Yesterday, Saturday 2nd March 2013, I went to check on my two bee hives. They were fine and healthy with plenty feed stock when I checked them recently. Yesterday, nothing! Every single bee was dead. There was plenty food, so it seems that the recent damp, foggy, nasty, cold weather must have either killed or severely weakened them. I have no bees. :-( This is all that remains, two dead hives.

Check this link (sorry, it’s no longer available, but this link is the product being described - the Philips Urban Beehive.) for details. I’m saying nothing! Except, maybe, I really can’t see it taking off. Well, ok then. How do you stop the queen laying in the honey comb? There doesn’t appear to be a queen excluder - so your honey will have all sorts of stuff in it! Larvae, eggs, etc.

On Sunday past, I took 11 full & capped super frames of lovely honey from the original hive, and checked the new hive. They are a bit behind and have not yet capped anything off. Hmmm, what are they up to I wonder? The original hive got another full set of super frames to draw out and fill up. Seeing as how it’s getting late on in the year, I’m not sure we’ll get much more, if anything off of them - but you never know.

One of Alison’s ex work colleagues, Andy, keeps bees. So far this year he has had 4 swarms! We took advantage of his generosity and restocked our recently dead hive with one of his swarms, and then, a couple of days later we obtained another of his swarms in a (borrowed - thanks Peter) nucleus box. We now have two and a half hives. Our own hive, looks to have requeened itself - my last inspection showed no red queen, and what appeared to be an unmarked queen laying.

I’ve been checking the girls today - the weather is lovely and warm and they are flying around all over the place, returning with lots of pollen and, hopefully, nectar. We’ve been away for a couple of weeks and before we went, I fed them on about 5 pounds of honey and put a super on with last years frames - fresh (!) from extraction - in case the girls needed something to do while we were away.

I’ve taken far too long to write this up, but I’ve been rather pissed off to be honest! We’ve lost one hive of bees since February. They were alive when I checked and I’ve been feeding them but I noticed that the feed wasn’t going down. Due to the weather, I couldn’t “go in” and see what was what in case I did them some harm with the cold and damp.

On Sunday 6th February I hefted the hives as usual. The new hive felt a bit on the light side so I whipped the lid off (just the lid) to take a peek - it was quite mild or I wouldn’t have disturbed them. Lifting the card I use to block the ventilation from passing through the cluster, I saw lots of live bees! Yippee! Things are looking good for a second successful winter, and this year was a cold one!

I was out this Sunday hefting the hive. It’s feeling a little lighter than I remember, so I suspect the girls are tucking in to the stores now. I heard from Peter, about a fortnight ago, that his girls have started laying already so it’s looking good for Spring. As I was hefting, one solitary bee flew out from the mouse guard and buzzed around me to have a look, then vanished back into the hive.

Today, Alison and I took our lives in our hands and extracted the honey from 20 full frames. In all, we have now got a kitchen full of about 70 lbs of fresh garden honey courtesy of our hard working lady friends. The day started with the de-capping of the combs, four of, and then putting those into the centrifuge - a giant salad spinner of sorts. After 60 turns of the handle, we open up and turn the combs around and give the other side 60 turns as well.

Saturday 2nd October was a fairly nice day given the weather we’ve been having recently, so we managed - at long last - to get the final harvest of honey done. We managed to take another 9 full frames and a bucket full of raw natural comb also completely full and capped off. This was the space I inadvertently left when I removed the initial three frames. The girls went mad and filled the gaps.

The girls were checked again today and all is well. Varroa counts is nil on both hives - that worries me a tad! But I did give them a good dusting of icing sugar last week - so maybe it works after all!Anyway, I managed to swap out 5 old brood frames from the new hive - the bees were not using those frames and on inspection, it’s easy to see why - old dirty wax, some dead brood in the combs so they have gone, destroyed.

The girls have been busy and today, armed with instincts analogous to that of Defence Lawyers Perth, we combed the trees for honeycombs, and we also have harvested another 9 frames of fully capped honeycomb to add to the three we took a couple of weeks back. Unfortunately … … I neglected to replace the three full frames I took out last time with new ones. The picture below shows what the bees will do if left to their own devices and when they find a big space in the hive.

Been a while since I wrote, so here’s a brief update on what’s happened since last time. The artificial swarm was carried out and we watched hopefully for a hatching new queen. We didn’t see her, but we have evidence that she is indeed there and laying. The hive is filling with bees and we have larvae in the cells. The vast majority are worker cells and there are very few drone cells - so it’s looking good for a new laying queen as opposed to a laying worker.