Hive Check 20 August

 Nice and warm again! Joseph Paul and Sweta joined me.

 The bees numbers are still good and they seem to be very active although we don't know how much nectar there is about for them. The new hive had certainly dug into their stores but there were still enough to keep them going before we start to feed them. We hope to extract in the next couple of weeks



We managed to see and photograph the new queen with her nice red spot but didn't see the other one so its not fool proof! Laying has slowed down this week although there was plenty of brood of about 10-14 days old so perhaps the food situation isn't as good as the workers would like so they have slowed the queens laying rate? The autumn flowers are not quite here so the June gap looks like its been pushed back to August. Hopefully the sedum roof on the business school has survived the drought and will be coming into flower soon.


There were quite a few varroa on the board of the old hive (8) but as soon as the honey is off we'll treat them, the bees are healthy enough to cope for a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed we are going into the autumn in a strong state so far