Chorlton Garden Honey

Lots of honeybees on my Sorbus Lutescens.

Another eviction. The insert board under each hiuve shows what is dropping through the mesh floor. The hive on the left shows the normal debris indicating all is well the hive on the right shows large pieces of wax indicating a mouse has set up home. The metal entrance reducer to stop mice entering isn't big enough.

Bee tree in Chorlton active today. Good to see the bees still alive. This tree has been occupied for the past 3 years.

Hazel catkins have been out for a few weeks. Aren't the seasons merging into each other?

New queen has been out meeting the 'boys'. That small white tissue protruding from her rear is the final testament of the last drone during her 30 minute mating flight. The worker will remove the drone's appendage and she should start to lay eggs in a few days.

After this recent rain the Himalayan balsam is finally producing nectar. Mixed with the late willow herb gives a delicious honey.

Been busy this year rearing lots of new queens and testing them out. Last round of queen rearing has produced 21 potential queens; you can see the queen cells in the photo. These queen cells will go into a mini mating nucleus colony with half a cup of bees to look after her; after 4 days of confinement the mini mating nuc will moved to a mating site and opened up. Three weeks later we will hopefully have a newly mated queen.

All the colonies have a laying queen. You can see the tiny eggs, like a grain of rice and the larvae floating in a bed of royal jelly and the capped brood cells

Busy on the rooftop at this time of year.

Caught a couple of honey bees enjoying the bramble yesterday.

86 jars of CGH delivered to the Barbakan yesterday.

It's been a busy time at CGH, making sure the bees have enough space to grow and store honey. I'm starting my second round of breeding new queens for the next generation of Chorlton Garden bees, hopefully they will go on to be healthy, gentle and strong? As we all know, only healthy, strong bees produce honey.

Most of the colonies look like this one. Simply bursting at the seams. The first honey box was already full to bursting so 2 more empty ones went on

Looking like one of the best ever starts to the beekeeping season here in Chorlton. Hives are strong and already bringing in the early spring honey from buckthorn. wild cherry, field maple and dandelion. There's more to come from hawthorn, sycamore and horse chestnut.
Mainly dandelion pollen coming in to this colony