Today was the final step in carrying out some artificial swarms for increase, and to keep everything ticking over while I’m away for 2 weeks at the end of the month.
On Saturday I swarmed both Willow and Yasmin - in both cases I did a pagden swarm, leaving the queen and flying bees on empty frames, and splitting the existing frames into 2 nucs (ensuring there were eggs in each nuc to allow queen cells to be brought on).
In Willow I couldn’t find the queen, so left them split and returned today. I found the queen in one of the nucs, so returned her to the original hive with the flying bees where she can continue laying.
I also lost one of my hives - Beth - which died from isolation starvation due to the cold weather some time over last week. The colony was dead, huddled round the queen on empty frames, with the bees mostly head-first into them, yet with capped stores in abundance 2 frames over. Sadly this is a common outcome in very cold, damp springs. I’d checked them a week before, and they seemed fine, so its unlikely I could have done much in the bad weather to help them.
My other hive (Amelia) is ticking over nicely - only 4-5 frames of bees and 2-3 frames of brood, but extremely dark black bees, with very quiet temperaments. I’m hoping to breed from this colony for my own stock and any nucs I can bring on.
Hopefully I’ll be able to use the new nucs to fulfil the ‘waiting list’ of new beginners who want to start having hives of their own.
