Last night i went to the annual start meeting of the Denderbiekes overlarvae project, always entertaining, sometimes barely understandable, bees in flemish dialect!
I took part last year and went from hero to zero in a week, 20 cells were pulled from 20 larvae, but i moved them to early to their fertilisation hives and only 1 out of 20 actually hatched a queen.
This year i'll use the same method, restrain the queen for a week before the larvae are introduced and she is removed, but i'll wait til hatch day -1 at least before i put them into their little fertilisation boxes.
I ordered 10 Carnicas from Guido, and i'll get 10 buckfast from Ghislain.
First swarm
Easter monday around 1600 a big swarm left the big drain end hive. Note on saturday i had taken an aflegger from this hive that included 6 closed queen cells, accidentally took the queen too, but put her back. Maybe i missed one, maybe they had already decided to swarm.
Any way a cloud of bees filled the air in front of the hive and slowly moved to the Generalisimo willow tree, happily i got to Timo who was sitting happily in the flight path just in time.
The boys in the house i got kitted up, and went about the work of boxing the swarm that had formed it bunch in the lower branches of the willow, Hilde having stayed on guard duty in case they moved!
Having refused to move up into the upside down box, i had to brush them in and close the box, wait for them to reform and repeat the exercise. Water spray improved the whole process and an hour later i'd got most of them, a god 1.5kgs.
Leaving the box where the hive would come, i went in for tea and to make up a lift of new wax.
The thunderstorm was impressive, it rained about 10mm in 15 mm,and of course the pampers box didn't like this much and the lids fell in and the sides sagged. Happily the swarm went up underneath the fallen down lids.
With Hilde's help, great to see her back in bee kit after 2 years of being pregnant and generally in mother mode, we brushed the bees into the new hive and feed them with 14kgs of liquid sugar.
From one bursting hive i now have three, two hopefully getting on with their new queens.
