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.

It was been checking time again yesterday and of the three queen cups I found last week, one has a grub in it. Looks like we need to consider doing an artificial swarm for real this time. The first super we put on is now in the process of being capped off. The honey is almost ready. I’m leaving it for the girls to completely cap off and then, Alison gets to do what she’s been looking forward to since we started on the Bee Keeping course, extracting her own honey!

On Saturday I went to check on the girls again. In the seven days since my last check, they’ve been busy. How busy? Well, last week I gave them a pair of brand new super frames to fill up the super. They had 6 already (or was it 7? I must go and count next time I see them!) and they had just started to draw out the comb. Well, 7 days later, we not only have a complete set of super frames, fully drawn out, but the whole lot is just about full (on both sides!

Ted Hooper has died at the age of 91. He was most famous for the Bee Keeping book Guide To Bees And Honey. Wikipedia link to Ted: Wikipedia

On Saturday, Peter came over because we (Alison and I) thought we had noticed a few queen cells in the hive. Drastic action could have been required if this was the case with an artificial swarm being uppermost on the list. As it turned out, we were wrong and what we had seen was a number of drone cells, not queen cells. Ah well, at least we know now! While inside the hive, we found the queen - and she was marked, with a red dot.

There’s a mass orgy taking place in our pond this weekend. The frogs are hard at it again - it must be springtime! The first spawn I found was actually in the filtration housing, one batch of spawn plus 38 frogs - 36 coupling and two single males looking for action. I hefted all the above into the main pond itself, and left them to get on with it. Yesterday afternoon, the spawning had begun in earnest.

What more can I say? I was leaving home, for work, this morning at 06:55 and when I opened the garage door (from the inside) a frog was sitting there, right slap bang in the middle of the doorway. She, for it was a girl frog, just sat looking at me. Obviously, if I was to drive over her, she wouldn’t be too happy (neither would I, I like frogs) so I picked her up to take her to the pond.

On Sunday (14th March) I went to check on the bees. Hefting the hive was a tad tricky as they were all out and about flying around and generally being bees. The weather had taken a bit of a warm turn (relative to recent months that is) and they took advantage. A closer inspection showed a good few had been “hopping” over the hedge to a crocus ‘plantation’ not 10 feet from the hive and were covered in shocking yellow pollen.

I hefted the hive the other evening - checking for the remaining supplies - it’s still heavy, so the girls should be fine for a while yet. Unfortunately, when I peeked in through the mouse guard, there was a pile of dead bees. Not good. There are still lots of live ones, clustering on the combs to stay warm (and alive!) so that’s good. It’s just a shame that winter kills off so many of them.

Well, the snows are here and the temperatures have dropped dramatically. The bees are settled in for winter. Hopefully they will make it through to next year (only eight days away!) and be ready to start hunting and gathering pollen, nectar and all the other stuff that they seem to like so much. We only had them for a brief period at the end of 2009, we got them in late August/Early September but so far they seem to have been fine.