Bees, Bees, Bees

It has been a mainly bee filled week. Two years ago when I started out with chickens and bees, I worried about them both. I worried about their accommodation, what they would eat, if they would get diseases, if they would get out and if anything would get in. I long since gave up worrying about the chickens, I let them out, make sure there is food and water and then shut them up at night, one of them lays a regular egg and that is it. I have lost three birds in those two years which has made me sad, but really I barely have to think about the chickens any more. The bees on the other hand seem to be a non stop source of anxiety. In winter I worry about whether they are surviving, in summer it is whether they are going to swarm or not followed by whether they are building up enough stores to last them through the winter. Almost all the year round I am worrying about whether to treat for varroa.
For beekeepers this spring who were congratulating themselves that their bees had at least made it through the winter alive (and I heard  last week of a Yorkshire beekeeper who lost 80 out of 100 colonies), a new worry was raised at the BBKA Spring Convention with the thought that as last summer was so wet, virgin queens had very little chance to get out of the hive to mate and if they don't mate within two to three weeks they will start laying unfertilized eggs which will become drones and thus mean the death of the colony. Fortunately my three virgin queens all seem to have mated.

I had several spring tasks I wanted to do with the bees, I wanted to repair or replace the floor of hive 1 which was coming apart and letting bees in through the back of the hive, I wanted to coax hive 2 out of their old brood box and into a new brood box and onto new foundation to try and stop them building brace comb between the frames and I wanted to change the brood box of hive 3, as I realised that it had not been built wrong as I had assumed but that I had put it together wrong.
I started with hive 3 last Tuesday. I had a bit of a shock. In March when we were forecast snow, the BBKA sent a warning round to feed the bees to prevent late starvation. Hives 1 and 2 still had candy left from the winter but hive 3 had taken it all so I put more on in an upturned plastic pot. By last week they had not only eaten it all but they had filled the pot with comb and the queen had been laying in it. I wish I had taken a picture of it to show you as the natural build of the comb was beautiful but I had a pot full of bees most likely including the precious queen and it was not as warm as it should be for inspecting bees so I had to act quickly. This is the pot and some of the comb after it was broken up.

 The bees would not simply shake out of the pot back into the hive but clung on to the comb. I started digging bits of the comb out and putting them on a spare hive floor. The bees did not like this but gradually by removing comb and shaking bees I got the pot emptied and the majority of the bees back in the hive. I put a queen excluder on the brood chamber and a super filled with foundation above that. Then I retreated to let everyone calm down, hoping to God that I had got the queen on the right side of the queen excluder and hoping even more fervently that I hadn't dropped or killed her in the melee.The queen excluder by the way is to stop the queen laying eggs in the super, thus if all goes well, you can extract honey from the super without the risk of finding eggs or larvae in it.
Examining the exposed larvae revealed the presence of varroa but I couldn't tell if they were at levels high enough to need treatment.

They are the red brown crab shaped spots on the larva. There may have been more of them as some of the brood were drones which take longer to develop in the cell which gives the varroa mite longer to develop. I have put a collection floor on the hive to try and assess the level of infestation by counting the number that are dropped but I may treat them anyway.
I then gave the larvae to the chickens who enjoyed them immensely.

On Friday the weather was fine enough to go into hive 2 and put a new brood chamber above the old to try and tempt the colony onto clean fresh wax. I went through the old brood chamber removing brace comb wherever I could. This colony was nowhere near as strong as hive 3 and there was a small patch of bees dead in cells which was an indication of starvation over winter. This despite there being a large lump of candy still to eat in March. Still there was normal healthy brood in there and I actually spotted the queen. Of course by the time I reached for the cage to capture her, she had wandered off again so she is still unmarked like the others. I have put a weak sugar solution on this hive to fool them into thinking it is a nectar flow which is supposed to stimulate them into activity but they still seem very lethargic.

On Saturday teatime, I strolled down to see what the bees where doing and was sent into a panic by a large cloud of bees massing outside hive 3. Some of the books say that unusual activity can be sign that they are preparing to swarm. It would be very early for a swarm given the late spring we have had, but this is a large and active colony who had already shown signs that the brood chamber was not sufficient for their needs. I would have to go into the hive and see what was going on despite the weather still being on the cold side. Thinking I might as well kill two birds with one stone, I took the new brood body and started to transfer the frames over. The bees didn't like it. They had been trying to keep the hive at 35 degrees and now I was taking it apart in a temperature of about 12. They buzzed around angrily in a cloud and I got stung once on the inside of my elbow. I'm surprised it wasn't more.
Whilst doing my lightning quick inspection of angry bees, I did spot a queen cup at the side of one frame. It didn't appear to have anything in it. Queen cups can mean several things. The most harmless possibility is that  they are a practice for later in the season. The next possibility is in my efforts to get rid of the plastic pot of comb I have inadvertently killed the queen and the queen cell is an emergency replacement. However this would not be possible with an empty cell or even one with an egg laid in it that I didn't spot, as it would need the queen present to lay in it. The worst case scenario, is that the bees are preparing to swarm and building a queen cup to leave a new queen to take over the remnants of the hive after the majority of the bees have left with the old queen.
So my plan of action, is to inspect again either today or tomorrow and if the queen cell is sealed then I need to separate the queen cell and most of the bees from the queen and a couple of frames of brood. In other words do an artificial swarm so that the bees are in the position they would be after a swarm either queenless and building up the colony again or in a small colony led by the old queen which also needs building up. However I went to the Beverley Beekeepers Annual Auction (splendid, bought loads of stuff very cheap) and talking there to beekeepers, it was suggested that what I saw was an orientation flight, when young bees come out for the first time and buzz round trying to work out where they are, so all might be well and there could be no need to panic.
We shall see but I bet it won't be the first time I am panicking this season.