Last Saturday the beekeepers checked the small swarm that they housed. In our previous post, we showed they have a queen. More good news now, as this queen appears to be laying – you can just about see the eggs in the banner image (small, white ‘grains’ in each cell). “Once we confirm the queen is laying regular worker brood in 9 days time (3 days as an egg, then 6 days as a larva) we may give this hive a boost by adding in a frame of emerging brood and some extra bees.” Plenty to keep our beekeepers busy!

And even more good news in the observation area, as Khalil explains: “Today we removed three supers to extract, and out of interest checked the status of the super added yesterday. Amazed to see that the bees had already started to draw out every frame. This is how it looks after being in the hive for one day; it shows how strong the hives are this year and the amount of nectar which is coming in.”

On a less positive note, fighting has broken out at the entrance to the second observation hive. Previously, the beekeeper kept the entrance quite small; it may be that by opening it up, bees from other hives are chancing their luck at robbing this hive. You can get an idea from the video clip below. Hopefully, the beekeeper will be able to mitigate this by returning the entrance to how it was before – a smaller entrance is much easier to defend, harder for robber bees to sneak past.