Sunday 14th June
It's been a fortnight since we last did an inspection. It’s not so urgent to do weekly inspections now that there's no danger of these bees swarming, but we need to check that both the queens are laying well because it’s very late in the year to start rearing a new queen now if there are any problems.
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First Hive:
The top super is still completely full and they have made good progress building up the foundation in the lower super. The only frames they haven't started building wax on yet are the two end frames...
... and there is some sealed honey in the centre frames. I switched a few of these frames around, putting the emptier ones nearer the centre and sandwiched between two heavier frames. This should persuade them to build up all the foundation wax equally.
Everything looks in order in the brood box too. The three frames at each end are still not being used but it’s not usually recommended to change the order of these frames too much, unlike the super frames, because the brood nest should not be divided up at all.
All the tiny eggs we saw on this frame a fortnight ago have been sealed over and it’s clear that this is worker brood, not drones. This queen is proven to be laying eggs successfully so we decided to try marking her.
We had real trouble marking our previous queen last year. On the few occasions we tried, the paint was always licked off by the next time we looked at her. This year the international colour code for queens is green. We carefully manoeuvred her over to the corner of the frame...
... and very gently (remembering my disaster of two weeks ago!) I put a tiny dab of paint on her back, officially christening her Queen Beatrix the Piper (first daughter of Queen Amidala the Swarmy!)
We let the paint dry thoroughly for about 2 minutes to be absolutely sure, then let her toddle off amongst all the others. If this paint stays it should be incredibly easy to spot her quickly another time.
Second Hive:
This is the colony I've been more worried about - drenching the queen in green goop must have been an ordeal for her!
All looks fine in the super here - this hive has only the one super on and it's nearly full of sealed honey stores.
There are only two unstarted frames at each side of the brood box but there is still room for expansion without needing to add another super yet.
The pattern of egg-laying here seems ideal and I was relieved to find young larvae at the bottom here - it means the queen has survived the paint blob incident!
A couple of frames further on we found bees have recently hatched out of these cells - the first offspring of the new queen (this queen started laying eggs about a week before her twin sister)
We saw the queen a few moments later - still with a few traces of green paint on her but thankfully mostly cleaned off. I attempted to mark her again, even more carefully this time!
However, just like last time she squirmed around so much inside the queen cage, even while held down, that the tiny blob ended up spread all over her head and wings! Again, I didn't want it to dry like that so I let her go quickly - it was a hasty ceremony but she's now been christened Queen Charlotte the Smudgy (second daughter of Queen Amidala the Swarmy)
We didn't have an opportunity to inspect the hives this weekend but the bees have been all around the garden working the flowers every day.
The colour of the pollen can be seen in the bundle on the bee's legs - this poppy pollen is very pale grey, sometimes it is even jet black! Bees do not mix pollen varieties - this bee will just work this variety of poppy only and it will only be stored in cells with identical pollen in the hive.
A fabulously hot day today - I closed the shop a bit early today so that I could get home in time to see how the bees are doing because we never had time at the weekend.
Loads of gummy propolis all over everything today and now this second super is about one third full of honey - at this rate I expect there may be several pounds of surplus honey to harvest this year, but I can't really tell until the end of July.
Propolis all over the brood chamber frames too and the bees seemed a bit bad-tempered with us as well, for no good reason as far as we could tell.
We saw Bea on the frame above (she's in the bottom left corner) and, fairly predictably I suppose, she has barely a trace of paint left on her - only ten days after being clearly marked!
We didn't bother trying to mark her again - we need expert advice on this! Everything else looked good in the hive so we closed up.
This colony was noticeably calmer than Bea's hive. The guard bees from the first hive stopped bothering us after a few minutes and these ones didn't seem interested in us at all.
Again, loads of propolis about - it must be the time of year for sealing up all the cracks and joints.
We saw Charlie quite easily again (in the centre, near the bottom) and of course...
... she had just a few traces of green paint left. 'Bee Paint' they call it? I've heard that some beekeepers use Tippex instead but I'm sure I remember hearing stories about kids getting high on that when I was young - maybe that was just an urban myth!