2 Queens, some more honey and preparations for Autumn

Thank goodness, our new Queen has been accepted by the queenless hive... Not only that but she is laying like a trooper and is wonderfully easy to spot thanks to her bright mark (thank you Donald).

Once the hurdle of requeening was out of the way, we proceeded to take off the supers from the hive (we were reluctant to make too many changes at once). We took 4 supers off but none were completely full and only about half were capped. Still, we managed to extract about 20 pounds of honey which is still in the honey bucket for now. This harvest is much darker than the Spring yield and the consensus seems to be that it has a more complex taste.

We are now at the point where the bees have cleaned out the super frames and we are feeding both hives - one at a time as we only have the one (small!) feeder. We have also put Apilife var on both colonies. I was a bit concerned - apparently the colony may become "slightly agitated" during treatment.... However, so far, we have not noticed any reaction. It also says that they might take down less food - fingers crossed as both colonies definitely need it (neither has ten fully drawn out brood frames - I was hoping that the feeding would make them draw them out).

Question: Some of my super frames still have pollen in - am I ok to leave them wrapped in bin liners over the winter or will the pollen go mouldy? Does it matter?

Honey Sold Out...and Issues with a Queen

Have just about recovered from the Nunney Street Fayre where our honey sold out with orders for additional jars taken! The stall looked (I think) quite good with a smoker, bee book, and super frame for display and the all important tasting jar. Liam had raided McDonalds for those wooden coffee stirrer things that I then snapped in half for people to use to taste.

So what did we learn? People were intrigued at the idea of raw honey but I think mostly just loved the fact that our hives were less than ten minutes walk away from our stall. I also discovered that at least four other people in Nunney keep bees that I had no idea about - although bizarrely none seemed aware of the oilseed rape fields that we can see from our hives - but which are in fact, nearer Nunney than we are. Interestingly over the course of the whole day, perhaps just 5 people said they didn't like the texture (granular) so I definitely wont be worrying about that again. A stall nearby was selling Wiltshire honey at £4.20 but nobody seemed at all bothered by our price of £5. Several people mentioned Manuka honey so I suppose if they are paying £7-10 a jar for that, £5 didn't seem nearly as much.

We also had a surprise visit from Donald from the Frome BKA who happened to be visiting the Fayre (just as Liam got slightly carried away and put a sign up saying "Last Jar - £50").

However, back home from the show we now have to address a problem with our parent colony. Our sealed Queen cell hatched successfully and we left the hive for the required 3 weeks. However, we then booked a last minute holiday to Turkey leaving on the day when we were due to check to see if the virgin had mated successfully and was laying. On the grounds that we couldn't actually do anything constructive in the time we had left before going, we decided to leave the hive well alone. Then (long story this - sorry) our holiday firm went bust, and we booked a less exotic holiday for the following week. In the meantime, it poured with rain and we decided to put off the check again. On coming back from a damp and drizzly Cornwall, we noticed something was wrong. Very few bees were flying back to the parent hive, and when we opened it up, there were no eggs and no brood. All we could see were bees, stores and masses of gunky grey cells....

Cue mass panic. Us being us, we immediately decided it must be American or possibly European Foul Brood. (Mainly because I couldn't remember which was which). Visions of burning hives and horrified bee officials loomed. We rang Norman. Norman was calm. He pointed out that it was extremely unlikely to be either of the FB's and that August pollen is often grey. We grew calmer. We finished the call with suggestions to smell the grey gunky stuff and to ring Donald to see if there were any spare Queens.

We smelt the grey gunky stuff. It didnt smell. We probed it with a biro. It was clearly pollen. Why didnt we do this first?! Much embarrassment. Still no eggs or brood though. We rang Donald. He asked us to check for Queenlessness and explained that we should take a frame of eggs from our second hive and put it in the first one. If there is a Queen, nothing would happen. If the colony was Queenless, the bees would start making Queen cells from the imported eggs. He also explained that he has a mated Queen, but that she wouldnt be ready to go anywhere for several days.

The situation at present then, is that we have put a frame of eggs in the parent hive. (Which involved Liam, an open bee veil - his this time - and eight over-friendly bees, but that is a whole different story). We will try and check the frame tomorrow or weds but are keen to get the colony Queenright asap so we can begin preparations for Winter.

Honey for Sale?!

I am sitting at the kitchen table putting the finishing touches to my labels for the 20 or so jars of honey I want to sell at the Nunney Street Fayre this weekend. It is a ridiculously small number to sell, but as Liam takes honey in his tea instead of sugar, he refuses to let me sell any more!

We have decided to try and explain the concept of raw honey - unprocessed, untreated/unheated honey which is wholly different from the "commercial" honeys offered by the supermarkets. I know that some people will baulk at the fact that it is granular in texture, but we couldnt bring ourselves to heat it in the oven or heaven forbid, the microwave and so alter the flavours.

We have had some interesting pricing debates too. I have seen Somerset honey for sale at £6 in the local farm shop and £5.50 odd in local delis. We have decided to aim for £5 for a pound jar.

The next few weeks will be busy ones. Tomorrow we need to check to see if our new Queen is laying in the original colony - and we need to feed our second colony who are slow to draw out the foundation in their hive. Once the Fayre is over we will also need to put our names on the list for the club extractor and take off the four supers for extracting!

4 stings and 2 bees inside veil

My last post was positively celebratory. This post reflects on the darker side of beekeeping....

We have been monitoring the hive every 4-5 days to check on the development of Queen cells. Originally, we were waiting to find a well developed Queen cell with an egg inside it and were then planning to split the hive - a process that would have involved trips to a second apiary site in order to have two hives, both with large numbers of forager and young bees. However, our bees did not bee-have and it is a case of too little, too late. True, there are now several million (it feels) Queen cells, but it is now a bit later on in the season, and the wise men of the Frome Beekeeper's Association have suggested that we simply take a nucleus instead.

However, I dont know if it is because we removed their honey, or, more likely, because the weather has been so rainy and stormy here, but the last two visits have been really unpleasant. The bees have been pinging off us and generally been extremely aggressive.

As we tried to find the Queen yesterday to remove her into the nucleus box, I was stung once, and Liam three times. Worse than this, I had the moment every beekeeper dreads when I realised the buzzing was actually coming from inside of my helmet! Thankfully I managed (blindly - as my fist instinct was to close my eyes!!) to grab at a loose piece of veil and squish, and actually got the bee before it got me. However, the result was that I then kept being dive bombed at the precise bit of my helmet where the bee was stuck - and I was so terrified more bees would get in, I was useless for the rest of the check.

Eventually we were forced to close the hive up without achieving anything and come away. Then, as I was about to remove my veil, Liam calmly noted I had another bee wandering around inside my helmet - it had probably been there the whole time...

All in all, we were both dreading today - where we faced repeating the whole thing all over again.

The aim was to:

1. Find the Queen and remove her to the nucleus box - this means the parent hive is Queenless and wont swarm once Queen cells are sealed.
2. Put Queen plus two frames of sealed brood and eggs into the nucleus hive. Forager bees should all return to parent hive. Again, this apparently means that this hive shuld not swarm as one of the constituents of the swarm (Queen, forager bees, young bees) is missing. Hmmm, touch wood...
3. Put brood frames with foundation in parent and nucleus hives and feed nucleus hive

This time, Liam and I were armed to the teeth. 3 layers of trousers, gardening gloves covered with disposable plastic ones, and my bee smock elasticated waist carefully not pulled down around my hips (we think the bee got in underneath!) Liam built a small fire which we carefully loaded into the smoker - today was not the day for it to go out like normal. Finally we gritted our teeth and went for it.

The bees pinged, they were a bit aggressive, but thankfully today is sunny and there were far fewer bees in the hive. This time, we found the Queen (albeit on the last but one frame) and quickly put her in the nuc with two frames of brood and a shaken frame of bees for company. And then we ran.

Well not quite. We had to go back and feed the nuc because quite honestly, there was no way we were going through the 3 layers of trousers paraphernalia all over again in one day.

Now we have to keep an eye on the nuc, turning the frames of foundation so they draw them out and maybe feeding again. Once established we can try putting them in the second hive and hope they build up into a full colony in the summer.

And in six days time, we have to examine the parent hive for Queen cells, choosing either just one sealed or maybe two - one sealed, one open and destroying the rest.

Fingers crossed!

First Crop

A very important post! As the oilseed rape faded from gold to green we arranged to hire the club extractor for a fiver. We picked it up on Sunday, and by Monday, we were ready for action.

We wore old clothes, and sheets of newspaper swathed the kitchen floor, the table and any clear surfaces. We had a serrated bread knife to uncap the comb and some industrial sized baking trays to take the wet cappings. A few jam saucepans were ready to collect any strip drips and we found two sieves to filter out any impurities. Ted Hooper was, as ever, on standby...

Liam went out to take the supers off the hive and managed without too much difficulty. We had used two Porter bee escapes, and these had got rid of all but a few bees. So far, so good.

Next was the problem of what to do with the liquid that came out when you shook some of the frames. Karen, another

Frome beekeeper had suggested we extract this "nectar" first and keep it separate from the honey. We put these frames into the extractor, nervously started it up and got about 4 jars of liquid. The consistency was not at all like honey (too watery) and we were glad that we took the time to do this first. Had we merged it with the honey, I think it might have encouraged it to ferment. Instead, I suspect we may explore the possibility of mead!

Next, we used our everyday bread knife to slice off the cappings from the comb. This was hugely time consuming and I suspect we took off far too much, but we did seem to get a bit quicker by the end. (Although as we finished at twenty minutes past midnight, this may have been out of sheer desperation to get the job done!!) The bread knife was definitely up for the job although we reckon a smaller serrated knife would also be good for small bits of undulating comb - a serrated grapefruit knife perhaps?

We tried our best to follow instructions and load consecutive bits of comb opposite one another into the extractor (for better balance) but in all honesty, it didnt seem to make a

huge amount of difference. We also tried not to get over enthusiastic with our spinning in an effort to preserve the combs and I dont think we did too badly.

Finally, we filtered the honey through our ordinary kitchen sieves - one plastic, one metal, and into a plastic 15kg honey bucket where we left it to settle for 24 hours.

Needless to say we couldnt resist taking a jar to "taste" - and it is good! Very sweet and very long tasting with none of the cabbage taste I was worried about. This first test jar does have lots of bubbles - noticeably more than the jars we

are now bottling up. (Another tip we learnt by accident - by covering the honey bucket top with cellophane, which "rested" on top of the honey, when we came to remove it, all of the air bubbles and surface "scum" was removed with it - far more neatly than we could have done).

We started off bottling into all the jars we had carefully saved over the winter. However, I couldn't bear seeing our precious honey being decanted into jars still sticky from the old labels so we ended up buying some new ones. At twenty odd p a jar I dont think this is too extravagant...

24 hours later, there was still no sign of crystallisation which prompted me to ask Norman if it was definitely oil seed rape honey. Apparently the sweetness is a giveaway - and it might change colour / texture in the next few days. We await developments with interest...

So far we have bottled 23 1 lb jars with another 2/3 of the honey bucket remaining. This gets done tonight.

Backward bees

A fourth super has now gone on - which is good (obviously) - however, it would seem our bees are possibly the only ones in the Frome Beekeeper's Association NOT to be trying to swarm. I find this amusing as our one ambition for this year was to split the hive - something we obviously failed to share with the bees...

(Although I thought most swarms happen in June not May - maybe all the other Frome beekeepers are just ahead of themselves?!)

Went to the Bath and West Show to pick up some more equipment - supers and a honey bucket - and learnt that oilseed rape honey can (to some people) taste of cabbage. Great! Will look forward to that... Now just waiting to hear when the extractor is available as we must take the oil seed rape honey off before it sets.

We did an inspection yesterday and one super is sealed, the other two still a bit drippy if you shake them. Don't think we will be able to borrow it until after the weekend but fingers crossed.

Super Number Three

It's incredible. In my last post, I mentioned (somewhat sarcastically) that the bees had been spotted in the second Super. Now, in less than a week, it is full. On Saturday, Liam and I hastily constructed a 3rd Super and put it on the hive, and in our inspection yesterday, some of the frames have been partially drawn out and nectar and pollen deposited.

I am no longer even worrying about them capping the frames. David, who dropped by to deliver the Somerset Beekeeping Association's newsletter, pointed out that the honey needs time to settle and "mature" before they will cap it. And, if it is oilseed rape honey, which as the picture shows, it could well be, I will need to take it off the minute the rape stops flowering regardless of cappings anyway!

A full bee inspection yesterday resulted in one sting (me), a sighting of the Queen, and a new Queen cup - this time with egg. Inevitably, this has happened just as it is least convenient. We have worked out that if we check the hive on Friday we SHOULD be just in time to avoid the worst happening. Fingers crossed.

And of course, we have now run out of supers. Back in March, 3 Supers seemed positively decadent. I am hoping to order one and pick it up at the Bath and West show.

Queen Cups moving up the frame

Another full inspection, and this time, the Queen Cups are moving up the frame. I think these could quite probably become full on Queen Cells and am busy planning my next steps.

Robin (bee mentor) has developed his own method of dividing a hive that is based as far as possible on the bees' natural behaviour, and which also (hopefully) will result in two strong hives rather than one strong and one weaker one. I will try and blog about this in more detail this week as it will involve me moving a nucleus hive and one of my main hives to his apiary. Every beekeeping association seems to have experienced beekeepers with their own methodologies and I thought it would be interesting to give Robin's method a go as it certainly seems logical! Wathc this space, and i would be interested in any thoughts / feedback...

And finally - it is official. Bees have been sighted in the 2nd super. There are rumours of one frame of drawn comb, and, in the first super, about 1cm of capped honey....

The realisation dawns...

Am feeling slightly stupid this morning... Liam and I have kept returning to the question of why our bees are taking honey from the super. Indeed, we were talking about it even as we assembled our 5th bonfire of the fortnight which is situated about 20 foot from our hive....

And yes, although the hive is screened by 2 giant leylandi, the bees will be inhaling a fair amount of smoke when the wind blows in the wrong direction. I assume that they then go into a panic, snort honey from the nearest place to hand, and then generally feel quite cross. Or sleepy. Or whatever.

Thankfully, we have now burned all of the debris that resulted from the laying of a 20 metre garden hedge (5 bonfires worth and considerable amounts of blood, sweat and if not tears, certainly agony) so hopefully the bees will consent to start SEALING SOME SUPER FRAMES!!!

Queen Cups and Super Puzzles

We did another routine inspection yesterday as we had been away and left it7 or 8 days since the last one. The weather was not ideal - lots of bees were on the frames rather than out and about - and the light was such I couldnt see into the cells to check for eggs etc.
We saw at least 4 or 5 Queen Cups - little "acorns" on the edge of some of the frames. It was almost impossible to see if they had anything in them although I don't think there was... We have marked the frames with a pin and will check again on Friday. I am now wondering if I should have destroyed them? But I want the bees to start developing Queen cells!

One thing that I found puzzling was the first super. Last time I checked, it was almost full but not sealed. This time, some of the centre frames had no honey on the middle - ie empty cells. I am convinved last time these were full - would the bees start consuming honey from the super? Even if they had ample stores in the brood chamber?

The bees were also having a good nibble at the brood frames - why do they do this? The super is definitely a concern though - nothing is capped - but it feels like a diminishing crop rather than an increasing one! (And needless to say - nothing in the second super yet...I knew I shouldnt have bothered!)

Freecycle Thanks

I was lucky enough to spot a post on Freecycle offering a Solar Wax Extractor near Bristol. Beekeeping equipment only ever seems to appear as a "wanted" item, so I jumped at the opportunity.

Despite lots of interest, Lyn very kindly offered us her extractor, handmade by an expert beekeeper in her district.

It is now in situ and we look forward to using it! I really want to be able to make candles and this will help me collect the wax from old frames much more easily. Many thanks again...

Still no Queen Cells

Another full inspection reveals no Queen cells (I think) but a few open drone brood cells that look a bit like Queen cups because of their size. No eggs or larvae were in any of them, and the Queen is still in the hive (and moving towards the right hand side of the picture).

I think I will try and have a look at a few pictures of Queen cups / Queen cells to give me more confidence...

2nd super is completely empty of bees let alone drawn out comb - maybe we were a tad premature! Still no capped honey in the first super either.

I also looked at the varroa tray - I counted about 8 mites over a week but in all honesty, there was so much rubbish on there I dont think this was even vaguely accurate. Will try again and do a two or three day check.

Robin and some of the other Frome beekeepers are reporting Queen Cells in their hives, so I will try and be extra vigilant and do the next inspection on thursday.

Taken by suprise

At our last inspection we were surprised by how full the super was. This is heady stuff - starting in June as we did last year, we had no honey and a super full of barely drawn out foundation at the end of the season. Now we are into new territory - a super I can hardly lift and frames dripping with the runny stuff!

Although none of the frames are sealed, we decided to add another super to try and keep ahead of the bees. Not sure if this is the right thing to do, but we can't bear the thought of missing any honey! The hive looks different to normal because I decided to clean the old hive and moved all of the frames into this second, new hive. At my next full inspection (tomorrow), I will swap back and leave the new hive for our future (fingers crossed) second colony.

I have a nasty feeling this is oil seed rape honey as we can see a few fields of rape from our windows. In which case, we will have to be finding out about borrowing an extractor asap - not to mention saving as many jars as possible.

Picture of a hive

I finally got round to doing the brood box inspection with Liam as I just didnt have the strength to prise some of the frames apart. Fingers crossed, everything seems OK. We saw the Queen and a full complement of stores, capped and uncapped brood and eggs - both standing up and lying down.

It seems a shame somehow to be wishing for Queen Cells so that we can go ahead and start stage two of splitting the hive but that is what we are now watching and waiting for...

But until this happens, inspections will continue as normal. Below are my notes (probably not very interesting) as to what we found on each frame - and what I need to remember to do next time!

1. Stores on both sides
2. Stores on both sides
3. Stores on both sides
4. Stores on one side, 80% eggs on the other
5. Mixture sealed and unsealed brood, eggs
6. Mixture sealed and unsealed brood, eggs
7. Unsealed brood
8. Mixture sealed and unsealed brood, eggs
9. Queen (!) eggs, a few drone cells
10. Stores on both sides
11. Stores on both sides

Next time: Insert varroa tray, bring icing sugar, maybe new brood box so we can swap over and clean the old one?

Supers are needed

Have just done a quick check to see if the bees have gone up into the supers since I took off the Queen exluder. The Queen has definitely been up - two frames had eggs in and I have removed these. I will leave the frames outside for 24 hours so that the eggs die (I wonder if that is because of temperature or lack of food?) and then I will put them back for the bees to clean out and fill.

Some of the other frames are filling nicely with pollen and nectar - others are still barely drawn out. Still, it's a start.

The problem is that although the Queen must have been there today, I couldnt see her. And there werent THAT many bees to make me think I had just not spotted her. So fingers crossed, she had gone down into the brood chamber when I opened the hive as the other scenario (squashed or lost Queen?) doesnt bear thinking about. I did put the the excluder back on and tomorrow I will do a brood box inspection. Yesterday's post somehow seems a lot less funny!

Funny Post

I have just read Ian Douglas' Daily Telegraph Beekeeping Diary.

I feel so much better about my not having a clue! The phrase that made me really laugh out loud was "I'm left with my hopes pinned to a possibly non-existent virgin queen" - read it and weep! (Or smile...Fingers crossed for him)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/beekeeping/7581209/Beekeeping-diary-smoking-out-hopes-for-a-new-queen.html

Long live the Queen

Finally, on Easter Monday, the sun shone long enough for us to do our first full on bee inspection of the year. Prising the frames apart was a major undertaking - the bees had well and truly stuck them together. Just to make things even more difficult, there was brace comb on the ends of each and every frame and at the bottom of the hive as well.

We laboriously unprised each frame and checked them over. They were literally dripping with honey. In fact, we took some of the brace comb from the frames round to our neighbour's for dinner as there was even honey stored in these. We estimated that 4 or so frames were full of stores. Perhaps another 4 were full of brood in various stages, and one frame had eggs.

I was disappointed that we couldnt see more eggs - but as there was so much brood, I won't worry too much (yet). The big news of the day though was undoubtedly the fact that we spotted the Queen. She is the same as last year (our swarm queen), is still marked, and I am pleased that she is still Queen Bee as I think she has a very good temperament.

Having said this, Liam got stung on his thumb, and I was stung on the leg. However, I think this is fair enough given the amount of disturbance we put them to - and all without a smoker. (We tried - it went out...as always.)

I also removed the Queen Excluder and rearranged the Super frames as I had intended. Needless to say hardly any bees were in the super. Maybe it is just too early. Still - it is there if they need it.

I will take the varroa insert out later on and do a count for 2 days - and then do another one. Someone pointed out to me it is easier to count fewer mites twice rather than try and distinguish loads of them all in one go. I shall give it a go!

Frustrated with the weather

What rubbish weather! I have psyched myself up to try and find the Queen and it wont stop raining. Just before the bad weather started Liam and I had a quick look inside the hive without removing any frames. We took the decision to add a super as the bees were now moving over all the frames and it felt heavy and looked busy.

However, we decided to put the Queen Excluder on, and then immediately thought we had made the wrong decision but it is too wet to change it! I am not sure that the bees will go into the Super as we used foundation that was only half drawn out from last Summer.

I am waiting for 5 minutes of sunshine to go and remove it but it is not looking promising...

A second hive, and a water puzzle

We have taken the plunge and bought a second hive from Thornes - mainly because Liam didn't want to spend his birthday at the Ruishton Beekeepers Auction.

It has arrived and I am waiting for a nice day to sit outside and apply Linseed oil and to build some frames. I have been keeping an eye on the hive entrance and there seems to be a lot of activity on sunny days with bees taking in a lot of pollen. I am also enjoying the sight of my bees on the flowers in my garden, and I think for the first time I understand the point of all those BBKA leaflets telling you which plants / shrubs / trees to plant as it is somehow very satisfying. (The picture above is of a crocus about ten foot from the hive).


I have been slightly puzzled by the large numbers of bees ignoring a 5 foot high water feature (fountain and pool) bang smack in the middle of the garden to visit a water butt right the other side of the garden from their hive. How do they know it contains water? The lid is on and there are no obvious signs. And why dont they like the pool?

Following David's advice we have put a bowl of water on top of the butt with a stone in it. This will hopefully stop the bees going into the water butt and drowning. However, they seem to be happy to ignore it and keep burrowing under the lid. Very mysterious.

On the next sunny and warm day, we are going to try and find the Queen to check to see if she is marked (and the same one as last year) or not (in which case, we are going to have to try and mark her - gulp.) This is the precursor to starting Robin's artificial swarm method. Watch this space...

First sighting of pollen

Another inspection, and a quick heft of the hive on Monday revealed more dead bees on the ground but the hive felt heavier (??? can fondant really work this quickly or is this my imagination?!). Looking at the hive entrance, there were also guard bees and plenty of forager bees returning loaded down with an incredibly orange pollen - possibly snowdrop?

Inside, on the crownboard, there was still some fondant left and the bees were clustered around it. From what I could see through the glass partition, bees were extremely active in the brood chamber with bees teeming all over all but 3 frames.

I havent done a full inspection yet - I want to go to a "Disease and Hygiene" talk on thursday at Frome BKA and will ask the experts when they intend to do theirs...

Have just realised that the bee equipment auction at Ruishton falls on Liam's birthday. Tentative questioning has revealed that he does not see this as how he wants to spend his day and so I think it is a case of choosing our hive from Thormes...

NB Until I find my bee notebook (carefully shelved since October), I need to note that I did a varroa check and had a daily mite drop of 1.25 - no concern (yet).

Planning ahead with ebay

Over the winter, Frome beginner beekeepers have been lucky enough to attend a series of evening courses run by Robin. These are pitched at a level above total beginner but below the basic exam course and have been extremely interesting.

Robin has encouraged us to think ahead and work out what we want to do if (when?!) we find Queen cells. Liam and I have decided that we would like to increase the number of colonies we have and take it to the dizzy heights of two hives.

Last week's course included a discussion on the different methods of swarm control. There are a couple of different approaches including the Pagden method (the BBKA recommended method) and a revised approach - Robin's "Safety First" method! We will be attempting the latter so more on this in a few months time...

Whichever method we use, we learnt that a nucleus hive would be useful - and that these are available on ebay from £35. I have accordingly just "Made an offer" on a nuc hive with a wire mesh floor for £32 plus £15 postage and had it accepted.

Next up is a second hive - I am hoping to find a second hand one at a local auction?

The bees are awake!

It is so nice to finally have something to post about! After a long winter with not very much happening (bar some oxalic acid treatment in December and an excellent candle making course with Robin - see separate post), my bees seem to be waking up again.

I have been hefting my hive every couple of weeks from mid Jan and had noticed last week that it was definitely lighter. Liam bought some fondant from the bakers in Frome (who immediately asked how many hives we had - he must have suspected something!) and we put it in the hive on Thursday. Up until then, we had seen no activity whatsoever around the hive - no flying bees, or visible guard bees etc.

This continued until Sunday when I went to check again. In the morning - nothing, despite the fact that it was a reasonably sunny day. I lifted the roof and inspected the fondant and was reassured to see they had taken some and seemed very busy in the hive at least. Later that afternoon I glanced at the hive and saw not only bees flying but about 20 bee corpses in front of it. It looks as if they had suddenly decided a spring clean was in order and had chucked out all the debris? For the first time since November, I could also see guard bees at the entrance and a few bees flying.