On the 7th of April I mixed up syrup and got ready to feed, just prior to two days of rain, except with that came colder temperatures so it took them longer to take. I mixed up 250ml of syrup with 40ml of BeeStrong from Bee Vital. I know they say use 25ml per hive or double the dose per weaker hive. I thought as I had a 250ml botle of Bee Strong and if I give each hive 40 ml I will have 50 ml left so I could still give two single shots to two hives if I wanted to at a later date. Wether that was clever or not time will tell.
The stronger hives took the syrup mix within 3-4 days but my two smaller colonies took their time, actually the one colony that was small and then it got robbed hardly took it, so on the 13 of April when I was looking at them, and taking the empty feeders off I decided I was going to spray some of the syrup into a frame, put that in and the leftover I took away as it has been out there for nearly a week and I don’t think that is very good. Either way, this hive is fighting on, it has little amounts of stores, little amounts of bees but the Queen is there and she is laying so what I am planning to do is to give them one frame of stores and one frame of brood. Most people would have joined this colony with another one, but I am going to try and get them better and bigger again, after all we are all learning. As I have left myself some Bee Strong this hive is going to get some more but this time I am going to spray it onto a frame and put it right next to the bees.
I gave a hive a new super on the 5th, with 4 Foundationless frames inside it, they have nearly finished building them when I checked on the 13th and already started filling this super up. Another of my better colonies has a super nearly full with honey, some of which is capped, gave them a super with 4 Foundationless frames in there.
During my last inspection the bees were very calm and collective, the last two times I have opened up the hives I have done so later on in the day, around 3pm, I decided that the bees have less chance of being angry, they have had some time out collecting pollen, nectar etc, they have had their exercising flights around the hive and there is less chance of the smell from honey drifting away and bringing in trouble. So far it has worked.
Trees and plants in flower are, Cracked Willow has nearly finished that has been a star this year, there are many Cowslips in the fields, Maple has come into flower, Hawthorn, May,Cherries, are just about going to open up. It has cooled down a little, we had cloudy rainy weather today about + 8 C, yesterday we had sunshine and about + 19C so it flactuates a little bit, but it is acceptable.