New hive update

Today, Steve and I checked on the new hive. It was hardly ideal weather as it was quite windy with rain showers, two things that bees absolutely hate. Added to this, we couldn’t find the bee suits after Phil had taken them home to wash a couple of days ago.

So armed only with a thin fleece, I helped Steve check the new hive. The yellow contaiowhich held the Queen bee was still stuck between two of the frames. Steve managed to retrieve it using the hive tool to prise it out.

At first, neither of us were sure that the Queen was out. There were several bees inside all milling around. We thought she was probably out and put the container aside.

Next, we started to check the frames, removing about a dozen unsealed Queen cups. These would have been used if we hadn’t provided a Queen for the hive so quickly. On the third frame, we spotted her. As she is a 2019 Queen, she has a green spot on her back. This makes her much easier to spot amongst the thousands of other bees.

Now that we have found the Queen, we will leave them to settle for another week. Then Phil will take them home for 2-3 weeks before bringing them back and transferring them to a wooden hive on the Community Garden.

After this excitement, I managed to hoe and weed half the plot before calling it a day. Tomorrow I plan to finish hoeing and dig over the chicken coop. I still haven’t quite worked out how to extend the new coop but I have a few ideas.