It was a lovely afternoon at the apiary. Bees and beekeepers very well behaved as usual. We had twelve members attend so we split into two groups. The two weakest hives were put together using the newspaper,telegraph of course,method. I was about to squash the unwanted queen when shouts of NO went up. Someone now has a suspect queen in a cage with three attendants. Might prove useful. There were reports of two swarms seen yesterday. Six hives are doing very well. The two we supered two weeks ago needed a second one and three others
3 Comments
Stephen
6/5/2013 12:43:21 pm
The 'suspect' queen is now safely housed in Langley on 3 frames of sealed brood plus house bees and 2 frames of stores taken from a strong colony. Will she be accepted or will they kill her - find out next week. (This is better than The Archers!)
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Jim Cooper
9/5/2013 03:39:43 pm
Would it not have been better to unite the two weak colonies with two strong colonies - assuming a thorough disease check has been done? I remember Clive saying in his recent talk that two weak colonies don't make a strong one...
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Dennis
14/5/2013 10:06:40 am
Jim is right about not mixing a weak colony with another weak one. In this case we had just supered the other colonies so we did not want to disturb them.There was only a very small patch of healthy brood in the smallest colony so it seemed a good idea to use them to help the other small one.
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