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.First Hive: (Queen Bea)
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.I'll work out what weight they have in total at the end of the honey flow and then I can calculate what each colony will require to overwinter successfully. Anything surplus to their requirements is fair to remove - by the time they would be in a situation to use it for themselves next spring, the new honey season will be in full flow.
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..
Second Hive (Queen Charlie):
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!PS I've just realised that we've just passed our one year anniversary of receiving our first bees! I can't believe it's only been 12 months - so many near-disasters already!
