25 May 2024 · Colonies in all states.

For a couple of years the apiary has been ticking over, generally going well, we've been managing disease when needed, keeping things tidy, doing the odd experiment, and learning as we went.

For the first time, today's inspection gave us a radically different situation in each hive. One had a queen laying only drone brood, another was plain non-viable. Then the other three hives gave us reasons to be happier. One had a near-perfect configuation. Brood was in its typical shape in the brood box with off-white honey collecting in the supers. The two remaining double-brooded hives showed astonishing productivity, both in terms of laying and honey production. We had to perform a split on one of them there and then. They didn't like it much, but hopefully it was for the best.

I could write a lot about this inspection, but our general feelings were something like the following:

• Double-brooding hasn't worked. At one point, we wanted to expand the number of hives we have, so we began using double brood boxes. The bees didn't agree with this plan in any of the colonies and generally only used one of the two boxes, even if they were running out of room in the one they did use. We're moving back to single brood boxes again now and consciously abandoning the ambition of growing the number of hives. Instead, we'll likely be stacking supers like you'd see in a more conventional apiary.
• The fight against varroa goes on. We're observing varroa on some of the pupae in a couple of colonies. We should review our treatment plan for the winter and keep a closer eye on things.
• In a damp woodland environment, hives need to be in the sun. We learned this from a mild dysentry problem a year or two ago. Anecdotally, the hives that receive warm rays from the sun seem to do better. They seem to have less disease, mould, and generally have more laying and honey production.

I'll be going to the apiary a couple more times this week to trim the rapidly-growing vegetation, change over some old comb, add a super or two, and maybe even to peek at the bees.