Weather Report:
Wednesday 30 may 2018: 26°C, no rain.Thursday 31 may 2018: 25°C, showers all day long.
Friday 01 june 2018: Temperatures were trying to reach 20°C but didn't get there, It poored rain during the night and showers in the afternoon.
Saturday 02 june 2018: No rain at all and temperatures flirting with 20°C again.
Sunday 03 june 2018: Temperatures rising again up to 25°C, no rain.
Temperatures today started cool around 18°C but went up to 20° at noon.
Hive Report:
Simplex Nuc (2017): I didn't really want to open this baby up again till next year, but ... I got a queen today from the apis mellifera mellifera :
I inteded to use 3 Zander frames or at least 2 and maybe a simplex frame if I needed to. The frames were supposed to come from my swarm box (PC 1 2018) But there I didn't find anything without eggs.
On to the report: I checked the middle box since the windows show there is no activity in the bottom box. There are 3 frames, not 5 as I thought, that have fully built out comb. No larvae or eggs were found, some cells had emerging bees. I didn't take any frames out of this box.
I opened up the top box and there the bees are doing well. I spotted 2 frames of almost fully capped honey - boy I wanted to harvest, but I didn't - After that there was half a frame of honey and half a frame of emerging bees. I took this frame to put into my next split (for the Black Queen) I found another one with only capped brood on and also took this out. A final one had some BRIAS (BRood In All stadia) - I didn't like the eggs at all, but it'll have to make do.
The middle section of the top box existing out of 3 frames from the cut-out I did are still all built together. I could move them all at once by trying to lift one frame. I did not take that cluster of frames out to inspect.
I closed up the hive again without spotting the queen.
Before I started the inspection I did see pollen come in - mostly orange like.
TO 2 2018: I went back to check this box of 6 frames again - if possible I would've put the Black Queen in there. But, since I'm still unsure if they need a queen I didn't - Nothing much changed since last time. The bees were very calm, and this adds to my confusion. From what I hear and read on the internet, queenless bees are more agressive. I did not spot this at all. I'm going to wait another week and we'll see what happens from there. Worst case scenario I have to combine them with one of my other hives. - I used the BuzzBox app and it says the bees are healthy - another reason I didn't want to put in the queen there.
PC 1 2018: As I stated above, I wanted to take out frames with larvae and no eggs from this hive, but all frames had eggs apart from one that didn't have anything but nectar. I insepcted the hive real quick but did not see the queen. I'm hoping these bees will do well before winter and will thank me for the hive that I built, rather than get me pulling my hairs out for being the dumb newbee that I am.
SS 1 2018: With this hive I have the same problem as my trap-outs. I have no clue as to whether there is a queen in there or not. To be on the safe side I put a queen excluder on this hive and put one of my Zander boxes on that excluder. In that box there is the following:
1 - Filler Block
2 - Filler Block
3 - Frame of half foundation
4 - Frame of sugerfeed
5 - Zander frame with emerging brood
6 - Zander frame with BRIAS
7 - Zander frame half of nectar and some emerging brood on the other side
8 - Frame of half foundation
9 - Filler Block
10 - Filler Block
I placed it on there around 12h10.
Now if that hive isn't queenright I might have gotten myself into trouble; I gave it a frame of eggs.
Bees in there will start using the larvae that are young enough (and also in the frame) to build themselves a queen. In that case they might not even want to accept the queen I bought. So I did an inspection of this 6-frame hive to spot evidence of a queen.
Around 13:30 I went back a first time to check on the bees and looked through the window to see if there were nurse bees up there. - It was dark and I only saw some bees up there. I opted to wait a bit longer and went back out at 14:30.
The 3 frames seemed to have some bees in them, so I moved the box down to where I want my new hive to be and did an inspection of the frames still in the SS 1 2018.
5 frames are filled with food apart from here and there some capped brood ready to come out. No fresh eggs, no open brood and only one queencup without egg in it and it doesn't look like it has been sealed off.
I bit the bullet and decided to put my Black Queen in here. The SS 1 2018 has now got the black queen you see above! But before I introduced her I shook out 3 more frames of bees inside the new split. That new split will be my second attempt to raise a queen by myself.
I'll report back tomorrow to see if the queen is out of the cage in the SS 1 2018.
SS 2 2018: See above to see the composition of this hive. This is what they call a walk-away split now. I hope there's enough bees in there to take care of the little brood that is in there.
Bob Out
