Saving the small colonies
Updated: Jan 23, 2019
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.

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See AllChecking 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 ha