Ben'S Berkshire Bees

We have some markets coming up:
20th July - Sustainable Living Market - Thatcham. Sustainable Living Market July'19
21st July - Shaw House Summer Fair. https://www.facebook.com/events/102013940 1505745/
... We're hoping to have some summer honey available or sale (as long as the bees have finished making some!).
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Another three cells have emerged. In two 6 new queen bees have come out of my queen rearing. The next stage is for them to be in mating hives or queenless colonies to mate and start laying eggs.

The first of my queen cells from my queen rearing emerged today! This is the left over cell. You can see where the emerging queen has cut the end of the cell in a circle to be able to crawl out!

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A mention for Ben’s Berkshire Bees in newburytoday in an article about Blue Beetle Ceramics where they sell our honey!

The yellow “lumps” on the back legs of several of these bees is pollen that they have collected from flowers. Bees have a pollen basket on their back legs to hold it! Lots of pollen going into the hive at this time of year is a good sign that there will be nectar as well. Nectar = 🍯!

There have been a few problems in the hives this week. A few have been supervening their queen, which is the natural way in older queens are replaced. However, I think because of the cold wet weather a few weeks Ago those queens were unable to mate properly. After a period of time of not having an effective queen worker bees can start lying eggs but they only lay eggs which develop into drones. Laying workers are a big problems for the hive. Unfortunately one of the only ways to deal with it to shake all the bees out into a pile and letting them disperse up join other hives. I brought one my small colonies into one of the now empty hives and other I will create a split using one of (hopefully) new queens from my queen breeding.

The honey seems to be coming into the hives! Hopefully I will be able to extract some before the Shaw house summer fair!

The queen cells for my queen rearing are now all capped. I have put protectors over them to contain the queens when they emerge. In a few more days hopefully we will have some new virgin queens!

So far so good with the Queen Rearing. The bees are nicely drawing queen cells around the young larvae. In the next few days these cells will be capped.

Here is one of the really amazing things that bees do. When you have a swarm that needs to go into a hive of you put them on the ground in front of hive with a ramp up to the entrance they will all walk nicely up into the hive!

In my Queen Rearing attempt this was the box that I used to encourage the queen to lay eggs in the little plastic cups. You can see the queen at the top right of the picture ( marked green).

My little assistant beekeeper still has time to beat the record!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/five-year -old-becomes-britai…/

I’m attempting to raise some queen bees. Within each of these little cups is recently hatched bee egg. In theory the bees should now form queen cells around them to allow queen bees to be raised. That is the theory anyway I will see in a few days if it is working. 😆
#bee #bees #beekeeping #beekeeper #berkshire #bensberkshirebees #queenrearing

If you like beewax wraps - it is remarkably easy to make your own at home. We set up a group Beeswax Wraps Knowhow for people to share information and tips - we have nearly 500 members from around the world!

With the temperature picking up it is very busy at the hive entrances! I have taken out the entrance blocks to make sure there is no congestion and make it easier for the bees to bring in the honey!

Most of the time bees seem amazing in the way they work together to achieve what is best for the colony, it some time they do odd things!
I had a small mating hive in the garden that a queen has been living in happily for a week whilst he hive is used for Queen rearing, at the weekend I brought home a second small mating hive with a sealed queen cell to see if it would develop into a queen.
But the bees then decided they that would rather all live in the first box together! But there were far too many bees for a tiny box then so they next day they all decided to leave! I managed to get them back into this much large box!