The Apiary in June

Title Photo: Bumble Bee on Blackberry Flower

As we travel into the heat of June our colonies still continue to  try  and swarm or worse ‘throw casts’  until you have few bees remaining in the home colony.

This is why it is so important that after a colony swarms you get into the original hive and cull all the Queen cells but one.

My bait hives continue to catch swarms and casts before they restock my neighbours’ chimneys and warn me that “the game is afoot” somewhere in somebody’s Apiary.

My bees never swarm of course?!!!

Last month I spoke about putting on a deep Brood Chamber full of National standard frames that I use throughout the Apiary, onto  a strong hive to get them to draw it out and store  honey and pollen in it.

The result is shown below honey to extract or food to place into my breeding Nucs.

But be careful – I left an Eke above the Queen excluder on what I thought was a weak colony early in the month then the nectar flow started and the result was wild comb everywhere! This problem solved by getting a couple of supers on double quick.

Another issue that we have not seen in a while is that of ‘spray damage’ caused by somebody using Insecticides to treat their flowering crops.