An August Inspection

Well the bees in Hive3 seems to be calming down a bit, they're still far from placid but today they didn't sting me once which is a huge improvement. The Queen is pretty elusive, I've not actually seen her since the day I marked her and with a splot of green paint on her back she should be hard to miss. However she's definitely laying eggs in there now.

Black Bees and Buckfast bees.
Spot the difference.

In the photo above of the bees on the top bars of Hive3 you can see some bees have one, two or three orangey brown bands on their abdomens. The sections of abdomen are actually called tergites and you can also see that some of the bees have only black tergites. Those are, believe it or not, the black bees. As time goes on the proportion of black bees in the hive should increase and as the Buckfasts reach the end of their short summer lifespan. Unfortunately I probably won't have a black bee colony for long because as soon as they raise a new Queen and she goes off to mate she'll mate with drones that re very unlikely to be the same race so it'll be mongrels from then on.

Hive1 had been queenless but I wasn't too worried as I'd spotted a huge Queen Cell in the middle of the comb so knew they were superseding her. During today's inspection I didn't see any eggs or young brood but I did spot her wandering about the comb. I suspect she's recently hatched and may not yet have mated, there's been some very rainy days recently so she may not've been able to make any mating flights so far. Because of that I decided against marking her just yet. Don't want a big blob of paint marking her out for birds after all. The hive was already very populous so despite being briefly queenless so they've been busy working the super. I'd actually given them a second super but they've barely touched that so far.

Plenty of capped brood in Hive2

Hive 2 is pretty full of brood ready to emerge and their Super is busy with already. I think when the current brood emerges they're going to need more space so I'll probably be adding another super very soon.

It's busy in the Super.

The Queen was happy to pose briefly for a picture. She's still the same Queen I found and marked in June and she's laying up the hive very nicely. Think I should've maybe been a bit quicker off the mark this year and made moves to replace the queens earlier rather than waiting for the bees to do it mid season.

The Queen of Hive2 going about her royal business

The more eagle eyed out there may spot something not so good in the above picture. I didn't see it at the time but when I was scaling it down to post on here I spotted a bee with a varroa mite on it's back.

Varroa Destructor on a worker bee, just above centre.

It's currently believed there's some level of varroa in every hive although some people will swear down their hives are mite free it's a little unlikely -unless you happen to be keeping bees in the Pitcairn Islands anyway. However you can't usually see them on the bees themselves unless there's a very heavy varroa load. The usual way to spot them is by putting a sticky board below the colony to catch any mites that fall through the mesh floor or to pull out some drone brood with a capping fork and check them for mites. I went through all the other photos I took today and couldn't see any more varroa but that's not too surprising really as they'll mostly be in with the sealed brood anyway.

Pulling out Drone Brood to check for Varroa

I've ordered some Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS) today and when they arrive I'll be treating all three hives just to be safe.