This month in the apiary – May
- Continue weekly inspections checking for eggs and queen cups and cells. Empty cups may be okay watch when they are polished and act if they have an egg or are charged with royal jelly. Remember the appearance of drones indicates swarm time watch the egg laying. If it decreases the bees could be readying your queen to fly.
- Change comb by Shook swarm, Bailey comb change or rotation. Be mindful of night time temperatures if doing a shook swarm.
- Keep checking the queen has space to lay. If the colony has supers on but they have also filled the brood box with frames of stores remove one and add foundation near to the brood nest but not splitting it.
- Add supers before all frames are capped . If you have Oil Seed Rape in the supers extract before it crystallises. If most is capped shake to check uncapped frames if nectar doesn’t come out it is probably okay, though better to check with a refractometer.
- Check swarm control equipment ready, a nuc or another hive.
- Start queen rearing to replace older queens or any you might lose or to help out someone in the association .
- Put up Asian Hornet traps. Ensure any traps have holes of 5mm to let other pollinators out. Only put them up if you can monitor them.