A Journey of Many Pounds Starts With a Single Penny

debtfreeoneday

Paying off 50% is not to be sneezed at. That’s a huge accomplishment. All downhill from there!

LadyGnome

I've done a bit more money shuffling as April was a 5 payday month.  I've paid off some of my stooze cards and started saving for my course fees for next year.

I've got a busy couple of weeks coming up with theatre, cinema, studying, work and my voluntary position as well.  I am away 1 weekend in May on my course and then for 2 days the week after back for 10 days then away for a week.  I have a couple of assignments to complete as well.

On top of that the bees have had their own agenda.  One hive was determined to swarm.  We caught the swarm and put it in its own hive but it must have been too close to the flight path of their old hive so most of them appear to have decamped back.  They then swarmed again and we caught the swarm (again) and put it in a hive in a different part of the garden.  That seems to have worked.  I took a couple of frames out of the swarmy hive that had a queen cell and put them in a different small box (nuc box - like a mini hive).  That box may have a queen in it.  The swarmy hive still had several queen cells so I decided to reduce them down to one but unfortunately managed to pick one of the cells with a queen about to emerge.  Consequently, that hive now seems to be queenless - I've given them a frame of brood from the bigger queenright hive so they can make a new queen if they need one.  I've now also combined the nuc box colony with what was left of the first attempted swarm using a sheet of newspaper to divide them so the smells of the two colonies combine as they chew their way through the paper.

We should have a better idea in the next week or so if all this fiddling around has achieved anything.  The one hive that is behaving normally is doing well and we may have honey to extract next week.

I need to sit down and work out some shorter term financial goals to give me a few targets to aim at - when I get 5 minutes.

Suffolk_lass

Hi @LadyGnome, reassured here that it is not just our bees that are misbehaving!

So far this year we had a drone laying Queen colony (they superseded in August and most drones had already been evicted!) so we shook them out in front of the adjacent colony. One down. That hive now has a capped QC (removed to a BB with many dummy boards as most nucs already in play yesterday) and we tore down a row of swarm cells along the bottom. Two uncapped good looking QC in supercedure position two thirds down a (commercial) frame we have left both as can't say which is better and a VQ might tear down the second

DH took out a nuc at the Farm site and took swarm cells that were empty so on return from hols, that has dwindled, not sure if I will add a frame or let it go. The hive from which I would choose to add a frame of eggs is mid-re-queening. They are quiet and gathering pollen but no brood. One full super and one half full there.

The adjacent hive is too hot to look (at 4.30pm yesterday) but there is pollen going in and it remains busy. I don't want another aggressive hive so might have to squish her (if I can find her, or split them) make them hopelessly queen-less and then try to re-queen them.

We have only collected one swarm, looked like a caste, in a dead tree, in the middle of a sheep field, in the pouring rain. It is at home, in a nuc and has drawn three and a half frames in a week and bringing in pollen but no brood yet - hopefully she is a VQ and has been out on the razzle this week.

The other (inherited) colony at home has grown rapidly, loads of brood, I added a second BB and a third super, removed the finished super and borrowed a friend's 9 frame electric extractor.

A busy time of year!

LadyGnome

Compared to last year it's been crazy.  We had that very wet April last year when the bees did very little but this April was so hot that they got off to a flying start (see what I did there...) and caught me out.  I've certainly learnt a lot. Quite a few of the local beekeeping association have had similar problems with hives reaching swarming state much earlier than normal in the season. Normally, around here May is when swarm season really gets going but quite a few of us have had swarms in April.

 We have 2 nearly full honey supers on the well behaved hive but I want to leave something for them in case we have a June gap.  Talking to BK who have had hives for longer in this area the June gap seems to be disappearing a bit.  There used to be a clear break between spring flowers and summer flowers but that is less the case now.  Apparently, it's still more noticeable at Kew Gardens according to one of the beekeepers there - their nectar flow does drop off sharply from June onwards.
This week's inspection should be interesting as I am hoping that I can see evidence of a laying queen in the two new hives.  I will have a better idea about the condition of the possibly queenless hive if there are QC or not.  My back up plan is if either or both of the new boxes are queenless and there are QCs in the hive that got the frame of brood I might try cutting out a QC for the other boxes to raise.

The hives are popular with small birds as well.  It appears that as well as feeding the birds in winter, I am now inadvertently feeding them in spring with some of my bees.  I've seen great tits and sparrows (& the odd magpie) foraging around the hives so far.  

Suffolk_lass

Laying workers are a nightmare. You will know (but other readers may not) that multiple eggs in cells can mean a newly mated Q who has not quite got the hang of it, or a laying worker, who has taken several weeks (normally) to develop the enzyme that means they try to take over. Their short abdomens mean they lay part way into the cell, rather than in the bottom though. Almost impossible to identify which is the culprit, the advice round here is to shake them out as once they start, they do not stop.

I think last year's miserable Spring has accounted for lots of poorly mated Queens and that is why all hell has let loose as they come to the end of their useful careers and along with the longer lived old girls it is Swarm-a-geddon.

LadyGnome

Check the sig...

Halfway point is passed   

Onwards and downwards

This month has been pretty hectic and next month will be too.  I am busy in work, with my studying and my voluntary work.  It should calm down by mid July when all my coursework deadlines are met.

We've harvested some spring honey just from one hive and that should keep us going for quite a while.  I am going to do a full detailed inspection of the hives over the bank holiday as I was away this weekend.  I hope we will get some more honey by the end of July that will take us through to next years harvest.  We had 3 jars left when we did this one.

I'm also going to use the BH to do some financial planning as I need some shorter term goals to keep me motivated now I've achieved this one.

Suffolk_lass

Gosh, well done! On a mortgage of over £300k that is amazing. Bees are vexatious here

South_coast

Well done on passing the halfway mark! Fantastic work 😀😀😀

LadyGnome

Thank you both - it is a huge relief to feel like I am gradually winning the battle.

debtfreeoneday

Well done on passing halfway. All downhill now!