.
The second hive should have a queen cell in the final stages now, ready to be capped for the final stages of development before emerging next Friday. Hopefully if the weather continues to be good, there should be evidence of eggs in a fortnight to three weeks. Fingers crossed.
These, plus the two 'queenright' colonies make four on the site, with room for development later in the season.
For those of you buying honey from Mark and Vicci, you should know that my honey kitchen has been awarded 5/5 after a Food Hygiene inspection. Furthermore, the Regional Bee Inspector for Wales has done an inspection on one of my apiaries and there is no evidence of disease in my hives - hurrah. After all the hard but gratifying work to survive a harsh winter, early spring and now the June gap, here's hoping that we have a good summer so that the good work can continue positively.
The June gap is where the Spring flowers have stopped flowering and the Summer flowers haven't yet started. However, there is some blackberry and some clover, and poppies are a good source of pollen. If you can spare a patch of garden and you don't mind your lawn having some clover in it (heresy, I know!), then bramble and clover will live happily in many situations. Besides, picking blackberries later in the year and cooking them in a pie with apples is one of the highlights of my Autumn, reminiscent of my childhood with real shortcrust pastry made from scratch - yummy.
Jeannie Hainsworth Lamb
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