Full inspections of the bees will start again next month, when the weather has warmed up a little more. In the meantime we checked the winter food stores again this weekend, beginning with the trio of Honeydale hives. One of these colonies has used up all the fondant while the second hive has only used a fraction, so we shared out the remainder between the two to last them both until the bees can go out and about collecting their own food supply. The third hive, being a recent addition, still has plenty of stores of its own.
Moving on to Chris’s hives, our task this week was to prepare for the arrival of five additional hives which will be arriving at Honeydale in a few weeks time. With the help of new recruit, Dan, the bases were rearranged so that they are in place for Chris to sit the new hives. Luckily each base is large enough to accommodate two hives so we don’t need to bring in any more of them.
Over the past week, Bernie has been refurbishing one of the spare hives which were donated to us at the end of last year. It has scrubbed up nicely and they’re all going to look very attractive when they’re given a fresh coat of ‘Honeydale White’ paint. Once the paint has thoroughly dried on the first refurbished hive, the colony of bees in the older Honeydale hive will be transferred to it so that Bernie can then set to work refurbishing their current hive.
