Slow Start

This time last year the hives were bursting with bees, Hive2 had two brood boxes on it and I was preparing to split off a second colony. Not quite the same story this year unfortunately. Today's inspection showed the buildup is still very slow. Hive1 had 5 seams of bees and Hive2 only three. York Beekeepers Association have put back their 2013 auction to June because of the lateness of the season start so if my colonies haven't built up numbers by then  I'm toying with the idea of uniting them and purchasing a new colony.

In Hive2 the queen has been laying and despite her patchy start seems to have managed a fairly normal brood pattern. Ideally there should be a large oval area of capped brood with young uncapped brood on the edge and eggs around them.

Hive2 are getting their act together albeit a little slowly.

There's a few gaps in the capped brood but they've mostly got healthy looking brood in them whilst some have eggs in them. The uniformity of the pattern is used as a reflection of the quality of the queen, whilst that pattern was good there was still not a lot of it. I'm not entirely sure how long I ought to wait and watch before decided to requeen or not but as long as she's laying eggs if she starts failing the bees will take matters into theirs own hands (well okay claws) and replace her themselves.

Scarlet Lady

Marking the queen made her far easier to spot, and it doesn't appear to have done her any harm. Bees breathe through holes in their sides called spiracles and their exoskeleton has a waxy coating making it an impermeable surface unlike animal skin which is a selectively permeable membrane so the bit of paint shouldn't really effect her like it would affect a human.

The only red thing in the hive

The bees have been busy bringing in some yellow pollen too which you can see in the above pictures. I'd fed both colonies recently but neither had taken much syrup down so I removed the feeders today and poured the now mouldy syrup away. the brood pattern in Hive1 was pretty poor due to sacbrood. Last year I had this in Hive2 and after removing the infected larvae it seemed to clear up. There's no treatment for it but it's something the bees should be able to take care of themselves normally. Sacbrood is generally seen as something some bees are genetically susceptible to and the usual solution is to replace the queen. It might be that a stronger queen has brood less susceptible to it or it may just be the break with no brood that causes the virus to die back. As this colony hasn't had it previously I'm inclined to think its presence is due to the small size of the colony so if, or hopefully when, their numbers increase they should be able to cope with it.

Patchy brood pattern

I didn't actually see the queen in Hive1 today at all. There were a few eggs though. I also spotted a large drone wandering along the comb, probably the first of the season in my colonies. Also watched a couple new bees emerging from their cells. All in all not a great start to the year really. Both colonies building slowly and Hive1 dealing with sacbrood. On the plus side both colonies have stored food, new bees are emerging and they're not preparing to swarm yet.