Bad beekeeping [Stoat]

A photographic essay.

Hive #2, “flattop”, with a smoker on top and surrounded by a carpet of weeds. The bees don’t really mind that, I think. The observant will notice the roof is in rather poor condition – but its been like that for years and not getting much worse – and the queen excluder is above the first super, which is careless of me.

Hive #1 is even more covered in weeds, perhaps a little more than is desireable. The odd blob on top is my gloves.

General view, with my shed in the background.

Looking the other way to the (not visible) stream at the bottom. The triffid on the left is a horseradish, I’m assured.

After some vigourous weed-pulling. The wet June has been bad for weeds, in the sense that they’ve grown well and that’s bad.

Hive #1. The decayed bit at the front is the “alighting board” but bees don’t need it.

And for completeness the de-weeded #2 also.

Oh dear. Who left a garden inside the top of my hive?

Remove roof and cap board, and all is fairly quiet.

Yes, pretty quiet. In a good year, they’d have filled the empty space (that really should have frames in it) with comb.

One layer down. I remember now, I didn’t get round to putting wax into all the frames, but hoped the bees would. But, its all looking pretty thin in there. Not hopeful.

Pffft. Is that all? Just one small capped area? Oh dear.

One lower, the top of the brrod box, and careful inspection shows I left the Apistan in. I really should not have done that.

The brood box. A reasonable but not overwhelming number of bees, and inspection of a couple of frames didn’t show much or any brood. Well, we’ll see.

A brood frame. Black as the ace of spades: it really ought to be replaced. Next year.

So much for hive #1. What of #2? Oh dear, I didn’t put enough frames in did I?

Slightly less obviously, there’s not a lot of honey in all that comb, either. It really hasn’t been a good year.

So I took a bit out, and left the rest. Let’s hope the remainder of the summer is sunnier.