May, as always, has been an extremely busy month for us here at Thorne HQ in Lincolnshire. The sun has been out, the bees have been busy and we have been even busier (if that’s possible!).
We have continued last month’s main job of taking off nucs for sale. This has become easier and easier as the month has gone by, with lots of brood frames and stores to choose from. Here you can see the difference in size of some of our nucs as we also sell 14”x12” and Langstroths for beekeepers who run those hives.
The turnaround time for nucs varies and so it is always a balance between getting enough bees in there and not filling the box so much that they swarm. Here are a couple of nucs ready to go!
We have seen plenty of drones in the hives this month, meaning that the breeding season is well underway. You can see lots of emerging drones with their big eyes in this photo. This means that new virgin queens are getting mated nice and quickly, especially with the great weather we have had this month.
The next two photos are quite interesting. At first glance you might think that this patch of dead bees was caused by pesticides or even CBPV.
However, we know for a fact that there was a swarm that landed at the front of this hive so most likely there was a fight of some kind between the bees already living in the hive and the incoming swarm. The dead bees could be the swarm that tried to get in but were fought off; they could be the original bees killed by the swarm and dragged out; or they could be a mix of the two and what’s left in the hive is a merge of both the original bees and the swarm. We will probably never know.
As with last month we also got a couple of swarms in May too. It is always a fascinating process to watch (albeit frustrating at times!), especially when you witness them settling down and can get close enough to have a good look. Here are two that we caught in the big laurel bush at the apiary. It is interesting to see how different in shape they are. One is compact and oval and the other is long and thin!
Next month we envisage much of the same long, busy days beekeeping. It is hard to believe that we are only just coming into June when we have had what seems like a summer already!
