School time

This term (year?) is turning out to be so hectic and filled to the last minute with activities that I will have trouble getting my bee inspections done, let alone take pupils along. This is very sad as one of the main points of having the hives in the school is to involve the pupils. So far this has always worked well, but today's inspection had to be sandwiched between lunch and rehearsals for the house singing competition. This meant I was on my own and also had to rush, which simply is not a good idea when handling bees.

The Tower of Beebel

So, working in a school environment does not only have advantages...

Before carrying out the inspection I stowed away the empty supers that had previously formed the 'hotel' (see the last post) int he shed. As hoped, all boxes were clear of bees and honey. Like last year wasps had started dismantling the wax, but this was on a much smaller scale.

Purpose of the visit to day was to take off the Apiguard varroa treatment and to amalgamate the hives. The former was no problem and easy enough, but the latter proved more difficult. The way you combine two hives (as avid readers of this blog will know) is to put one brood box over the other and to separate them with newspaper. This allows the pheromones to transfer between the two colonies, so by the time the bees have chewed their way through the paper, the two colonies accept one another.

The Star is over the Moon

As I only had very limited time, I did not use a smoker (I have since discovered that the secret to a good smoke, like in real life, is time!). This was not a brilliant idea, as I wanted to quickly check on the Star to see whether a miracle had occurred and there was brood. I also thought I might try to locate the queen (if there was one) and give her a crushingly quick ride into the afterlife (can't have two queens when you combine). However, the Star bees were very aggressive and came out in force, so all I could do was to lift them onto the open Moon. Being on my own, this was not an easy operation, especially as the floor of the Star stuck to the brood chamber (it needs to be off to combine two hives) and a wind was blowing, removing the newspaper between Moon and Star. Eventually, I did manage, but felt slightly apprehensive as I had rushed the job and potentially had two queens in the amalgamated hive. Not good; not good at all.
And I had stings in my hands, arms, knees and thighs to boot: almost competing with Goulwenn on the number of stings a person can get in one inspection.