Over the past week, some primary 7 children have been learning how to perform beekeeping inspections.

There are different stages to an inspection

safety equipment

smoker

taking off the roof and crown board

lifting out each frame one by one to look for the queen and eggs. 

putting it all back together.

The children were very calm when around the bees and were extremely gentle which keeps the bees calm.

Our second bee hive is doing really well! The Queen has started laying lots and lots of eggs because the bees are bringing in bright yellow daffodil pollen which they feed to young bees.

In a few weeks, when the hive has grown nice and full, we will split it into two hives again!

Some good news!

Hive number 2, the one that has survived is looking reasonably healthy.

They don’t have much food left, so we have been feeding them until the weather gets better and there are more flowers around for the bees to get pollen and nectar from.

There were, however, some dead bees on the bottom of the hive floor and we have cleaned these out for them.

Bombee dreams has done a good job this year!

Today we did our first full inspection of the bee hives since the winter.

Unfortunately one of the hives has died due to starvation. The hive had fondant icing on the top for the bees to eat, however, this had unfortunately dried out so the bees couldn’t eat it easily.

This hive will now have to be cleaned out and stored inside so that we can reuse the wax and honey.

Our other hive is still alive, however, it is quite small.

It too was quite low on food and but still has a queen who has been laying eggs and building the hive up again after winter.

We are hopeful that this hive will continue to grow and we will be able to split it into two again to fill the other hive up.

RIP Beeyonce number 2.