An Inspector Called, this one wasn’t a J B Priestley character he was the Regional Bee Inspector
May started with showery weather but the bees were gathering lots of pollen and nectar. Some of the
Queen cells that I grafted very small larvae into on the 29th of April had been accepted and I have been
busy making starter mating hives/nucs for the new Queens to start out in before transferring them to a full
size Warré.
The Bee Inspectors visit went ok but for a few minutes it was a bit tense as he checked a couple of larvae
he wasn’t too happy with. Foulbrood is not too far away so I was relieved to not have it. The feeling was
that the larvae were in the early stages of chalkbrood, which is in many colonies but strong bees cope with
it.
Now it’s just a case of waiting to see how many Queens emerge and getting them started off in a nuc so that
they can fly to mate before settling down and building their own colony. I’ve started some nucs in National
boxes because the bees were making Queen Cells on the frames so I created nucs to hopefully stop them
swarming.
Once the National Nucs are settled and the queen starts laying I will transfer them to Warré hives.
The photo (right) shows
some bees setting up home
in my first Warré hive. I cut
some stores and some brood
with a sealed Queen Cell
from a National and fastened
them to two bars with elastic
bands, the photo was taken
the following morning.
If you would like to follow
monthly email complete with links to the new bits.
Regional Bee
Inspectors are
employed by the
Governmeent and their
job is to examine as
many bee colonies as
they can find and check
on the health of the
bees.
At present Beekeepers
don’t have to register so
it makes their job rather
difficult, searching out
beekeepers. to check
their bees.
They need to check the
bees for European or
American Foul Brood as
well as other pests such
as varroa. and small
hive beetle.
 "Bees and brood on a National frame")
 "These bees were put in here the day before with some brood, Queen cell and stores")
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