streetbees at Tallis
streetbees make streethoney make streetmoney
Today we ran in the cast swarm for the second time, as you can see they had taken to living in the empty super by building there own natural frames. For some reason they were not keen on our brood box full of fresh new foundation…this time we have housed them just in the brood box and no super or feed…will feed in a couple of days once they have started to build out comb on the frames…we hope
Had a quick look at the cast swarm yesterday when adding more feed. But they have chosen to bunch under the cover board and not start to build comb in the brood box.
The plan is to run them in again tomorrow if the weather cheers up a bit.
Today at 12.15 a call came from distressed allotment owners to say they had a swarm of bees causing a lot of upset … Within forty minutes the swarm was happy setting up home in the now christened swarm pod … Tonight I will go and collect them and bring them to join the streetbees at Tallis …
Ok so since the swarm episode we have had lots of honey work going on but not seen a queen or any fresh lavae…until yesterday when Martin saw the fresh young healthy red looking queen..no pic i’m afraid as he had his hands full inducting one of the cleaning staff into the workings of a hive.
But he did see her, briefly, she then dropped off the bottom of the frame and back into the brood box…(we hope)
So hope for fresh larvae next week, i will try to get some up to date pics or a sound clip to upload.
On Saturday I got a call at lunch time to say the bees had swarmed and were causing a problem at the allotments. We rushed over and managed to catch the swarm which had gathered on the trunk of a nearby tree. Having swept them into a box and upturned it on a sheet we left them til evening to gather in the box.
Then we collected them about 6.30pm and drove them home to their new hive where they walked up the ramp nicely and set up home in a lovely new cedar hive.
In order to feed them as they dont have any stores in the new hive we made sugar syrup and poured it into 2 honey jars with lots of tiny holes in the lid made with a nail. You upturn this and place it over the cover board holes and they will feed from this.
So welcome to the blog Streetbees2 the Welling branch!
Yesterday I popped into school to check on the hive in the beautiful spring sunshine…good news to report…the colony is very busy, they have nearly polished off 2 packs of fondant from the Christmas feeding and i saw lots of fresh bright orange pollen being brought in by workers.
I removed the mouse guard as a queue was forming at the entrance and also replaced the queen excluder.
Amazing the tidy up process they have been through clearing out the frames and base following the long cold winter…so here comes summer.
On 17 Dec Martin and I had a brief visit to the hive to put on a pound of fondant icing to see the girls through the winter…we will be checking in again in January.
The hive was quiet, much reduced numbers and a few dead bees around the outside areas, its quite sad to see this after spending all summer taking such care of them but it is the natural process.
Great news…The bees have been busy indeed…we have taken off 7 capped frames of honey and have jars at the ready for our first harvest.
Looking forward to the next video opportunity of extracting honey with the borrowed honey spinner…
