What have you done today bee-related?

[Chrisbarlow]

thats a good reminder Patrick. i will be beekeeping Thursday and will be checking over as many colonies and nucs as I can do in a day to check for stores, laying patterns, queen rite colonies, i will be taking along sugar syrup and a little bit of fondant and seeing how everything is going, topping up where neccesary.

[MickBBKA]

I will be out on Thursday also as I know I will have several colonies probably running on fumes. The Feb warmth gave them a super start but then the last 2 weeks have been bloody awful and the white hedgerows turned brown by the wind and rain. Second flowering just starting so I will need to fill in the gap. Maybe some OA vaping to do as well.

Cheers, Mick.

[Chrisbarlow]

I have the gaz-vap and want to try it out shortly. I still need an appropriate face mask and eye protection , Once thats sorted, I am good to go.

[Patrick]

Yes I think that February hot spell turned on the turbos (not to forget the month started for us with snow!).

It’s not that warm at the moment and I wondered if bees would use a rapid feeder with syrup or only a (slower) contact feeder. They emptied a rapid no problem, which is my preference as I just want a quick shot of syrup rather a long distraction.

[Chrisbarlow]

popped in to an apiary to see what was flying and by the looks of it, everything was. the overwintered colonies appear to be extremely strong this year, which is great news. I think the temps were about 15°c. They were all bringing in a lot of pollen.

[AdamD]

I checked some colonies yesterday - it was 18 degrees when I started. They have only just started flying again after some days of wet and windy weather so colonies had no liquid stores although they were bringing in pollen well and all had some pollen stores. Some colonies had little sealed stores too and it appears that some had stopped brooding for a few days - there being eggs and very small larvae and a little sealed brood but no large open brood.

[Chrisbarlow]

15°c today and finally went through most of my boxes. I am very happy with them. A couple of drone layers were identified and thrown out. most nucs need more space but will have to wait. a few nucs had laying queens but not as strong as I would like so, so swapped them round with strong boxes to equalize them. so far it really has been a very good winter.

[Chrisbarlow]

and the amount of drones Ive seen! I wasnt expecting to see any but the colonies with drone comb in has eggs, larvae and sealed brood in, saw one drone hatching and saw quite a few on various combs. I suspect some will have overwintered in the colonies but some are definately new ones.

[MickBBKA]

18C today....OMG !!!
Found one colony with about 7 emergency looking QC's, no brood or eggs, no visible queen and fanning like a VQ was out of the hive. No drones at all in this apiary. Looks doomed.
At my other apiary I found my very first Marie Celest colony. I have been expecting this to fail as I am sure the queen never mated as I had not seen brood since Sept last year. Its strange, not a single bee dead or alive, 6 frames of mixed pollen and capped honey. Mouse guard so the bees have not been eaten and no sign of robbing although there are 6 other colonies feet away. Not seen this in the module exams..LOL

Cheers, Mick.

[NigelP]

Lucky sods been laid up in bed with "man flue" watching the first real opportunity to examine disappear from me.
Hopefully next week can start getting to grips with the new season.