Yesterday was an exciting day for us. It was bee delivery day at the new apiary!
Greg had ordered a full colony and a nuc of overwintered bees - this is important as they're strong enough to survive the winter and will therefore be eager to build up and hopefully make honey this year - this means we now have 1 strong colony, 2 weaker colonies and a nuc for the beginning of the honey-making year.
We started off by preparing the apiary as we knew that the frames the new bees were coming on were 14 x 12" rather than the British Standard National that we use (14 x 8") therefore we needed to do a Bailey comb exchange to swap them onto our frames. This means placing our brood box with the smaller frames on top of the bigger brood box, which belongs to the lady we purchased the bees from. The brood in the bigger frames, at the bottom, will have time to hatch out and move up the hive into our smaller frames. This will happen over approximately 3 weeks because the queen and her ladies prefer to be towards the top of the hive where it is warmer. After this, we will return the larger frames and brood box to the lady they belong to.
We decided to reduce the extraneous frames in both the lower and upper brood boxes in order to keep the bees warm and to encourage the bees to travel upwards. We pushed all 6 frames to one side of the hive and placed a dummy board (a piece of wood cut to the inner dimensions of the hive) to block off the other half of the hive. It, therefore, went from 11 frames to 6 in each box.
1 2 3
4 5
1) 14x12 brood box and nuc just arrived.
2) Full complement of frames.
3) 14x12 Frame - brood, food & pollen.
4) Reduced number of frames with dummy board.
5) Bailey comb exchange taking place; you can see that our brood box (the brighter green boxes on top) are slightly smaller.
Greg's Garblings: Greg says "Another benefit of the Bailey comb exchange is that it renews all of the frames of a hive in one go. This means that if the old frames are diseased or poisoned it will allow the bees to make fresh, healthy comb without sacrificing the brood that they already have. Also, as it's all fresh comb, they go into a 'recently swarmed' mentality which means that they produce loads of wax, rear loads of brood and collect loads of food."
After we had made the exchange we made sure to feed them using the contact feeding method as they had new frames to draw out and so may need the extra food. Using this method means putting syrup into a contact feeder (see picture below) which has a mesh disk in the top. You turn this upside down to create an air vacuum inside the container.
This allows the syrup to hang at the mesh and the bees can lick at it as and when they need it.
We then left them alone as much as possible i.e. I dragged Greg away kicking and screaming.
We named the new colony Steph (after Greg's mum) and she was very well behaved considering the journey she'd had. Here they are having just done an orientation flight and calling back their lost sisters by fanning their Nasonov Gland (sticking their bum in the air) to signal they'd found their home.
Steph
Weak strength
Quiet temperament
1 (14x12) brood box
4 seams of bees
2 frames of stores
3 frames of partial brood (all stages)
6 foundation frames in upper brood box
No signs of varroa
Didn't see the queen
Fed sugar syrup
The new nuc was a bit rowdier when we were inspecting her and flared up a bit but we can't really blame her after having been shaken around on the drive across and she soon settled down again. Here they are emerging from the entrance after it had been first opened.
Nuc
Weak strength
Cantankerous temperament
1 (14x12) brood box
3 seams of bees
2 frames of stores
3 frames of partial brood (all stages)
5 foundation frames in upper brood box
No signs of varroa
Didn't see the queen
Fed sugar syrup
Following on from our initial inspection of the new bees, there are several jobs for the future that have emerged. These aren't urgent but it's useful to make a note of them.
Mark the queens, when spotted as they're currently unmarked. (All our queens should be Blue as they're are 2020 queens.)
When the new nuc has built up a bit and has filled its frames it will need transferring to a new hive (hopefully ASAP!)
Potentially, an oxalic dribble might need to happen (see our previous post) as we don't know what varroa treatments have taken place in the past.
Keep an eye on their temperament and genetics to see if they are potentials for queen rearing next year.
In other news, we went across to our first apiary to do a quick check of the food situation with Kate and Laura and we ended up seeing both girls! Can you spot them in both pics v?
Laura ^ is obvious (Juicy!). Kate is the first bee to the left of the silver hive tool ^ and appears slightly longer than the others around her.
Laura is massive and looking really strong whereas Kate was quite difficult to keep an eye on as she wasn't much bigger than the other bees. I really wanted to mark them but Greg had left the marking equipment in the car and we ended up taking our eyes off Kate for a second and she disappeared into the mass of other girls ... hopefully, we'll see her again soon and Greg has promised that he'll keep his marking equipment on him from now on so we don't miss another opportunity.
All in all a really successful day. The weather was glorious and warm in the full sun, cool in the shade. Hopefully, this will continue for some time and the girls can get out and forage as much as possible.
Until next time ...