For this week's hive inspection I took along my mentor, Pippa, from Manchester Beekeepers. She has kindly agreed to look after me in the first few months of my beekeeping and is a very nice, very laid back person and great around the hive. Not like some of them on a Monday night at Heaton Park, banging things around and squashing bees through ham-fisted carelessness. I mean, I know eventually I will get stung but the longer it goes when it doesn't happen, the better and I certainly don't want to get the fallout from someone else's clumsy handling.
Anyway, this week was very hot and even with shorts and a t-shirt under the bee suit it was very warm. Sweat trickling down your face doesn't help and because of the veil in the way, you're not able to wipe it away so must suffer. We were met at the gate by one of the allotment holders, who asked if the bees had made any honey. She went on to ask me twice more, and Pippa once, if they'd made any honey and proudly said there were more bees (wasps, it turned out) in one of the compost bins.
The hive looks quite at home now, in the midst of the allotments and the windbreak fence is helping to lift the bees up to a safe height so they don't bother other allotment holders. The posts are sagging slightly so I will have to keep an eye on that as time goes on. The choice of colour was a good one, and unless you know it's there, you can hardly spot it.
There was plenty of activity, lots of brood, stores, eggs and larvae and a lot of bees coming in and going out of the hive. In another week it will be time for a super and hopefully we will have a bit of honey at the end of September. More importantly, the colony should be big enough to over-winter safely and start next spring in good condition. The queen, marked in this picture, is doing well and laying a nice brood pattern and there are plenty of young bees.
They do seem to be using a fair amount of syrup though, and it's starting to become expensive, purchasing sugar to feed them, but it has to be done. Without it they couldn't produce wax to make comb and therefore nowhere for the queen to lay. Aside from worrying about them when I am not there, and resisting the urge to open the hive every five minutes, they are getting on with business without me interfering. It is very pleasant to sit and watch them gliding in and taking off, bringing bags full of pollen and crops full of nectar and generally just enjoying watching them flying about. The next job now will be to name them all...
After we left and I had dropped Pippa off at her house, she gave me some redcurrants which I used even more sugar to turn into redcurrant jelly. Such sweet pastimes!
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