Our Beekeeping Year 2024

Follow OBKA’s beekeeping year 2024 in our
Training Apiary

20th April 2024

Flighty queens

We had a good session today (Sat 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 embarrassing 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 colony 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??

04 April 2024

We have already had a few Apiary days doing some quick checks on the colonies but this is the first one where we have been able to have a decent look at the colonies. The main purpose of the Training Apiary is to have colonies ready for the Beginners Course whose practical sessions start in May.

Andy Pedley, Training Apiary Manager, tells us how today went:

‘Good afternoon all. We had a great open session at Woodstock earlier, and it has put us in a great place for the coming year. We had to split one colony – sealed queen cells present. Masses of frames were waxed, grass trimmed, boxes flamed and filled ready for the season; hedge cut, shed a bit tidier (more work in prospect there!). Many thanks to Richard, Steve, Eric, Loretta, Nick, David, Paul – I think that’s everyone and apologies if I missed someone.

The next open session will be next Saturday. All (OBKA Members) welcome; the Long Deep hive needs to be opened and checked, and Richard will be demonstrating transferring colonies from Nuc Boxes to hives.’