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!