Two of our biggest jobs this month have been to take off nucs for sale and to manage the colonies generally. They seem to go nicely hand in hand, as breaking up large colonies into 6 framed nucs helps with swarm control and keeping the apiaries in some kind of order overall. This doesn’t always work out as you can see here in this photo.

There is always a sense of disappointment when a colony swarms, that we haven’t quite got to the hive in time, but sometimes it happens, and we just have to deal with it. Anyway, it is always fascinating to see the bees marching into a box!

Our apiary around the museum has been looking particularly beautiful this year with our gardener deciding to do a No Mow May. This is such a great idea as not only does it look wonderful,  flowers are allowed to thrive instead of being cut down bringing tonnes of insect life to the area. In turn, we see an abundance of bird species and wildlife in general. As you can see from the image here, some of the hives at the apiary museum had a new lick of paint, which would look great, except some of the colonies were so big that we had to place another brood box in between!  

As the season slows down, we will be able to take these boxes out and enjoy the colourful hives in all their intended glory.

Down at the lakes apiary, we have also seen this beautiful March orchid (according to my plant ID app!). It is just wonderful to be able to work outside in nice weather surrounded by nature. 

We hope that June will continue to provide for the bees, however we are always on standby with feed just in case of a June Gap where there is very little forage. We envisage a busy month with a few more nucs to take off, queen rearing to start with gusto and swarm control to continue.