Season Update: Spring Viability and First Queens!

Another two weeks and spring is definitely kicking off, at times it has even felt like summer. This sudden rush of warmth has done our colonies a world of good, and we were able to get through all of our nucs and hives to treat them and assess their strength for upcoming nuc production and the oilseed rape.

After doing the first proper inspection we found that the strength of our colonies greatly varied, some colonies had very little bees making an environment that was not conducive for the queen to lay and expand as optimally as we were hoping for this time of the year.

However, within the first week of the warm weather the weakest colonies have already shown some progression to be seen as a viable colony, instead of needing to unite the colony with a stronger one. So it’s looking very positive for us having got through so many nucs over the winter, things are however a little slower though with our restrictions in place meaning that a lot of the nuc production is going to be handled by Sian alone but she’s working all the warm hours that she can.

Not only is she working 24 hours a day, she is also finding all sorts of mysteries! Worryingly, she found a bullet in one of our poly nucs, lucky she wasn’t shot at and that the bees were not harmed!

Last year we tentatively started our own queen rearing production, we only managed to get a few queens, but one of which has been incredibly prolific since the start of the season. So we’re hoping to get a good rearing schedule going this year.

Talking of queens, our breeders abroad have been able to send us some overwintered queens and spring queens much to our relief!

Everything seems to be happening all at once, and I have been confined in the office drowning in work! Sometimes we forget over the winter just how busy it gets during the season. We’re looking forward to our customers receiving their queens, as well as nucs, we are a few weeks behind but we’re hoping the next two weeks will enable us to get out our overwintered nucs.

Stay safe,

Becky’s Beezzzs Team