What beekeeping related activities did you do recently?

[MrEd]

Settling in nicely. Fed the small swarm in the wooden mating hive, and housed it in a nuc with a couple of extra frames

All colonies flying and bringing in stores, will hive them Saturday


Decided what to name these ones aswell….
Apollo, Gemini, Mercury, Artemis and Soyuz

 

[MrEd]

Housed 2 of them in national hives now from their nucs, never sure whether to chequer board the drawn comb from the nuc with fresh undrawn foundation or to put all the nuc frames as a block in the middle with 3 fresh undrawn frames either side.

I don’t know so I have done one way and one the other to see if it makes a difference.

One of the nucs has gone queenless - which I was expecting to happen with this one as I think I damaged the queen doing the split last Saturday, she came out of the queen clip all lethargic and slow…. but they have thrown up two emergency cells, so I am leaving them to get on with it - I couldn’t find the queen or eggs anyway, just week old larvae was the youngest I saw. Will see what the emergency queen turns out like, and either stick with her or requeen from one of the other colonies or combine.
Here is the emergency cell. Looks ‘alright’ so will see….

 

[MrEd]

Sometimes you get lucky, the landowner where I keep my bees called me tonight and said ‘I think you have had a swarm there is a massive clump of bees on one of the empty hives’

So I went over and had a look, checked my hives (i inspected them Friday and didn’t think it was one of mine but looked anyway) - not a swarm from one of my hives, so a nice prime swarm for me and it landed about 5m away from my hives in my pallet of spare nucs and old frames

I love free bees

Now all in a nuc, couple of handfuls scooped in and the others marched right in. Bit of feed on and I will look at them in a week!

 

[SaraR]

Sometimes you get lucky, the landowner where I keep my bees called me tonight and said ‘I think you have had a swarm there is a massive clump of bees on one of the empty hives’

So I went over and had a look, checked my hives (i inspected them Friday and didn’t think it was one of mine but looked anyway) - not a swarm from one of my hives, so a nice prime swarm for me and it landed about 5m away from my hives in my pallet of spare nucs and old frames

I love free bees

Now all in a nuc, couple of handfuls scooped in and the others marched right in. Bit of feed on and I will look at them in a week!

View attachment 82233

Nice!

Although this year, I could have done without all the free bees that settled in my apiary. Had more than enough hives as was and then more and more swarms seemed to be attracted to it.

 

[Wander]

I've done absolutely no beekeeping activities whatsoever.
But I don't have any bees, so I wouldn't.
But I tell you what I did do.
Just over a week ago, whilst out for a walk, I saw a very dozy and weak bee who was clearly having trouble to take off and fly. Now, as it happens, I'd recently seen a segment on TV about just this and some kind of bee-rescue service saying it's because the bee lacks sugar and often leads to death because the bee can't take off and get to some flowery nectar. They even offered little pouches of sugar solution that you could offer such bees.
But I didn't have one of those.
What I noticed though were loads of wild marjoram in flower.
So I carefully scooped up the bee on to a twig and then deposited him on a bunch of flower heads. I saw him greedily lapping up the nectar, which was encouraging.
I just hope he could get enough to build up his strength and fly off safely and strongly.
But I'll never know.
Hope that counts as beekeeping.

 

[slowworm]

Sometimes you get lucky, the landowner where I keep my bees called me tonight and said ‘I think you have had a swarm there is a massive clump of bees on one of the empty hives’

So I went over and had a look, checked my hives (i inspected them Friday and didn’t think it was one of mine but looked anyway) - not a swarm from one of my hives, so a nice prime swarm for me and it landed about 5m away from my hives in my pallet of spare nucs and old frames

I love free bees

Now all in a nuc, couple of handfuls scooped in and the others marched right in. Bit of feed on and I will look at them in a week!

View attachment 82233

I was hoping the swarm season was over. I've managed to not have any of my colonies swarm this year, well so far.

How are your other bees settling in? As clam as expected? Are you likely to requeen the swarm or keep them as is?

 

[slowworm]

So I carefully scooped up the bee on to a twig and then deposited him on a bunch of flower heads. I saw him greedily lapping up the nectar, which was encouraging.
I just hope he could get enough to build up his strength and fly off safely and strongly.

That's what I do with all sorts of bees. I not a fan of feeding, just pick them up and place on a suitable flower in the sunshine. Often bees can get cold, not just in need of food, so putting them on a sunny plant can warm them enough.

 

[MrEd]

Nice!

Although this year, I could have done without all the free bees that settled in my apiary. Had more than enough hives as was and then more and more swarms seemed to be attracted to it.

Yeah tbh it’s a bit late for the queen to get sorted and laying her winter bees. I popped them in a nuc and fed them and will see how they do! Worst case scenario is I combine them with my smallest hive and snuff a queen

 

[MrEd]

I was hoping the swarm season was over. I've managed to not have any of my colonies swarm this year, well so far.

How are your other bees settling in? As clam as expected? Are you likely to requeen the swarm or keep them as is?

Yeah will snuff a queen, probably the swarm queen as she is unknown

My other hives are fine, all my mite treatments are done until I do an oxalic acid vape end of December. One semi-agressive hive but they have produced nearly 2 supers of honey this year