Too much to mention but nothing is going to plan this year..every single hive has lost there original clipped Queens.. four of which are from a none swarming strain..i have managed to save three 2019 Queens and place them in nucs which they are filling with eggs and stores fairly quickly and soon to be put into a full size brood box ready for a unite to the colonies i do not like once i dispatch there Queens..
Anyway a short round up of what i have done over the weekend..
I went to the hives on Saturday to remove supers for extraction and by the time i had finished faffing on knocking Queen cells down and looking for Virgins i ran out of time and only managed to get six supers of and extracted..
So i had to go back at the bees yesterday but i went a lot earlier and just as well..bedlam is a understatement..two hives had swarmed with virgins just before i got there one swarm flew past me and into the woods..they are of no harm to the public so i just left them too it.. first hive i opened i spotted a very dark virgin and two open Queen cells and a third still capped..i removed the capped one and opened it up and sure enough another virgin ready to emerge so she got my welly ..i went through all the other colonies meticulously with a fine tooth come and knocked everything down to one Queen cell..i lost count of the amount i knocked down and many of them had ready to emerge virgins in them...i ended up releasing three onto the comb of three colonies and by the time i was done i ended up removing another ten supers which i will extract today..
Hopefully every thing starts leveling out soon so i can concentrate more time on the supers rather than rooting through every frame of every brood box each time i am at the bees..
Anyway a short round up of what i have done over the weekend..
I went to the hives on Saturday to remove supers for extraction and by the time i had finished faffing on knocking Queen cells down and looking for Virgins i ran out of time and only managed to get six supers of and extracted..
So i had to go back at the bees yesterday but i went a lot earlier and just as well..bedlam is a understatement..two hives had swarmed with virgins just before i got there one swarm flew past me and into the woods..they are of no harm to the public so i just left them too it.. first hive i opened i spotted a very dark virgin and two open Queen cells and a third still capped..i removed the capped one and opened it up and sure enough another virgin ready to emerge so she got my welly ..i went through all the other colonies meticulously with a fine tooth come and knocked everything down to one Queen cell..i lost count of the amount i knocked down and many of them had ready to emerge virgins in them...i ended up releasing three onto the comb of three colonies and by the time i was done i ended up removing another ten supers which i will extract today..
Hopefully every thing starts leveling out soon so i can concentrate more time on the supers rather than rooting through every frame of every brood box each time i am at the bees..