March 2012

3/29 Inspected the two sets of two hives that were split and didn't get the original queens. These three-way splits were split back on the 24th February. Just saw eggs and larvae.

3/23 Swarms

3/10 Transferred the bees in the feisty nuc at the AL farm into an 8 frame deep box with screen bottom board etc. This hive contains the original queen. I saw her today - big and blond.

3/9 Checked the hive in the backyard containing the old queen to see what was going on. Didn't seem like there were many eggs but there were a few medium frames of capped brood. Moved a partially drawn out into the brood nest.

Similarly checked the cottage hive containing the old queen from that split. Saw more brood when compared to the backyard hive on the deep frames. The hive was busy. Placed an empty frame within the brood nest to try and persuade the bees to draw more comb.

Also checked the feisty hives, which consists of the original hive and a nuc that was split off 5 days ago. Found lots of eggs in the nuc, so, despite my best intentions, that's were the queen ended up. With that news, I checked the main hive and found 12 queen cells, four of them capped. In the others larvae were visible. The hive was still feisty.

3/5 Noticed that the first buds on the pear tree in the backyard had opened, probably yesterday or the day before that.

3/4 Checked the hive in front of the cottage at AL that contains the queen from last week's three-way split. It seemed during the splitting that this queen had stopped laying eggs, presumably in preparations for a swarm flight. The hive was full of eggs today, so it seems like she's laying again, or never actually stopped. The hive was busy. The split hive in the original spot was very busy also, whereas it's neighbouring hive not so much.

Also did a full inspection of the feisty hive, as this hive has not been split yet. Didn't see any queen cells but there were a lot of bees. Lots of brood in the bottom deep plus brood in the medium above it. The bees were really annoyed - need to do something about this. Decided to split off a nuc, as these bees will surely swarm if nothing is done. Perhaps the new queen will be more docile and the hives can be combined back together later. Took three deep frames of brood, one frame of eggs and the remaining two full of capped brood, and two frames of nectar/pollen and put them in one of our new 5-frame nuc boxes. Checked for the queen but didn't see her, hopefully I left her behind. Took too many frames really as the original hive only had three drawn out deep frames in the bottom box. But trying to hobble this hive a little and presumably this will help. The medium above is full of brood though.

3/3 Jessica checked the hive in the backyard that contained the queen from the three-way split done the week before. This hive was slow with bees until yesterday when suddenly a lot of orienting bees came out. The hive looked good. Lots of brood and eggs. Saw a drone outside of the hive.

3/2 The two split hives at both AL and in the backyard that contained the queens were really quiet until today. Opened up the entrances to the medium size. Lots of bees orienting from them. Particularly the AL hive - almost thought they were about to swarm for a moment!

3/2 Drones: Saw one drone on the outside of one of the cottage hive at AL. The first one of the year that was outside.