June has been a busy month for us here at Rand in Lincolnshire, with more hot weather for the bees to enjoy. At the beginning of the month we made up some nice nucs for our customers, so we hope everyone is happy with them.

Of course, at this time of year we expect a certain amount of swarm activity. One warm morning whilst out with the bees, a loud buzzing noise came to our ears. We looked up and saw a swarm moving into our empty top bar hive! This was very exciting. Since then, we have had a peek inside and seen that they are building nice, wild comb on the underside of the top bars. 

This month we also harvested any extra queen cells from hives that didn’t need them and transferred them into mating nucs with a handful of bees. From the picture below, you will be able to the see the light coloured Nasonov glands of the bees who are fanning with their back ends in the air. By doing this they spread a pheromone around attracting other members of their colony to that location. It can also indicate that there is a queen inside – which on inspection, there was!

Everything is going well so far and next month we will be consolidating the work we have done this month to make sure all our colonies are queenright and strong going into Autumn.