The bees have been acting quite protectively around the hive, the smell of honey is pretty overpowering so I am guessing for a very good reason they are acting the way they are.
Yesterday I got stung twice just being in the garden, I thought the bees just bumped into me and decided to sting me, fine.
Today I got stung, mind you totally my fault, due to the fact that I wanted to cut the grass in front of the hives, although I got dressed and sorted they still went totally ballistic, I decided not to proceed so I stopped, got my hood off, went and got a bit of hay to smoke and calm them down, but as I was walking down from the hives are after lighting the hay one stung me on my forehead. Brill.
In the evening I decided I would check the bees just to make sure all is well, I had a quick look at them here and there since the last inspection, but not lately.
Hive A considering I was unlucky with the Queen is catching up fast, I swapped the hive bodies as I believe it will make my life easier later on, I put the main brood super at the bottom – which was nearly filled with stores and larvae and eggs, put the second super on top.
B swapped hive bodies, this colony is much bigger, stronger, have all filled brood super, the now second super, super on top is ready to get stores in it, they have a lot of new bees coming out, plus lots of eggs, and larvae so should be busy, as long as the weather is good, they should do well.
C, very big, but it was the swarm hive, did not swap supers, not see much point it doing so as they have started to fill the bottom super with stores and eggs so I will just let them get on with it, they were aggressive, watching my every move around the frames, C hive started my stings tonight.
D was nice and calm, much smaller colony, although they have had the most foundationless frames in their hive and I actually added another two, they are doing really well, I took two frames out that they were not doing anything to, and they are building them relatively quickly plus the Queen prefers to lay in these than the made up ones. They had nice eggs, larvae, capped cells, plus stores, I added two new foundationless frames plus they had another two that were bare.
E little bit aggressive, this is the hive which made me swap the hive bodies in A and B, because I did this as a test, much later than the previous two and they are already putting stores in the top box, they have two frames of stores in the top and they had a new super for the shortest time. Otherwise nice eggs, stores, larvae.
Right now we still have clover plus wild flowers flowering in the field around us, Trees have just about finished although I have noticed green pollen on the bees so the pines must be coming out.
Our garden, except for the nasty hail storm that we had on Friday, hail the size of golf balls, swept through the garden ripped up plants, shrubs, trees, broke some branches, … all in all the first impression was just horrendous, today some plants we had to cut down, some branches were cut where they were broken off, the rest is fighting on. I believe Mike is writing his blog as I write mine and he took pictures of the storm damage.
We have Echinacea coming out into flower, Lavender, wild Origanum, Golden Origanum and Mint will be flowering soon, the yellow Ligularia is in flower. I am looking into finding a tree that I would like to plant by the bees that would flower now, so it would provide them with bloom plus a bit of shelter, as while we were having the hot weather, 35 degrees, for a few days, it does get quite warm around there, I have been watering the grass in front of the hives to help them cool it down. I am hoping to go down there in a minute, it is dark now, and put a bit of wick rub onto the entrances, it has worked before to stop the smell of honey pulling in lots of other critters. maybe I will be luckier this time and the bees will leave me alone, maybe not.