What have you done today bee-related?

[AdamD]

I can see that the pheromones for one 'difficult' hive could 'wake up' the others and I have experienced that once there are followers, they remain for the rest of the session. I guess the answer is to leave the worst 'till last.

And during times of the June Gap or perhaps August, it's not uncommon to have to stop inspecting as bees follow me around the apiary looking for food; after 3 or 4 hives there's so many bees in the air and trying to rob the opened hive I have to give up.

[NigelP]

Squeaky bum time....just released the tabs on three queens in cages after leaving inside nuc for 3 days. Will they be accepted ....or won't they....

[JoJo36]

YES they will, fingers crossed!!!
That's your lovely Danish ones I'm assuming?!
I'm back to square one with my hive 1, snelgroved again as more queen cells despite brood and a half so sod them, now on single brood!
Hive 2 good tempered and on snelgrove with a few cells uncharged and possibly one charged so destroyed!
Brood frame down below fine, no qc's there!
Small quiet hive 3 (farmers) and 4 both got laying queens but so so slow to build up, thinking of joining but neither of the queens are fast layers ??!! Perhaps I'm expecting too much as new queens only found beginning of June so probably too impatient??!!
Weather changing for the worst down South:(

[Steve 1972]

Small quiet hive 3 (farmers) and 4 both got laying queens but so so slow to build up, thinking of joining but neither of the queens are fast layers ??!! Perhaps I'm expecting too much as new queens only found beginning of June so probably too impatient??!!
Weather changing for the worst down South:(

If the bees have too much space and not enough bees i find them slow to build up..for these situations i have a load of 50mm kinspan dummy boards to dummy the hive down ..it basically turns the hive into a Nucleus..if and when the Queens kick into gear and start filling the frames with brood a dummy board can be replaced with frames..and so on till the hive is now full of frames again..

[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.

[Steve 1972]

Good on you Adam ..it just goes to show how resilient bees can be..

[Alfred]

Excellent

[JoJo36]

Thanks Steve 1972
I've got a couple of dummy boards so I will try them!
Just looked up 'kingspan' as a filler too!

[AdamD]

If you like skip-diving around building sites, it's amazing what builders throw way and you might find some insulation there!

[Alfred]

Ive made mine in sets
The first is one frame wide ,the second is double.
The third is a plywood box suspended by two top bars and filled with insulation offcuts ,womble style.
The sets allow gradual expansion of the brood without too many 'moving parts'
I have also done this with supers to allow for spring expansion while still in winter temperatures.
Works just fine.