A Journey of Many Pounds Starts With a Single Penny

themadvix

It all sounds fascintating LG, especially the bit about the newspaper to separate them initially - so very mammal-like (meaning the sort of thing you do to introduce cats and dogs etc.)!

Suffolk_lass

The only time we merged two colonies with newspaper I was appalled at the newspaper debris that looked like a wooly fungus on the OMF. We had not used a drop board in our ignorance!

We might be doing the same thing next week. Like you, a new Queen may be a dud as lots of drone brood capped and multiple eggs in cells. This is her last week to settle before she is squished

LadyGnome

Sneaking back in.  I've had a manic few weeks with a big deadline on my course and getting going on a new project in work.  Added in to the chaotic mix was a completely random and unexplained bout of urticaria (hives) that lasted a week.  I managed to shift it by googling the NHS max dose of anti-histamines and taking them (4 a day at one point).  

The swarmy hive is now officially defunct leaving two reasonable colonies.  One of them seems to be requeening for reasons best known to itself.  I left one open and one sealed QC and let them get on with it.  I am gradually moving this hive to where the swarmy hive was so it's ready for the winter.  For those of you who aren't used to bees, the rule is that you can move bees 3 feet or 3 miles.  In other words you either have to move them a bit so they can find their way back to the hive if they were out flying when you moved it or you shut them in and move them so far away that they are forced to reorientate themselves to the new hive position because they are so far from their old home.   We've extracted a fair bit of honey from the settled hive and I will take the supers off at the end of the month and extract anything else that is capped off.

I was going to check the bees this afternoon but there was so much smoke in W London from a big grass fire that I wasn't sure what sort of mood they would be in.  I know beeks use smoke to calm bees but I wasn't sure what a pervading atmosphere of smoke for hours would do for their mood.  Luckily the LFB got it under control a couple of hours ago but 5 hectares were burning and there was thick smoke for miles.  I never fancy the idea of opening a hive of possibly very hacked off bees.

Just done the monthly money shuffle so I will update my sig once the mortgage balance updates - I will be into the next £10k bracket.

Suffolk_lass

Planning to inspect today. Think we have a drone layer in one hive (hoping it isn't a worker laying), vile temperament at a second, and masses of wasps at the third location. Going to inspect all today. We have four smallish colonies and a fifth with a new Queen (they think) who had not started laying ten days ago. Not much honey to show for it all