Queen, Queen, no Queen

The weather was glorious for my afternoon trip to the bees. I have sussed out how to keep my smoker going but I only really need it for clearing the bees from the edges of the boxes when I put the hive back together. The Nuc Queen has settled in and her bees are busy gathering stores but not so busy drawing out the foundation into comb. No comb, no where for the Queen to lay eggs. I open another hives and pinched a couple of frames of drawn foundation in the hope the Queen will adopt it giving her the space she needs.

The hive that I transplanted a Queen cell into is off and running the Queen is laying and the bees are flying freely. You can tell all is well with these hives since the bees fly freely to and from the hive, that is before I disrupted them. You can also see the bees coming back with pollen on their legs. They only gather pollen when the Queen is laying as it forms the basis of the high protein food the developing larvae need.

The last hive is a double edged sword. There are lots of bees gathering lots of honey. However the Queen is gone so there are no new eggs being laid. No eggs means no new bees. In a couple of months the bees will have died off. I sent off for a mail order Queen. I hope to get her in a week or so. In the meantime the hives fills with honey.

The new strategy of open mesh floors and small hive entrances seem the be paying off. There a very few wasps about. This time last year one hive in particular seemed to have more wasps than bees. This year the hives are stronger colonies so I expect what wasps had tried to get in were repulsed and thought to go somewhere else for an easy meal.

A word on the honey. This year the honey is a rich golden colour and looks very liquid as apposed to last year's honey which was very pale colour and quick to granulate. I put this down to the flush of hedgerow flowers from the late spring and the lack of oilseed Rape in the fields near the apiary. The farmer's crop rotation has cereals in fields that were Oilseed Rape last year. There is Oilseed Rape within the forage radius but I think it is diluted by the hedgerow blossom. The Elderflower have come out so both me and the bees will be foraging on them soon.