What a month April has been! The early part of the month was fantastic for the bees as the sun was shining and the temperatures good for the time of year which meant they could get out and forage. Our worry was that as unpredictable as British weather is we could still get a nasty cold snap. We have been lured into a false sense of security before, believing that the good weather is here to stay, only to have the strongest colonies die out due to bees’ lack of ability to forage and to support their expanding colony. Luckily, we have had a glorious month and the state of the bees reflects this, with lovely full boxes of bees and big frames of brood.
Early in the month we removed the ekes which had been used for feeding, because we wanted to avoid the bees moving up into them and building comb. Although some had already moved up and started building wax, thankfully that is all it was. There was no sticky, honey mess to clear up as we managed to get there just before the honey flow came in, phew. That is a messy job if ever there was one!
With the bees building up nicely this month, we were able to start taking off nucs for sale. Funnily enough, the first nucs were actually the most difficult to make up, simply because we had lots of great frames of brood but very few of honey for stores. This improved as the days went by and as the flow came in.
As we don’t take honey off, we have treated for varroa using Apivar. We have used this treatment before and find it works very well.
With the colonies looking very healthy and many on double brood, finding the queen when needed can be a laborious task to say the least! This is why at the beginning of the season we try to push the queen down into the bottom brood box and put a queen excluder above. This just means we know where she is and where the brood is so when we come to manipulate the hive for any reason, it not only takes us less time, but it is also less stressful for the bees.
This photo here just shows a frame of plastic foundation that the bees have drawn out and filled so beautifully, except for one odd little patch in the corner. Who knows what has happened there but they clearly didn’t like it!
Other jobs we have been doing this month are checking for any damaged or old frames and replacing them with new ones and having a little spring tidy of the apiary.
And of course, as with every year we get the occasional inevitable swarm! Sometimes things get missed or the bees didn’t read the manual, but we just do our best to keep them to a minimum and catch any we find.
All in all, this season has got off to a great, if rather early, start and with the weather forecast looking warm and sunny for the foreseeable, we don’t anticipate slowing down any time soon!
