All fun and games

Just when you think you have the varroa under control so now you can relax????  Swarmy bees!!  Buckfast ladies are doing well now, the first super is full of honey and they have begun to cap the wax.  They are also now into the 2nd super, the glistening honey is a pleasing sign. 

Those Carnis though are a pain, each time we go in, there are more and more queen cells.  We have tried picking out the cells but have read that no matter what we do to the queen cells those girls have it in their minds to swarm and swarm they will.  What we have done is taken the old queen out, put her in a nucleous box with some frames of brood, bees and stores and have fed them all.  Hopefully... the bees in Carni hive will not swarm, they will rear their new queen and live happily ever after.  If after a while, there are no eggs to be found we will but old queen back in and let her build up her brood again. 

Just in case all goes well, we will end up with 3 hives, 1 x Buckfast and 2 x Carnis.. that is where it stops though.

Early spring, April Heatwave and Varroa (lots of it)

Yes, spring is early this year, the blue bells are out in abundance and we are having a heatwave.  23deg C here in Derbyshire!!  We really could do with a good old soaking!!!

The hives have now been changed to the larger ones, 1st super is on and the bees are very busy.  We put the monitoring boards under both hives a few weeks ago and despite treating at Christmas we found rather a lot of varroa mites.  We've managed to treat well the Carnis, 2 lots of apiguard and they are much clearer.  The Buckfast however are struggling with the mites, we have done 2 lots of apiguard and are now resorting to "old faithful" icing sugar!!  They were doused in the icing sugar last Sunday and we will check them tomorrow. 

Hopefully the drop will be less.