Too many bees and not enough Queens

It was a cold, wet miserable weekend right up to 5pm yesterday when the sun actually shone.  We got suited up and then did our checks. 

On checking the first of the Carni hives, we couldnt find a queen, just about to put the middle frame in when O/H noticed a lot of bees on the underside of the open mesh floor.  We lifted the hive, took the floor off and brushed the bees into the hive... There was a Queen!!!!  No idea how or why she was there but we put her back and hopefully she is mated and will stay.  There are no eggs/lavae/brood in that hive now.  O/H went out later on to see if they had calmed down but there was another clump of bees in the same place.  we are hoping that they can just smell the queen from previous (fingers crossed).

The other 2 Carni hives have no queens at all!

Buckfast Nuc is doing well, we have had some robbing there from neighbouring black bees (cute bees but a pain)  our girls are doing an outstanding job of fighting them off though.  The Queen cell is capped and should be hatching soon, its small but hopefully it will produce a good healthy queen. 

Buckfast hive is as always just constant although there was no sign of eggs unless we missed them.  There was early stage lavae though.  It was pretty shaded by the time we did our check...
The Varroa appears to be cleared up now too. 

The 2 new Buckfast Queens should hopefully arrive soon, then we can introduce them to the queenless hives before its too late and hopefully they will build up. 

Ahh the ups and downs of bee keeping!!

Queen or no queen... oh and another swarm!!!

The day began well, the sun was out but a bit windy so we decided to wait a while to inspect the bees.  Had a cuppa at the allottment then came back.  Our nephew and his partner came round for a cuppa and always interested in the bees, asked if they could take a walk down to see them.  There it was... another swarm on the same archway as last time!!  Hubbs set to it catching the swarm, which was a bit unnerving as I had never seen that many bees together before but he caught them.  

As the swarm was settling down we began checking the rest of the bees..

Buckfast first as always are calm, busy and just get on with it.  Moved on to the Carnis (Harmony 2)  checked twice but not a queen in site and no eggs??  put the lid on, moved to nuc. 

The Nuc was pretty full so we decanted the colony into the new hive.. No Queen?!?!  however, there were 7 big queen cells and one was massive!!  we removed 6 cells and left the monster cell with the nuc/new hive..

Checked the final hive, no queen again so we put the swarm into it.  They will either, fight each other to the death, the swarm will move on again or... the queen will stay and lay..

What ever happens, we "will" be changing the carnis to Buckfast later in the season!! carnis are too much trouble!!!!!!!!!!

First harvest of the year

Its now practically a year since we started our "little" hobby.. how we've grown!!

The warm weather brought the rape on 3 weeks early and the spring blossom has been amazing.  So much so that we took 2 x full supers off both the Buckfast and Harmony 2 (carnis).  57lb we spun off in total and there is still more on the way!!!  Thank you Mother Nature for your lovely warm weather and blossom. 

2 weeks ago I mentioned that we had gained not one but 2 new Carni queens.  We decided to leave them alone after the initial inspection, let them make themselves at home.  Saturday is the next time we check them... so until then.