A Month in the Apiary - July

As we move into July, I am reflecting on what’s happened over the last four weeks. The hives were only slowly building up. I started to get a bit anxious as none of the bees seemed to be building stores ‘upstairs’, in the Supers. These are the boxes where honey is stored and the queen cannot get up there, as there is a queen-excluder frame just above the brood box, and the queen, being bigger, is unable to pass through.

With the strongest hives available that had a calm and gentle queen, I did what is commonly called a ‘split’, removing a brood frame of newly laid eggs, together with a frame of pollen and another of capped honey stores, from the strongest hive and placing them into an empty hive. I also shook in many nurse bees (the youngest bees from the strongest hive, who had never left the hive, hence this was their new home). Within twenty-four hours these bees realise they were queen-less, and start the process of creating queen cells and queens from the resources I’d made available to them. The nurse bees in the new hive look after the frame of brood. Additional feed, syrup, is provided, as there are no flying bees available to bring in nectar at this stage, the nurse bees having yet to develop. All being well a new queen will emerge in sixteen days. Now the crafty beekeeper will, during his regular checks, look out for the queen cups, noting how many there are. I then prepared five additional ‘Apidea,’ small queen-rearing boxes, placing approximately one litre of nurse bees (yes, I measure them) into them, and shutting them in for twenty-four to thirty-six hours. They’ll realise they’re hopelessly queen-less and readily accept the new sealed queen cell – hence I’m able to increase the number of hives.

With all this activity trying to get my hive numbers up, I’d neglected the additional ‘bait’ hives I’d put out around the barns, to try and catch swarms that were passing. There was a moment of panic when two hives filled with two different swarms within ten minutes of each other. These were relocated to the Apiary. I went to check the remaining ‘bait’ boxes only to find the wax moth had moved in and had set about destroying the wax frames inside.

All hives seem to have increased in size very quickly and I’m up to seven honey supers on one. Hopefully, there will be a crop in a month’s time and the honey will be available in the local farm shops and the Fletching shop.

If you are lucky enough to get a swarm arrive in your garden, do give me a call and I’ll pop round and deal with it.

Nick Pendleton
Woodside Farm
(M): 07983 1751556