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  • General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #10414  by Steve 1972
 27 Mar 2021, 20:58
Took some supers full of drawn frames plus Queen excluders to my Alnwick apiary just to be on the safe side ..i will be stuck up there for the next six weeks so it makes sense to be prepared for the unpredictable weather..
 #10427  by Cable_Fairy
 30 Mar 2021, 17:25
Today has been the first day the temperature was high enough to open my hive. I found the queen actually I could not miss her as there are not many bees in the hive. There was a small cluster of lava and a large number of eggs, I hope that the remaining bees can last for another three weeks or so to look after the new brood, but I am not hopeful.
 #10428  by Alfred
 30 Mar 2021, 18:08
They might surprise you yet
Ive one on a definate downhill .
Today I put on supers all round each dummied with kingspan filled lugged boxes giving th colony three frames to play with.
Every hive had done this
Imageso at least they wont be wasting any more time and resources.
Cleaned up a few floors too -sad waste of pollen through the meshes but some were going round the back to retrieve it.
Image
 #10430  by MickBBKA
 30 Mar 2021, 20:31
Did I understand that correct, you have given each colony 3 frames in a super with the rest of the space filled with Kingspan ?
 #10432  by Patrick
 31 Mar 2021, 17:49
Had a go through the orchard hives, marking and clipping all queens that required it. The usual bell curve distribution of few poor, most okay and few very good. I have learnt from early inspections before that colonies that seem slow out of the blocks early on can easily pick up later on, though in this case some of poor ones are also elderly queens so they may need interventions. My experiments with late winter pollen sub patties did not show any conclusive advantage and there was generally limited take up. This is probably due to natural pollen availability and favourable foraging weather. If neither happened, then it might have made more of a difference.

I had a go nadiring most of last summer's late crop supers rather than taking them off, as I had a considerable amount of honey already stored and limited outlets to market it. Those colonies certainly didn't run out of food but no clear advantage otherwise. We often read about how "clearly better" it is to overwinter on with just their own honey although research says not so. Compared to previous experience of feeding syrup to augment brood box supplies, I couldn't see any advantage in colony vigour, size or brood to just being on honey. If anything, the colonies with several part filled nadired supers were actually behind the single or double box colonies. All nadired supers have been removed now anyway.
 #10434  by MickBBKA
 31 Mar 2021, 21:08
Finished inspecting all colonies. H10 that I put a 2nd brood box on has drawn 8 of the frames and now has 16 frames of brood so stuck a super on as well. As Patrick says its the usual spread accross the colonies. Poly hives are now being left behind by the wood ones with no more than 8 frames of brood in any of them. Removed lots of old excess honey/syrup frames and added foundation. Put supers on every colony for space. 1 colony I am sure is queenless and probably doomed, my only loss this winter.
 #10436  by Patrick
 31 Mar 2021, 22:22
NigelP wrote:Honey sells for over £10/kg Sugar can be bought for around 60p a kilogram.
Expand your markets Patrick.
Exactly right. But interesting to have trialled honey vs syrup. Truth be told, there were other reasons at the time 2nd extraction didn’t happen, but they were non- beekeeping related so not relevant here. As it transpired, the honey reserves flew out, so it’s an experiment I won’t be repeating I hope.

One strange one was a hive with capped emergency cells and plenty of capped brood, so the queen must have gone South in only the last fortnight. Think that might be a unite job.
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