Today we were at the plot early for a DEFRA insection of our beehives, along with our beekeeping partners (Pat and Colin from the plot over the way from ours) and our friend who helped us get started with the bees!
The inspection went well, all 3 hives passing with no problems, and whilst we were doing the inspections we found lots of queen cells, so after locating the queens we were able to split the hives to take our total number of hives from 3 to 7!
The original queens were put into new brood boxes (in the same place in the apiary as they were already in) with the flying bees, a bit of brood and a feeder to help them draw out the foundation and get restarted. The existing frames that were removed containing queen cells were split into 4 hives with 3 to 5 frames of brood and at least 4 queen cells in each hive, plus the stores in the super frames that the colonies had already collected, and these were moved into our new apiary, so we've now got 7 hives, assuming the queens hatch and areable to get properly mated over the next few weeks!
Back to work tomorrow, so not much chance to spend time on the plot for me until Wednesday, but Mr D will be on the plot on Monday and Tuesday day, before working in the evening!
The inspection went well, all 3 hives passing with no problems, and whilst we were doing the inspections we found lots of queen cells, so after locating the queens we were able to split the hives to take our total number of hives from 3 to 7!
The original queens were put into new brood boxes (in the same place in the apiary as they were already in) with the flying bees, a bit of brood and a feeder to help them draw out the foundation and get restarted. The existing frames that were removed containing queen cells were split into 4 hives with 3 to 5 frames of brood and at least 4 queen cells in each hive, plus the stores in the super frames that the colonies had already collected, and these were moved into our new apiary, so we've now got 7 hives, assuming the queens hatch and areable to get properly mated over the next few weeks!
Back to work tomorrow, so not much chance to spend time on the plot for me until Wednesday, but Mr D will be on the plot on Monday and Tuesday day, before working in the evening!
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