Still no sign of brood!

Inspected the bees again this morning, a glorious day out, plenty of activity, amazing how busy so few bees can look! 

Lots of pollen loaded bees flying in, but on opening hive still no sign of any brood or larvae and as for eggs, well my eyes have never been able to see them! On the plus side the queen seems bigger, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.

If she doesn't start laying soon there will be no replacements for all those flying bees, their expected life in the air is only two weeks, so numbers will start dropping drastically!

I have ordered another colony, dropped off my nuc box last Saturday and should be able to pick it up next weekend.

If this colony does die out then will have to sterilize the hive ready to accept another nuc that I have also ordered which should be ready sometime in May. Must remember to buy some more wax foundation so I can recondition the old frames.

  

She bee back!!!

Here she is, you can also see dead brood and hatching bees

Ok a bit like Arnie, except this isn't the same queen bee that's back! The little ladies continue to surprise me, when their backs are up against the wall they come up trumps, seems they created a new queen out of nothing, just how did they do that I certainly can't see any sign of queen cells! The will to survive is a powerful force.

Not all plain sailing now though, the new queen isn't laying, so hasn't had her virgin flight yet, which is probably just as well because there are no drones in my hive, understandably! Just hope there are some in other hives locally at this time of the year, otherwise she is going to end up like Queen Elizabeth I and rather than it being the end of the royal line it will be the end of the hive with no new bees to take the colony forward into the new season :(

I doubt the mixed up weather is helping her cause much either, two mornings of frost interspersed with great flying weather!

On top of which the hive is full of granulated honey which the bes will have to work ten times harder at to convert into wax to create new breeding cells. Perhaps time to give them a helping hand put in some new foundation and feed them up with sugar solution?

Finally what to do with all that surplus granulated honey in the brood cells! Perhaps a call to the bee mentors is on the cards.

OMG, the unthinkable is happening!!

The unthinkable is happening, my bees are dying!!!!

"One of the Few", RIP

I was watching them on Saturday morning busy flying to and fro, even flying in pollen, so as the afternoon was nice decided I would have a quick look inside, to my horror hardly any bees, maybe a thousand, but where are all the dead bodies! Looked twice through the frames and no sign of the queen, very little brood cells, what there was were dotted about, but many bees seemed dead hatching from cells, see the black spots on photo.

The hive was full of honey and pollen stores so they can't have starved, I think perhaps are this changeable weather confused them, if you recall they were flying on new years day. The over wintering bees aren't supposed to fly much so that they live through the winter, unlike summer bees that only live 5 weeks, think mine just flew too much, wore themselves out and died, meaning numbers went down and when cold snaps happened, not enough bees to keep the colony warm and then more died including the queen!

So much for my plans of colony expansion this summer! I will have to start all over again.

Hopefully I have managed to secure an over wintered nuc which will give me a good start and just maybe I will get some honey this year. Have also booked another nuc for May time, I need two colonies as a minimum in future