That time of year again when blog posts become scarce. All the usually gardening and poultry tasks to be attended to, plus the allotment and bees to see to. Been thrown some curved balls by the weather too to deal with. There’s quite a bit of other “stuff” going on too round here at the moment just to keep us on our toes.
Last week when I checked the bees I took my guru along (after sales service he called it). Hive full of bees all looking very happy and healthy, brood, egs, feed, pollen, queen etc. No signs of swarming.
Today when I checked – hive full of bees, starting to bring in some honey, pollen, capped brood, erm, no queen (not unusual – she goes for flights and sometimes just has too many attendants to spot her), but wait, no eggs either. Bugger.
A quick call to the guru confirmed what I suspected – leave the hive alone for 2 weeks and they’ll rear a new queen. Bit of a pain as it’ll set the hive back about a month and I was hoping to make a second colony with a controlled swarm, but they’ve already started raising there new monarch and with no eggs in the hive she’s unlikely to swarm, so fingers crossed.
All part of the learning curve.
