My most troublesome hive as all it seems to want to do is swarm..
Key dates and log of activities
28/2/26 Survived the winter with a good few bees. The hive is looking fairly tired with green on the side so I might swap the hive out with another so that I can give it a lick of paint. This hive will stay white and be White Hive, but the bees will remain in their new home which will be BH as the blue poly hive. Need to do this on a good warm day.
13/6/25 This hive is still not looking happy super has been removed. Cant see the queen no evidence of any eggs. Is a shame as the swarm used was a really happy swarm from the nuc besides the hive. Was a really nice colony that was expanding and needed the space of a full hive.
24/5/25 This hive had a non laying queen. Kept threatening to swarm but probably didn’t allow the queen to escape for mating. I have therefore blended in one of the swarms that I picked up. Old Queen removed. Hive put on top with all the new bees and a queen and left over night with a semi secure boundary. Then integrated into one hive once the scent of the 2 hives had mixed. They seem to have accepted the new hive though I didn’t see the new queen.
5/5/25 This this colony swarmed on the 5th or 6th. Bees were collected on the 7th and put into the purple hive.
16th Jan 2023: scales on and sensor in. The temperature and humidity sensor didn’t fit in the top of the hive as there was not enough space above the frames below the feeder. I was reluctant to keep the hive open for too long as it was 10 deg outside when I put the sensor in so I allowed it to drop down between the frames.
5th Feb 2023: Sensor removed and mounted onto a frame and inserted. lots of bees on the top so didn’t want to disturb sensor placed on the edge of the frames pointing in towards the centre.