A challenging day

2026: Cliffe Castle Bee Blog 8

Lee and I checked the colony this morning (8 June). We found 3 emergency queen cells on the frames. All last week’s eggs had become larvae, last week’s larvae sealed brood. I had brought a small poly nucleus box to take them back home to my apiary and will reduce the queen cells to one tomorrow.

We transferred the bees I had brought today (a split from my 2nd home colony) into the observation hive, with their queen (who is blue, so she dates from last year). Somehow everything that could go wrong did today, but we just kept going on and the bees helped, by staying very calm, despite all the upset.

Hopefully they will build up again over the next few weeks and be ready to entertain their public up to and during the school summer holidays.

Thanks to Lee for his help and patience with a challenging morning.

Linda