What have you done today bee-related?

[Steve 1972]

I went through the colony on the shed roof the day before yesterday...it is a swarm I caught from my bees around four weeks ago..the virgin is mated and definitely taken after her mother..she has layed in eight frames some of which are surrounded by stores and the other three frames where fully capped with honey..I removed them for extraction and filled the space with drawn out brood frames..inbetween doing this I marked and clipped the Queen..
Come night fall I closed the entrance up ready for the move yesterday morning...the only near by spot was 500yards away on the edge of a phacilia field..after moving them I opened them up and headed back to the aipary..by the time I got back the shed roof where I moved the hive from was covered in bees looking for their moved home..I placed a nuc on the spot and the bees quickly went in..so again by night time I closed them up and moved them again this morning..it is a miserable cold damp day with very little activity from any hive so touch wood they stay put this time..

[JoJo36]

You sound very well organised with the bees all settled in and a brilliant laying queen!
To also have marked and clipped her and placed a nuc to pick up any flyers left was a good day by the sounds of things!
May be good that the weather has changed to get them used to their new home??!!:)

[Steve 1972]

More like organised chaos.. .

[NigelP]

Chaos is the right description.
Currently have lots of boxes with bees in. Some with queens, some without and some waiting to see if their virgins get mated. Thrown a few no hopers out today. Found a couple of newly laying queens and marked them.
Lost a queen to the nuc method of swarm control, she has simply disappeared and they are now throwing up emergency cells in the nuc even after the queen was laying well....
Nothing is ever simple in beekeeping; which I guess is why I find it all so fascinating.
Next job is to decide which hives are strong enough to go to the heather at then end of July and which hives I can boost with extra brood/and or flying bees to give them a chance of bringing in a decent heather harvest....weather permitting.
Assuming there is any heather left after hearing devastating reports of the effects of heather beetle on the moors.

[AdamD]

I went through the colony on the shed roof the day before yesterday...it is a swarm I caught from my bees around four weeks ago..the virgin is mated and definitely taken after her mother..she has layed in eight frames some of which are surrounded by stores and the other three frames where fully capped with honey..I removed them for extraction and filled the space with drawn out brood frames..inbetween doing this I marked and clipped the Queen..
Come night fall I closed the entrance up ready for the move yesterday morning...the only near by spot was 500yards away on the edge of a phacilia field..after moving them I opened them up and headed back to the aipary..by the time I got back the shed roof where I moved the hive from was covered in bees looking for their moved home..I placed a nuc on the spot and the bees quickly went in..so again by night time I closed them up and moved them again this morning..it is a miserable cold damp day with very little activity from any hive so touch wood they stay put this time..

My home is about 500 metres from my out apiary, so if I need to relocate a colony from one to the other, it goes to the office first which is a few miles away. After a couple of weeks, they can be moved again. However when I have made up nucs and taken them just 500 metres from one site to the other, I don't lose many bees. Sometimes when a nuc is made up at the same apiary site, all the bees return home, leaving just a hand-full of bees (and a cold queeencell).

[AdamD]

Collected a swarm - nearly dead.
Last Monday evening I had a call about a motionless swarm on a bush near the harbours mouth Great Yarmouth. Not a good place to be for a bee. The caller used to help his grandfather in Lithuania who had 700 hives, so he recognised a problem. It was a good sized swarm that must have been there for at least 5 days judging by the weather and had got stuck - but then there are few nest sites on the North Sea for them to find and my guess is that aftr they swarmed, the weather had changed and they had also suffered two days of heavy rain. There was a cool breeze off the sea and the bees were hardly moving and like stalacmites, some had fallen off the cluster and were on the ground underneath.

I put some fondant in a box and dribbled syrup in there, then scooped up the fallen bees and dropped them in the box. No need for a bee suit as they hardly moved. I then held the box under the swarm and shook the bush with the help of the Lithuanian chap. Again hardly any bees moved. I scooped up the bees that had missed the box, dribbled more syrup on them and closed the box. This was at 9:50 O'clock at night - the job took just 5 minutes or so.
By the next day the colony was flying well and I put them in an 8 frame hive with mostly foundation and a feeder on. They have now drawn out most of the comb and there's a large queen in there, not yet laying. A good ending.

Inspected this lot today - well they inspected me (!) as they started to greet me as I was getting ready - my pickup was about 7 - 10 metres away and they were eyeing me us as I (very quickly) put my beesuit on. Now their true nature has developed they are horrible with veil pingers and followers, some of which wanted to come home with me in the pick-up later on. So I moved the hive and in it's place put a nuc with a frame of brood and one queencell. That was before lunch; later, a fair few bees have returned there, splitting the colony in half which makes them easier to manage. Later in the afternoon I also checked over the hive of bees that had been moved. I could not find the queen - which I had marked when a virgin - and with no eggs, I have placed a queencell and a little brood in that one too. Luckily I was needing to make up some nucs for queencells today, so I have used the swarm for two of them. The queencells are due to emerge by Saturday and with a virgin queen and some brood, they should improve, I hope quickly.

[Patrick]

There’s gratitude for you Adam (not)!

Inspected some hives this evening after work. only really now recovering from the dire spring, washout May and random queenless periods. Unless there is a really strong bramble flow in the next three weeks I would think it is all too late this year for me. All bar two now queenright but one of those is determinedly queenless despite giving it two cells. Shame as it was a high performer last year.

My three Snelgrove 2’s all went to plan and original queens laying strongly with top box with new queens. Left them for 12 days before putting Mrs back below. Will be uniting next week and probably take a small nuc with one of the queens, not sure which.

[MickBBKA]

Assuming there is any heather left after hearing devastating reports of the effects of heather beetle on the moors.

Is that report for this year or the effects from last year ?

[NigelP]

Both, will know more later next week.

[Alfred]

Got halfway around fourteen colonies.
Drowning in sweat and smoked-eye-juice.
Hot and overcast.
Horrible
Im almost missing that spring we've just recovered from...
Bees were all incredibly pissy-even the docile ones.
The other half was on the payroll today and even she got harassed which is very unusual.
Tactical retreat
On the plus side one doomed caste swarm has picked up the pace and earned another fortinghts reprieve.
The cloud for that silver lining is that they're now still hogging space and equipment I was wanting to free up