Thursday 21 July 2011

Hive Check 21 July



Todays helpers were Julie and Fiona, both hands on! Many thanks



Sorry I forgot my camera today and we saw our first 'Play cup!'. Ive attached one I found on the Internet, ours wasn't so well developed.




A play cup is the first stages of a queen cell which the bees produce to create a new queen to either supersede the existing one or to make a new one prior to swarming. They make them all the time normally in the May/June period practicing for when they need to make a new queen. There was no egg or larva in it, so not a concern.



Less exciting, we also saw our first varroa mite, it was floating in the syrup feed. Julies taken it home to hopefully photograph through a microscope which we'll post if we can. We didn't see any on the varroa board so hardly an infestation at this stage.



No sight of the queen but we saw the odd egg. They are still not drawing out their foundation so we've put a call into Martin, the Bee Man for advice. Ill update once hes been!

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