The apiary has five hives - A1 to A5 all on 14x12 brood boxes
housed in WBCs but at the beginning of the year A2 and A5 had no bees. A1 had become queenless in the Autumn of 2017
with no opportunity to re-queen and at our first full inspection of 2018 not
surprisingly we found the colony had no bees just a couple of mice which
despite our best efforts to prevent it had taken up residence
The two remaining colonies had come through the winter strongly,
surviving on their own honey stores.
Apistan was put on both colonies in the second week March but because of the cold start to the
year, the first full Spring inspection was delayed until the beginning of April
when the Novices were involved. Marked queens were found in both hives and a
Bailey comb exchange was set up on A4 in the first week of April.
The flowering of the rape was delayed and the collecting of the
Spring honey crop ran into that of the Summer.
A second super was put on A3 at the beginning of May. A4 was slower to build up stores in the super
but had continued to store honey in the old brood box despite the queen being
well established in the upper box. This
was corrected when we put in an entrance between the two. The local Bee Inspector visited at the
beginning of May and gave the two hives a clean bill of health. No Spring honey
was extracted.
In mid May we setup a nuc using a queen cell, brood and stores from
A3. This was successful and was used to
re-colonise A2. At the beginning of June
we were able to set up A1 using another queen cell from A3 and brood and stores
from both A3 and A4. At the end of June
we set up a nuc using a frame containing eggs and no queen or queen cell which
developed successfully and was passed on to one of our regular attendees at the
end of August.
All four colonies were treated with Apiguard during September
having removed their queen excluders and A1 and A2 fed with strong sugar
solution. We consider that we have left
sufficient honey on A3 and A4 to get them through the Winter
At present 48lbs honey have been bottled into 12oz jars and sold to
Avoncroft Museum for a total of £160. A similar
amount will be raised from the 50lbs still to be bottled. The bees in A3 and A4 have collected 100lbs
of honey this year.
Thanks to those who attended the meetings, making it a very successful
year and we hope you had as enjoyable a season as we did and we all learned a
lot. Thanks also to the bees who were
very tolerant of our constant interruptions.
Alex Bignell and Bob Pargeter – Apiary Managers