We had our first lot of mated queens last week but we only received 25% of our order due to poor seasonal weather. This obviously caused a lot of problems for us and for our customers but the excitement when they arrived was great. I do love this time of the year.
Our bees are working hard and we are doing our best to keep up with the nucs at the at the moment. The shortage on queens is proving to be a real problem as we are running out of nuc brood boxes to put on top of the nucs to give them more space!
The honey production colonies are doing equally well but I don’t know what the crop from the oil seed rape will be like this year for us as some of the sites were out in full flower last week but the weather was so poor. What a contrast to today and yesterday though, I was in a vest top yesterday it was so warm.
Watch out for those swarms, even though all ours have been given room we have lost a few already. Rob called in the first one a couple of days ago; he managed to hive it OK so at least we’ve not lost the bees. That was from one of our over wintered langstroths that we had not had a chance to check because the temperatures had been too low!!!
Sians Breeder queens arrived yesterday as well. She is getting really excited (we all are) to get started with her grafting, we still have much to do and we need to make sure we don’t rush things and most importantly we need to ensure the breeder queens are accepted into there nuc boxes as it would be a nightmare if they are rejected!
Happy Easter to you all, Becky and the team.
Beckys Beezzzs 