Today felt like the first ‘proper’ spring day of this summer, and so I wasted no time in getting to the apiary to have a proper sort out of all the hives.
I found and marked the queen in my final nuc of the spring - ready for selling, and then did some splits and manipulations in others to get them ready for the potential summer flow.
Willow had finally died out (a cupful of bees and no signs of a laying queen) so I cleared them out of the hive (they’ll no doubt venture into the neighbouring hive). I then used this hive (which has stayed mostly undrawn since they superseded just after a swarm in spring) to split Amelia using pagden, as she had started to build lots of play cells and queen cups everywhere.
I then inspected Yasmin, who is also very busy (3 supers full of bees) and split out a nuc of brood, stores and nurse bees to both give Yasmin some space to manoeuvre, and possibly bring on a spare colony for selling (if it mates in time!) or overwintering.
All in all a successful and surprisingly easy day - with 6 supers on the colonies, himalayan balsam, lime and rosebay pollen coming in and a slightly better weather forecast there might be a summer honey crop!
