Tag: queens

Our best colony of bees is housed in a long deep hive. We were thinking that the queen would probably need to be replaced this year; she has produced very large colonies for three years in a row. The long deep hive currently has 23 deep frames – about the equivalent of three national brood… Continue reading Dividing the colony in the long deep hive

Some weeks ago we dealt with a colony with some aggressive tendencies by removing the queen. One week later we went through the hive carefully and removed all of the queen cells. We checked again a few days later to be certain that no queen cells remained. By doing this, we prevented the bees from… Continue reading Newly mated queen is doing well

Once again there is another beekeeping disappointment to report. In my last post, I mentioned that we had a colony with slightly aggressive tendencies and had forced them to replace the queen with some larvae from a frame provided by another colony of very nice bees. Hopefully, offspring from the first crossing will still retain… Continue reading Missing queen

Over the last couple of months we have been increasingly bothered with one of our colonies, which has become a little aggressive. The bees also have the bad habit of following us after we approach the hive. As hobby beekeepers, working with a large colony of angry bees is not pleasant and we certainly do… Continue reading Dealing with an aggressive colony

After losing a queen a couple of weeks ago, last week we requeened one of the hives with a new Italian queen, having first removed all of the queen cells. This week, we carefully inspected this hive for the first time since introducing her. Thankfully, she appears to have been accepted and has already started… Continue reading A new colony of bees

Today’s hive inspection was generally encouraging, with three large colonies in excellent health. All hives sported frames with large areas of clean white brood, and good amounts of stores are being laid down. The gold bees in the long deep hive show no signs of swarming, despite becoming a very large colony with an astonishing… Continue reading The flighty queen has flown

Today was time to go through all of the bee hives, a job that needs doing ideally once per week at this time of year. We currently have four colonies: one long deep hive which we started with a virgin Italian gold queen, who was likely mated with the Buckfast bees that we kept at… Continue reading Hive inspection finds an unusually flighty queen