Starting with Miriam's colony, everything looks fine. She is laying, there are plenty of bees and there is nectar coming in. There are two boxes (supers) of honey frames on the hive, and the first one (the one they will use as winter stores) is already full. The second super is mostly empty at the moment, but there are a couple of frames where the bees have started storing nectar.
Local councillor Ian was helping me with the inspection yesterday, and we were mainly focused on looking for queen cells, as these are a sign the colony is planning to swarm. We had a good look in Miriam's hive but couldn't see any, so hopefully her colony will stay nice and calm for the next few weeks.
On to Caroline's hive. This is the one where the queen has been allowed to lay in both the brood-box and the first (bottom) super - an arrangement known as "brood-and-a-half". It means she has around 60% more laying space than Miriam, which means lots more bees! The difference is noticeable - Ian and I were greeted with a very busy colony when we opened up. Unfortunately, there was no time for photos as we had our hands full just checking everything in the hive.
Looking through the brood frames, there were a few empty queen "cups" - these are concave wax structures that face downwards, and are the foundation for a queen cell. One possibly had an egg in it, but I squished it while I was opening up the cell with my hive tool to get a closer look.
On to the brood-containing super. The first frame was mostly honey, then two frames full of worker brood. And then on frame number four, I saw what we were looking for - a queen cup with an egg clearly laid inside it. This means the colony is starting to make swarm preparations, with the likely swarm date in around 8-9 days time. I don't want my bees to swarm, so I had two options - either remove the egg, to delay their plans, or remove the queen. I decided that removing the egg would only delay the inevitable, and I'd rather solve the issue as early as possible in the season. But what do I do with the queen?
Well, the first thing I needed to do was find her! Ian and I went back through the brood box for a second time, trying to find the queen. Believe me, when you are looking through thousands of bees, trying to find one that looks slightly different, this is no easy task. She made us work for it, too - there are 11 frames in the brood box, and we didn't find her until frame number 9.
So, having now found her, we needed to take her out of the hive and give her a new place to live. Beekeepers have a piece of equipment for this - a half-width brood box called a "nucleus" (often abbreviated to "nuc"). I have two empty nucleus boxes at the moment, so we brought one down next to the hive, and transferred the frame bearing the queen into it. A nuc takes 5 frames in total, so I added another frame of bees and brood, plus a frame of bees and honey (they'll need something to eat while they're getting settled into their new home). I had two partially-drawn (but empty) brood frames that I'd stored over the winter, so I put those in as well - these will give queen Caroline extra space to lay in. And then put the roof on, and the nucleus was complete.
The now-queenless hive needed three new frames to replace the three I'd just transferred to the nuc. I found three new frames from my spares box, put them in and then Ian and I re-assembled the hive. Then there was one last job: the colony had filled both their supers, so we needed to add another one. I had a spare one ready to go, and added it to the hive, which will give the bees something to work with while they wait for the new queen egg to hatch and grow.
I've been very pleased with the rate of honey collection this year - the bees have started earlier, and collected faster than last year. There is a great variety of forage around at the moment, including trees and garden flowers. Here's a picture I took of one of my bees foraging last week on some bluebells round the corner from the hives:
It's always great to see the horse chestnut in flower - the flowers are great forage for bees, and they bring lots of the brick-red pollen into the hive. Here's a picture taken near Bath Spa railway station, showing the wonderful "candles" of flowers:
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