JUNE GAP!

Checking the bees this week, the June Gap is very much in evidence. The Spring flowers (Oil Seed Rape) have finished but the summer flowers have yet to come into bloom. This creates almost a complete stop on incoming nectar. Stores in the hive are diminishing rapidly and so some good weather is needed to keep the season going.

Sunshine

A lovely warm sunny day to check my bees; how this weather affects the bees - they were lovely and couldn't care less about my intrusion, happy to let me meddle. What a joy!

So Buzzy!

My apologies; my bees are keeping me so busy I don't have time to sit and keep you up to date on blogs. I will endeavour to rectify this as quickly as possible.

Cooled Off!

May has brought the bees to a shuddering halt. After the warm April where the bees were building nicely, this month has been cool and the bees have done little. A few have looked to swarm and the Rape has yet to bring any surplus honey (though that is not a bad thing to me!). I do hope the weather changes though or I fear another bleak summer for the bees.   

SWARMING!

I had to carry out my first artificial swarm today; there were four charged queen cells in one of my hives. I am a bit sceptical about whether its too early, though a good few of my hives have drones in them. So the swarming season has begun. Looking back to last years notes it began around this time in 2014 too!

Turning Yellow

The fields of green now have a hint of yellow; it appears the Oil Seed Rape is coming into flower in my area. The bees will be working it soon and the colonies will expand quickly.

Been A Long Time!

I managed to check all my colonies this week to ensure that they are okay after the winter. As I updated my records I saw that the last time I checked brood was nearly eight months ago, such a long time, hard to believe! So I am more than happy to have seen over 30 queens during my checks . :-)