Hi
All,
Well
we have had our first day of sun for more than 2 months and I have to say the
bees have just gone wild.
On
inspecting our hives Barry and I were
rather taken aback, we have lost 4 queens!!!! I say lost
but;
1
was in the hive but must have been feeling lazy in that she had not been out on
her maiden flight, so no brood.
2
others which had new queens no brood, so they must have been killed during the
cold wet weather, one of these was part of our queen rearing system!!!
Arrggggg
1
other we don’t know what has happened but again no
brood.
Not
a great start to what should be a honey
run!
We
have taken action to rectify the problem, so hopefully we should have them all
running like a sleek car by the end of the
week.
The
weather has also set our queen and NUC rearing back by 2/3 weeks but if this
weather continues we should have spare’s to sell if any-one is still
interested.
You
will notice from the photo below that we are trying to breed British Black Bees
in our colonies and it seems to be working as we are getting a good mixture in
the new brood.
We
hope to be able to breed only British Blacks by the end of this season, so we
are keeping our fingers crossed that we don’t have any
set-backs.
Bees
in Newcastle city seems to have been put on the back page just now, no-one at
the council wants to take up the mantle which is a pity after all the work in
getting bees on allotments.
We
will be moving a number of hives to our new apiaries over the weekend, so hope
all goes well.
As
the sun came out so did the number of calls about bee swarms. Today we had three
calls all saying they had honey bees in a nest box. Needless to say they were
all bumble bees. Then at 3:30 a call saying one of our hives had swarmed. Yahoo,
it was the lazy queen out on her maiden flight. Let us hope she has not left it
too late!!!
Please
note the new email address.
www.3milebees.com
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