My bees sit on an allotment plot that a small group of us got permission to start an apiary on and fence off to keep them above head height as much as possible. There is only me and one other group member who now keep our bees there and he suggested a group inspection. Luckily our bee buddy also came along, as did the interested allotment holder who observed my inspection last time. Stephen opened his hive first. He is quite gung ho in the way he handles his bees so there was soon a large cloud of bees flying about albeit fairly good naturedly, although 'interested man' with his 'I'll watch but not wear a bee suit' approach did get stung and subsequently followed by other bees following the alarm pheromones so he had to leave. He said he didn't mind but I suspect there was a certain amount of bravado there.
Last time I checked mine I forgot to count how many frames of brood there were, add a super and check the varroa board, because I was distracted by interested man. This time I kind of counted frames of brood but didn't actually look through all the frames so I reckon that the front 2 frames didn't have brood, they looked like newly drawn out clean wax, but there were eggs in the last frame at the back so I reckon 9 frames of brood. The drone brood hadn't emerged yet but some of the queen cups I had seen last time were now capped queen cells. I am still very confused about what to do with queen cells. Some people say destroy them in blah circumstances but not necessarily in blah blah circumstances, some say don't bother destroying them, you'll always miss one. Anyway, right or wrong, our bee buddy encouraged me in squashing the queen cells I found, but, since I didn't go through all the frames there are probably more there and I still don't know what to do with them for the best.
They had eaten all the syrup I put on last time so I'll give them some more soon. Apparently this will help them to them draw out the foundation in the super I put on today which has given them more room. I remember how tedious it got putting frames together with sheets of foundation last year but I really need to get on with this so that I have fully equipped spare hives if I need them for a swarm or if I split the colony. Our bee buddy said not to bother splitting the colony because, although he agreed it is a strong colony, he said it will reduce their production of honey and they will probably swarm anyway. Better to remove a frame of brood and replace it with new foundation to keep them busy. On the other hand, our intermediate beekeepers course has been advocating planning what to do about swarm prevention including considering splitting the colony. They also suggest removing more like 3 frames of brood per year but they say this is to keep the hive clean and get rid of disease rather than for swarm prevention - every beekeeper has different ideas!
Well I achieved the most important things I wanted to do but still didn't get to check the varroa board. I really need the space to think about what I'm doing, without other people distracting me while I am still learning what to do. It was useful to get our bee buddies take on things though, even if I end up ignoring his way of doing things.
As an exciting finish to todays inspection, as we were walking away, I could feel something tickling on my neck. For a second I thought it was just a hair stuck in my collar but it didn't feel right and Stephen confirmed that it was indeed a bee on my neck INSIDE my bee suit. I managed to get my zips undone and my veil off for our bee buddy to shoo it away without getting stung which I consider to be very lucky!
