A New Home for the Ferals

Today, Lesley, Paul and I went up to South Milford to rehouse the feral colony into a new home. The plan was - move the colony to one side; put new floor and clean 14x12 brood box in original position; transfer the frames of bees into the new brood box. Simples!

Moving them to one side

They were much lighter than we had anticipated having gorged through lots of stores in the 14x12 frames.

Their new name is LAVENDER

We tried hard to find her, but the queen was elusive despite having several frames of eggs, larvae and sealed brood.

The old wild comb removed from the bottom brood box

There was still quite a few bees in the old wild comb that we shook out onto a sheet we had paced down. Some of them were a little reluctant to leave their comb but we did finally manage to get them all out with the help of a little smoke.

Finally settled in their new home

For the bees we had to shake out of the old wild comb, we gave them a plank to walk up so they didn't get trapped in the grass.

Simples!

Drone Laying Queen?

Checking the bees at the Granary, we found only a few small patches of drone brood in Sage despite there being lots of active bees in the hive. No eggs or larvae anywhere else so I guess the queen has lost her virility as we don't suspect a laying worker. We now have to make a decision on how to save this colony. Apollo and Zeus are both doing well so might merge them into Apollo. The problem might then be that Apollo has too many bees and may swarm.

Saving the small colonies

Now that we've managed to get a first inspection performed, we know that Thyme is doing well with plenty of bees, brood and stores. Not so lucky with Heather and Poppy as both had very few bees and just a couple of small patches of brood in Poppy. They both also looked to be close to starvation even though they are taking the fondant and pollen patties we gave them earlier on. We re-arranged the frames in Poppy and gave them a couple of spare frames that had plenty of stores on to help them along.

So the decision has been made - we're going to merge them together to try to give them a fighting chance of survival. The queen in Heather will be sacrificed as there is no brood or eggs present and she is still proving to be illusive.

Merging colonies together