Queens, Birds and Sunshine

We're getting some warm Summer weather between the downpours. Good time of year to observe high levels of activity outside the hive or just go for a wander in one the city's many Cemeteries. With over 40 to choose from Sunnydale's got nothing on on Hull. One of the more interesting ones is on the corner of Springbank West and Chanterlands Avenue and with all those mature trees I'm sure my bees visit the place regularly -linked it back to bees seamlessly there.

Old part of Western Cemetery, a little haven for wildlife.

Some of the colonies have been busy with Supersedure, where they replace their Queen for reasons known only to themselves. Some beekeepers don't like it and prefer to replace the Queens themselves but I just let mine get on with it. The new Queens will be open mated wherever the local drone congregation area is, no idea where they are myself, and their offspring will be a mix of the drones' DNA and whatever the young Queen inherited. So basically these are mongrels. As bee breeds go there's a bit of a variety in my apiaries. Between my first colony and now I've purchased 4 colonies which I'm told were Buckfast and caught a few swarms of dark looking bees. I've also bough in a few Buckfast Queens in the past and one Dark European Bee Queen for a dark swarm who seemed to have gone queenless -those dark bees are a bit xenophobic so easiest to replace like with like for them. I'm fairly sure that most of my bees are various degrees of mongrel from whatever their original species was but you can see quite a variety looking the Queens. Some have very dark Queens that are clearly from European Dark Bee stock (Apis Mellifera Mellifera) whilst others look more like Buckfast varieties.

This Queen is very dark and slender as Queens go, let's call her Maleficent.

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Good Queen Chubbychops on the other hand looks closer to Buckfast.

The two Queens above look very different but both head up very placid colonies although whilst the dark bee's offspring are busy with their third super the lighter Queen's colony are still on their first.

Good Brood pattern from the Dark Queen

I'm still using drone culling to reduce Varroa numbers in the hives, and I often see bees bearding in the space below the shallow frame I leave for drone comb.

Bearding under a shallow frame

I'm using Commercial Brood boxes but a while ago moved some test frames from the colony I bought in May into one and they'd come on smaller National Frames. The bees used the space under one to draw brood comb which I've removed to control Varroa.

National Frame with brood comb built below it

Depending what you read a bee colony can be 10-15% drones in Summer and whilst removing these large sections of drone comb is probably a a setback for them I usually find them making a rows of drone brood  rows of drone cells towards the bottom of other frames anyway. My culled drone brood goes in the freezer to get cooked up later. I've read that the removed drone brood makes a great treat for the chickens but I don't give it to mine in case the scent draws bees to the birds.

There's more than just bees enjoying the sun