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Hi Guys,
We had Ian Molyneux from the National Bee Unit come for a full apiary inspection yesterday, following up from the European Foul Brood at Dunham Massey they are inspecting all Bee Colonies within a 5km radius, and as we are just within that he came to do a complete check on all our girls!
We last saw him in May 2010, when he did an inspection on our 3 hives and helped us to split hive 2 into 4 (we had lots of queen cells in there last May), so he was quite surprised to see us now with 2 apiaries and 8 hives and 2 nucs, (2 nucs and 2 new hives of bees are for sale if anyone is interested!)
All our girls were checked over, and fortunately we appear to be free of any taint of EFB, which is a relief!
He was also saying that we arent alone with having had strange behaviour from the bees this year, all of our 6 hives have requeened themselves this year (the last of our older queens disappeared from hive 6 2 weeks ago, but there are superceedure cells present, so they should be ok in a week or two once the new queen has hatched and been mated), as well as having had 8 new splits, and its not unusual to find swarms of bees (from elsewhere) turn up if you have a busy apiary (hence the 3 swarms we've managed to catch and house this year on the plot that weren't from our girls!)
Overall he was very happy with our hives, very happy with what we are doing and with the health and strength of our colonies, and as he said 'whatever you are doing, keep doing it, as its obviously working really well for you!', which was a nice compliment!
Thankfully our girls behaviour seems to have improved massivelyover the past week or so, no more attempts to chase us of the plot, and very calm when we did our weekly inspections on Thursday and when Ian did the inspections on Friday, it was actually a pleasure to work with the bees rather than the chore it had been for a few weeks when they were misbehaving!
Anyone else had any inspections this year?
Are all the newer beekeepers registered on BeeBase.com?
We had Ian Molyneux from the National Bee Unit come for a full apiary inspection yesterday, following up from the European Foul Brood at Dunham Massey they are inspecting all Bee Colonies within a 5km radius, and as we are just within that he came to do a complete check on all our girls!
We last saw him in May 2010, when he did an inspection on our 3 hives and helped us to split hive 2 into 4 (we had lots of queen cells in there last May), so he was quite surprised to see us now with 2 apiaries and 8 hives and 2 nucs, (2 nucs and 2 new hives of bees are for sale if anyone is interested!)
All our girls were checked over, and fortunately we appear to be free of any taint of EFB, which is a relief!
He was also saying that we arent alone with having had strange behaviour from the bees this year, all of our 6 hives have requeened themselves this year (the last of our older queens disappeared from hive 6 2 weeks ago, but there are superceedure cells present, so they should be ok in a week or two once the new queen has hatched and been mated), as well as having had 8 new splits, and its not unusual to find swarms of bees (from elsewhere) turn up if you have a busy apiary (hence the 3 swarms we've managed to catch and house this year on the plot that weren't from our girls!)
Overall he was very happy with our hives, very happy with what we are doing and with the health and strength of our colonies, and as he said 'whatever you are doing, keep doing it, as its obviously working really well for you!', which was a nice compliment!
Thankfully our girls behaviour seems to have improved massivelyover the past week or so, no more attempts to chase us of the plot, and very calm when we did our weekly inspections on Thursday and when Ian did the inspections on Friday, it was actually a pleasure to work with the bees rather than the chore it had been for a few weeks when they were misbehaving!
Anyone else had any inspections this year?
Are all the newer beekeepers registered on BeeBase.com?
