Exclusive

When we inspect the bees, MrsM takes quite detailed notes: just what is on each frame - worker larvae or drone larvae or stored food (honey/sugar and pollen), in what proportions; how full up the frame is; did we see the queen; are there new-laid eggs - and so on. I transfer these paper notes to a spreadsheet, mapped out as a diary. 

I'm probably not typical. Most people keep paper records of some sort, but not usually at that level of detail. It certainly isn't essential - in fact I'm sometimes looking so hard at the trees that I miss the wood; I'm just a data geek. It does mean I can look back at last year's page and remind myself of how the colonies and queens that we have now came into being last year

The exercise reminded me again that we lost our two strongest colonies to virus disease. A priority this year is to try to avoid repeating the experience. The problem is that there is very little research about the disease or how to prevent it. All we can do is clean the equipment as thoroughly as possible and - as soon as it is warm enough for the bees to build new comb - get them transferred on to clean new frames, where they can build fresh new comb for the queen to lay in. We hope that will give them the edge over the virus

To achieve this, we will need to keep the queen in the box containing new frames, without preventing the workers from foraging outside or ranging through the whole hive. That is where one of these comes in: a 'queen excluder'. This is a grille with the bars spaced at a distance that allows workers to pass through, but larger queens cannot. Today, I cleaned them up in preparation: scraping off as much wax and propalis as possible and then 'scorching' them with a gas blowtorch - getting the surface of the wooden bits hot enough that it starts to oxidise (i.e. burn!), and hopefully killing any harmful organisms in the process - hence the rather dark corners. The other parts of the hives are treated likewise

Why is it in a flower bed? Because it amused me. People take pictures of teddy bears in the snow and plastic toys in a tree. I'm bidding for a world first - an exclusive