Last week our main hive swarmed. That means that the Queen has moved on and taken some bees with her. The hive is looking good and is growing some Queen cells. Mr Green got rid of all but 1 of the Queen cells. Hopefully in 3 weeks there will a new Queen in charge of the hive!
The first proper hive inspection after the winter. All four hives have survived and are doing well. Mr McMullan came down to help with the inspection.
We added the Queen guards so the Queens stay on the brood box and made sure the bees had plenty of food.
As the bees are doing so well we have decided to split the hives up. 2 will go to Aberdeen with Mr McMullan and two will stay here at Woodlands Primary.
It means that should anything happen to our hives we have back up bees in other areas of the country.
Now that it is colder we can no longer feed the bees using sugar and water. If we keep feeding them this way the weather will cause the water will cool down the hive.
This in turn will result in the bees using more energy and food stores to heat the hive.
To feed the bees we now need to use a special fondant. It will not freeze and it will give the bees plenty of energy.
The bees were not happy about having the feeders removed but once they realise it is being replaced with delicious fondant they will calm down quite quickly… or so Mr Green hopes!
This week it’s the turn of AK and KM to be our Primary 7 bee keepers. Over the weekend the bees have managed to finish off 8 litres of sugar solution!
Our bee keepers made up the sugar solution and helped add another feeder to one of the hives. This saves us time when swapping them over and means we can feed all the Hives at the same time.
Finally they helped place the wasp traps near the hives to help protect our bees. We’ll check back on how well they are working by the end of the week.
Well done to AB and AK for carrying out the first Primary 7 feed. They made up the sugar water solution on Tuesday and on Friday and carefully put the feed into the feeding trays. Great job.
During the visits to the nature garden we have noticed more and more wasps hanging around near the hives. If we don’t get rid of them they could cause havoc with our hives.
Primary 3B came to the rescue. They designed wasp traps for Mr Green and hopefully they will help help keep the hives safe from wasps.
Today was the first proper inspection of the hives. It’s a steep leaning curve for Mr Green but it looks like the bees are in good shape.
Four of out five hives are doing well and the focus now is on feeding the bees twice a week to get them ready for winter. Mr Green will be looking for Primary 7 helpers to make the feed and deliver it into the hives.
Today was Mr Green’s first attempt at feeding the Woodlands’ bees.
We mixed water and sugar to create a syrup.
We added the syrup to white bee feeders.
The bees were nice and calm.
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