2025-06-21 Turns out that Regina is still there and all the frames are laid up. We remarked her for good measure. There was brood and eggs in all stages of development. They were pretty cramped so we put on a super.
2025-06-13 All the paper is gone from the end of the Butler cage. There were eggs but no grubs yet. We saw a smallish light coloured queen. But she was unmarked so I am guessing that Regina didn’t make it and this is a late queen from a cell that I missed. Maybe. It is a bit hard to tell.
2025-06-07 Transferred the queen into Barbara. The brood frames were donated to Bella.
2025-06-07 Unbelievably she is still there, I need to be more careful because she is just wandering around in the box not on a frame where you would expect.
2025-05-30 Died out, no one home. If Bella is laying next week, remove the Snelgrove board and feed.
2025-05-23 Still alive with a few workers supporting her. I opened the door to brood box below so workers could easily move from Bella so they can support her.
2025-05-14 Despite the swapped location there are still very few bees, so I put it on top of Bella with a Snelgrove board.
2025-05-13 Virtually no bees but I saw eggs and the queen. Swapped places with Bella so the flying bees would end up in here. Possibly not a good idea because Bella should be on her mating fly about now.
2025-05-02 Removed from the original location because there were queen cells. Left the cells in place as Bobbly.
2025-04-30 Added an extra super.
2025-04-28 Found a couple of charged queen cells in the top box, so I did an artificial swarm and created Bella, Belinda and Barbara.
2025-04-24 Loads of food, bees and brood. Saw the queen and a single charged queen cell in the top box on the cull frame. I took it down because I want to see more queen cells so I can split the colony into multiple boxes.
2025-04-11 Plenty of food, bees and brood. Brood now in the top box. Some queen cups no signs of swarming. Put on an super because there seem to be so many bees.
2025-04-04 First contact day. Plenty of food, bees and brood but not much space to lay in. there is some back filling going on and I found one charged queen cell. I want split this into 3 (at least) so I put on an extra brood box with dummy boards to make it easier to work.
2024-10-26 Candy block.
2024-09-21 Removed the ApiGuard and bucket feeder.
2024-08-24 Second tray of ApiGuard and bucket feeder refilled.
2024-08-11 ApiGuard and bucket feeder on.
2024-08-09 Put the clearer board on to clear the supers. There is not much in the supers.
2024-08-02 There was a single queen cell at the bottom of the cull frame in the bottom box on the southern side. Not other queen cells, there were a few eggs in some of the frames around the edges. So I am not sure that they actually swarmed. Superseding maybe? Put on a clearer board to clear the most full super. Also put in two extra brood frames so they had more space in the event that I clear down the supers.
2024-07-28 Saw a small swarm crossing the yard so I figured they had swarmed. Went in and checked, didn’t see the queen but I saw eggs and no queen cells so I guess is wasn’t them. Took off the cleared super and put an empty one on because they seem very busy and it is going to be a warm week.
2024-07-27 Didn’t see the queen or do any checks because it looked like rain. Put on a clearer board to clear one super.
2024-07-19 Saw eggs, grubs and sealed brood. Didn’t see the queen. Lots of bees so I added two cull frames. Now there are two cull frames one in the top and one in the bottom.
2024-07-14 Saw eggs, grubs and sealed brood. Didn’t see the queen. Lots of bees. Lots of back filling going on. The super is full so I added two more. Also culled the drone comb.
2024-07-07 Saw eggs, grubs and sealed brood. Didn’t see the queen. Some back filling going on. The super isn’t full but is getting filled. They probably need more space, both in the brood chamber and another super.
2024-06-25 Saw eggs, grubs and sealed brood. Didn’t see the queen. Put on a super to give them more space.
2024-06-19 Saw eggs, grubs and sealed brood, running out of space but the brood should come out soon. No signs of swarming but there was a bit of backfilling going on. I am going to take a chance and not split them. Two or three of the frames in the top brood box are not drawn so I put on a feeder to help them out.
2024-06-01 Saw eggs and the queen, plenty of space.
2024-05-19 Saw eggs but didn’t see the queen. There aren’t too many bees and there is plenty of of space in the super.
2024-05-11 Saw eggs but didn’t see the queen.
2024-05-04 No explicit signs of swarming, the weather has been cold and rainy. However they are starting to backfill the brood chamber so I did a preemptive split and created Gwen. I didn’t get an opportunity to cull the drone cells so I will have to do that later.
2024-04-26 Saw eggs and brood, didn’t see the queen. Most of the cells on the drone cull frame are sealed. There were plenty of bees so I added a super.
2024-04-20 Saw eggs and brood, didn’t see the queen. A few queen cups but no other signs of swarming.
2024-04-11 Very little stores. About 11 frames of brood evenly distributed between the top and bottom boxes. Found the queen and marked her (but not a round blob). She is brown and looks a reasonable size. There was plenty of brood and eggs and some drone cells.
2024-04-09 Candy all gone, put on a feeder with 1 to 1 syrup.
2023-12-21 Put on a candy block.
2023-09-23 Apiguard varroa treatment off.
2023-08-25 Second Apiguard varroa treatment.
2023-08-13 Started Apiguard treatment.
2023-08-12 Added another brood box and cleared the supers. Confirmed that the brood is sealed as worker brood.
2023-08-09 Small patch of eggs, brood and sealed cells. Eggs in bottom of cells. It appears normal. Too many bees to squeeze down into a single box.
2023-07-12 Culled down to one queen cell at top on south face of the second frame from the south. Marked with and orange pin.
2023-07-04 Made up with 10 frames of brood from Yvette.