Last Tuesday
was one of the rare occasions when I had a little time off work and Lauren was
with her child minder, so I took the opportunity to brush up on my hive
inspection skills with Ian.
We arrived at
the apiary in the morning to bright sunshine and a bit of breeze after a heavy
rain shower earlier in the morning. We could see a lot of activity around both
hives as we suited up and approached them.
I inspected
the hive that contains Queen Beelinda. There were about 4 heavy frames of busy
and healthy looking bees; I spotted the tell-tale white dot on the back of the
Queen, but unfortunately there were no stores of food. I did also find one very
mouldy frame which I thought contained dead brood and pollen.
Ian inspected
the other hive which has a double brood box and found much the same but with no
mould and some stores.
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| Close up of mouldy frame |
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| Mouldy Frame |
Both hives are going to be fed now with sugar syrup (or fondant as the weather gets colder) until the spring, when hopefully the weather will be better than this year!
Hi All, apologies if this is not an appropriate thing to post here and please remove if so. I started a new bee related classified ads website in June called www.beekeepingonline.co.uk and added a Facebook page www.facebook.com/beekeepingonline last month. I would really appreciate any feedback on the sites good or bad, plus I am running a competition in association with Payne's Bee Farm to give away 2 Poly 14x12 (Jumbo) National Hives With Frames - its free to enter.
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