Fading Star

The first inspection of the new term with pupils accompanying shed a dim light on the Star. Its purpose was twofold: to renew the Apiguard varroa treatment and to check what was happening with the Star. As the title of the post suggests, the latter did not yield good news.

The inspection started off humorously with one pupil dancing around while piping and screaming because he had a spider inside his beesuit. I was scared this was going to turn into a full-blown crisis, but the pupil laughed about himself and could eventually be persuaded to put the beesuit on again.

A new Apiguard tray for the bees to stick down

First stop was the Moon. First job was to change the Apiguard treatment. The Moon bees had stuck the old tray to the frames and I had difficulty unsticking it, they had put so much propolis there. The pupils were fascinated by the toffee-like propolis and how it stuck. I'm surprised I didn't find at least one empty tray stuck to a pupil.

Sticky toffee Apiguard trays

 Checking through the supers, I saw most had been cleared and the bees were only using the bottom one to store honey again. So I removed it from the hive and put the whole super, with a lid on it, on the roof of the hive. I wedged a pencil underneath the super, so the bees can get in and out. Hopefully they will get the message and take out the rest of the honey and nectar from this super.

The things you can do with a pencil

A weak Star

Moving on to the Star, this presented a more dreary scene. While I was surprised at the number of bees still there (as well as some drones!), there really weren't many there any more. So, after the varroa treatment has finished, in a fortnight's time, I will amalgamate the two hives and have only one hive in the winter.

The small number of bees in the Star meant the pupils, who had been somewhat shy of the bees, obviously deciding all arthropods were superfluous that day, became more interested and dared to peer into the hive and get up close to the bees. They even tried out smoking the bees (it sounds so wrong, I know!). However, when I presented them with a drone and asked them whether they'd like to have it on their hand, they refused.

Children learning to smoke

With school events pressing, the pupils went away with the accompanying teacher and companion of many bee inspections, Richie. So seasoned is he that he came to the inspection very casually wearing loafers.

I remained behind for a few moments to remove the empty supers and place them in a plastic tunnel, once again lidded at the top and pencilled at the bottom, in the hope the bees would evacuate them. The supers look a bit like a bee hotel, so I'm not sure they will actually leave. We'll see.

Hopefully not a bee hotel