2026 Cliffe Castle Bee Blog 13

Anthony and I checked the bees yesterday (20 July) and found all in

order. Our trusty blue queen is still laying over 6 frames, and the bees

have drawn comb on the wax foundation template frames given over the

past couple of weeks. There is space for the queen to lay and for the

bees to lay down stores for their winter survival.

The frames continue very sticky with propolis, so we needed to give

everything a good scraping to make sure we could put the frames back

inside the hive without too much of a struggle. Anthony had kindly

brought a spare hive tool so that we could either scrape the frames or

clean out the slots in the hive sides that the frames fit into. This helps

speed up the inspection and put the hive back together without

disturbing the bees for too long.

This week marks the start of our summer programme of a Beekeeper by

the Hive. If you are visiting Cliffe Castle on Tuesday afternoons, please

pop upstairs to see the bees and say hello to our team of volunteers. We

will do our best to answer your questions about honey bees and other

pollinators and point out anything of interest on the frames.

Hope to see you there!