July 31st. When I went back to see how our bees had progressed it was not how I had hoped it would be. I found more queen cells down in the brood area. I   opened some up. Instead of young queens it revealed dead larvae. There was no worker brood, only drone larvae. This suggests that bees were attempting the impossible task of turning the male drones into queens. Obviously this is a non –starter and I have never heard of bees doing this before.

There is definitely no queen, so there must be laying workers as there are eggs. There was a queen in there before we united the remnants of the fierce bees with them. I thought things would sort out when the queenless bees were united with a queenright colony. It usually works well.

I have just read that laying workers will sometimes kill queens when they are put in together. Oh dear. Perhaps I’m a bit wiser now.

Aug. 5th. The numbers are dwindling and hive 2 is no longer viable as a colony. There are larvae developing  that haven’t been sealed into their cells properly. There aren’t enough young bees to do all the maintenance and nursing jobs necessary. We dare not unite these bees  with the one flourishing colony and risk the same thing happening again. Our only option is to take them away from all other known colonies and throw them  out.

Aug. 6th. I bound the hive up in a sheet, put it in the  back of the car and drove them to a quiet part of the farm. When I opened them up they were so mild and gentle it was really distressing to render them destitute. They won’t survive long. I consoled myself with the fact they were all pretty old bees and wouldn’t live long anyway.   It was tricky work. I dusted them off the frames with a pheasant wing, but having nowhere to go, they hung around in clusters on plant stalks. When they noticed  me they congregated on my back. I swept off as many as  I could and lay down quickly in the long grass. Eventually they left me alone and I drove home, very  saddened.

We extracted the honey that was in the hive. It was lovely honey, but it wasn’t the happy occasion that harvesting usually is.

Aug. 8th. It was hot and I had to sort out the old comb indoors because of wasps. It largely needs destroying because it has brood in it. My husband said he’d give me a hand and took the combs into the garden to clean. He was soon beleaguered by wasps. We gave up, so I  bagged everything up to tackle it another day, not noticing a comb had slit one of the bags.

The wasps and bees soon found this and at one point there must  havebeen several thousand of them in the garden, raiding the sticky comb. Things just got more and more preposterous, until after dark when most of the unwelcome visitors went home and I was able to stow things away securely.

I discovered some larvae in the defunct combs that looked as though they might have foul brood. This is a notifiable disease, so I picked out the bad larvae and   sent them off to the national bee unit for examination. They might just have died from neglect and gone rotten.  I can’t tell.

Aug. 9th. I inspected the one remaining hive and  was pleased to see a strapping great queen striding across the comb. She is the one we marked last  year.

Everything looks as it should, with healthy brood and honey stores building up.

Aug. 29th. The results of the examinations of the  dead brood have come back from the national bee unit. No sign of foul brood. What a relief! I started a course of varroa drops.

Sept. 2nd. We took the honey off the hive. It is a  good strong flavoured, dark gold, clear honey; about 18 pounds in total.

It is now time to set up for the winter. I have narrowed the entrance right down to prevent robbing, because we are going to start feeding them with sugar syrup for  their winter stores. Feeding provokes the queen to increase egg laying, so there will be a good number of young bees to take the colony through the  winter.

I have tacked on a mouse guard over the entrance, taken off the surplus honey super and put it into store with lavender sprigs to deter the wax  moths.

Sept. 16th. This colony has now had about twenty-five pounds of sugar fed to them so they won’t need much more. There are vitamin drops in the feed to protect them from winter ailments. The bees are bringing in  good bundles of pollen, which suggests young brood are present.

In our garden, the honeybees are particularly enjoying sedum and in the hedgerows they are working the ivy flowers. I bought some ivy honey when I was in France. It was very expensive and tastes horrible. Here we always leave it for the bees to use as it comes so late in the season.

Sept. 17th. I finished the varroa  treatment. When we’ve completed the feeds there isn’t much left  to do, except for cleaning and disinfecting all the equipment from the empty hives. I really ought to finish making that honey for sale sign!

Val Hicken