Sunday 21 June 2009

Midsummer: The first inspection!

I was unable to hold it off longer. I was pretty sure the bees were in good health and saw no point in waiting strictly till the 14th day of the new colony before cracking them open for a peek. And what a peek it was.

Day 12 inspection: the first of the new colony, in the new hive, on the new site. Sunny intervals. About 20 Celsius. I cranked up the smoker and approached the hive. Bees were coming and going as they had been for the past week. What would it be like inside?

I need not have worried. The inspection passed with little incident, save for my delight at how healthy and vigorous the bees seemed: they had been very hard at work. The three quarters of a gallon of feed I left them had been completely consumed. The 12 frame brood box was packed with bees and drawn comb. Only the frame face next to the entrance was not completely worked out into comb. It's worth mentioning at this point that I set the hive up as "warm way," i.e. with the frames parallel to the entrance. The couple of frames at either end the comb were full of nectar. In fact in the occasional place there was capped honey. From about the 5th to the 10th frames (counting from the back of the hive where I had started inspecting) there were wonderful signs of a well functioning colony. I saw tiny eggs, small uncapped larvae, large uncapped larvae and capped larvae. Each of these brood frames had been set up by the bees with a typical rainbow shaped configuration, with an arc of nectar around the top, then an arc of pollen (of various colours, mostly darkish), then towards the bottom an ellipse of brood. Beautiful. Bees were on every frame: not covering each frame even in the centre of the hive, but certainly this is a vigorous colony.

So, since the bees were filing the brood chamber I had to take some action. With only 2 spare supers and their frames to play with, I decided to put a super on. Now, I decided NOT to put the queen excluder in between brood body and super, so I'm now already running with a brood-and-a-half colony. I decided this on the basis that all evidence from this hive, from the previous hive the queen was in, and from the swarm itself, pointed to this queen being prolific and her progeny being numerous and healthy. I wonder whether running with a double brood hive might be the thing to do, but I did not have the kit to hand. I've have some on order for a couple of weeks and additionally bought a brood box and super on eBay last night - but too late. So, quite what I do if I find that a brood-and-a-half is a little pinchy for them, I do not know. Certainly I'm guessing that running with brood-plus-two-halves will just make inspections a pain and likely to result in a lot of brace comb being built in all the wrong places. Hhhmmmm - I've just started and already I have more questions than answers. I'll pop the questions to that lovely lot at Ealing very soon, and pick Margaret's brain when she pops on site. So, back on track with this blog: I shut the hive up and sat back, very happy indeed. Shame I'll not be able to open it up for another 7 days! It's worth mentioning that I did not put any more food in, and have no plans to do so in the near future.

Ann tells me the queen is unmarked, and she knows this since we have a good idea from which hive the swarm issued. I did not see the queen during the inspection, but it was not particularly my aim to search for her. Also, given the excellent signs of laying, I satisfied myself that a quick inspection was what was required, and certainly more important that having me spend ages with the hive open whilst I hunted for her. The hive was open for less than 10 minutes in total.

A point of interest re behaviour: during the inspection some bees had left the hive to form a group on the outside front and side of the hive. They were still there for 15minutes after the inspection ended, but they slowly made their way inside after that.

And to close, a few of general points regarding how I found the inspection. The height of the hive was definitely too low to be comfortable. Despite the hive being on a stand, on top of a slab, on top of bricks, I still found myself either bending over too far to inspect the frames, or lifting the frames a little further clear of the hive than I was happy with. This is food for thought, and I'll investigate somehow getting another "lift" in the stack. Also, it was not obvious where the second hive on the site would go. The site does not make it trivial to balance the needs for privacy from overlooking buildings, dryness from overhanging trees, warmth from the sun, and not putting a hive too close to adjacent private gardens. More food for thought. Finally, I noticed that the smoker went out before I finished the inspection. I'll try to pay closer attention to this during the next inspection, perhaps keeping a spare little stack of twigs handy and remembering to pump the bellows occasionally.

So there's a lot to think about, but I'm delighted that the colony looks so very well. I am (and I hereby promise everyone that this will be the only use of the pun in this blog) buzzing!

1 comment:

  1. How exciting. I still think that the location near the fox's lair is very promising for the second hive. Keep us posted!

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