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| Welcome to Gregory Boon's Garden Apiary in Catford SE London. I hope you enjoy looking at my bees as much as I do. |
| Can't find any queen cells on this frame |
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| A frame from a double brood with white capped honey at the top and hatching brood in the middle. |
| Smile please! |
| Some colonies hide their queen cells. |
| Showing off without a veil (it also makes seeing much easier). Ten days later when the bees hadn't been able to fly because of the bad weather, it was a different story! Even a swarm attacked me, though, I had just shaken it off an oak tree! |
| I hate to squash bees when handling frames. It's also bad because nosema can be spread if they have it and the bees intestines are ruptured. |
| Another great frame of brood. This colony also stores prodigious quantities of pollen. You can see some just above my right arm. It's mainly yellow, and the cells are half full, perhaps awaiting the honey (then capping) that will preserve it (by stealing the moisture from any bacteria, the same mechanism as sugar preserving fruit in jams). |
| Some of these WBCs could be pre war. First one, that is. The commercial beekeeper who introduced me to bees only ever used single (though 11 frame) brood. He'd often get four or five supers of honey too. |
| Honey and pollen collected and capped at different times. |
| A close up showing capped stores and glistening honey that's being ripened, and some pollen. |
| Missing a few summer days as they fly by can result in a swarm and the loss of most of the honey crop for that colony. Even if you catch them in time, they may have slowed down and be hanging around waiting to go with the swarm. |
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| A small nucleus to rear a new queen. Even a nuc will swarm despite being weak, if you leave more than one queen cell, and the conditions are right. |
| Yes, I haven't painted the hives for twenty six years, when I was 13 or 14. |
| I still had to turn the neighbour's apple tree into kindling, hence the long grass. |
| I must have misplaced something. |
| A hatched queen cell in the corner |
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