Author: Dronebee

As Spring starts to show we are busy painting the wooden hive, raking the slate in the apiary, and preparing to catch a swarm. Asian hornet traps will be in position soon. Because we had intended splitting our strong colony, in the wooden hive, a new Poly hive was brought. This hive, like our other… Continue reading A sad Honeybeekeeper in 2021

We noticed just after Christmas that there was very little activity from the main colony. Further observation indicated that there were no dead bees being put outside the hive. On a rare sunny day, the roof and crown board were lifted and a torch shone into the frames in the super down to the brood… Continue reading Honeybees are dead

After the loss of our strong colony in December daily checks were made on the swarm hive. On a weekly basis, the fondant in the crown board was checked and changed; if empty. Because of the loss of our strong colony monitoring consisted of at least observation of the hive both in the morning and… Continue reading Honeybees are dead in the second hive.

The last few months have been a busy time for the new beekeeper. You may remember that this is our second year of keeping honey bees and our first complete season of bee keeping. As a new beekeeper, this year has been full of problems: Covid 19 which from a beekeeping point of view has… Continue reading New Beekeepers Autumn Review

Over the last few months, we have only sighted one of the queens and just the once. Despite my wife’s ability to spot queens on our training, she has not been able to see the queen in the poly hive. if you can’t see them you can’t mark them. Incidentally, many books and articles on… Continue reading Queenie, Queenie where are you both? You need to be marked

Both hives are queenright and producing brood. Orientations flights have been seen from both hives and bees are bringing in plenty of pollen. So all is well in the apiary? Not quite. The poly hive bees are laying down stores around the brood frames but nothing else. Although, these bees have been very slow to… Continue reading What is going on? Bees frustrate beekeepers

A quick recap from our last blog. Poly hive is queenright, nuc is queenright but the wooden hive appears to be queenless. Consequently, the decision was made to unite the nuc with the bees in the wooden hive. Our thinking was that this would overcome the problem of overcrowding in the nuc and give the… Continue reading The honey flow was starting, but our problems continued

You may recall from our last blog that keeping bees has some challenges. The most important was that bees don’t read the bee books and magazines we do. Consequently, we had a swarm from a queenless hive; or so we thought! This hive had been opened and frames checked for eggs, lava, and pupa none… Continue reading The Honeybee’s saga or how to nearly lose all your bees in one go

As mentioned in the last blog swarming was uppermost on our minds. If you remember we have a colony of bees in a nuc which is queenright and expanding quickly. We also have a colony in our wooden hive which was inspected first. The bees were quite aggressive when the hive was open and there… Continue reading Swarming honeybees

This year has been so full of problems, of our doing, I don’t know where to start. At the beginning of March, our bees were very active and the queen was laying well. The brood frames still had plenty of stores and the inner frames have eggs, lava, and pupa. There was a steady build-up… Continue reading Honeybees are alive