OBKA Training Apiary session 20th April 2024

Flighty Queens

We had a good session today (20th April 2024) at the Woodstock Teaching Apiary – the bees were flying well and in a good mood (though there were a few stings). we spent a couple of hours going through the hives and sorting them out after the last session 10 days ago.

The Long Deep Hive, one section was found to be queenless (but they had been busy, they d been given loads of foundation in frames and had drawn virtually all out); the queenless-ness was probably as the colony had been split at the last visit, and the queen had gone to one of the two nucs that had been taken out!

The other end of the Long Deep hive was embarrasing for the Apiary Manager, who had carelessly left a gap, which the bees had, of course, filled with wild comb. The queen was seen and we were happy that all was well.

We then checked “the splits” and found an emerged queen cell in one – yay – and that the queen from the first colony was indeed in the second split; she was picked up to mark and clip, but flew off …. 50/50 if she’ll come home. Fortunately we’d found an emerging Virgin in the first colony, so popped her in in a queen cage.

Then to one of the Nucs that Richard had brought 10 days ago; they were now building some wild comb into the roof, so we removed that and found the queen – beautifully marked red for last year. we clipped her wing, and then realised that this conlony was swarmy, so split it into a nuc, and made up with loads of undrawn foundation.

The sun shone, the bees buzzed, the bee keepers chatted. What better for a Saturday Afternoon??