After multiple retries due to the weather and medical issues, our bee inspector arrived today to check over my hives for signs of EFB.
She had to do all the heavy lifting unfortunately. By the end I was struggling just to continue standing up (and in fact I had to have a sit down on an empty hive stand for a while). The good news is that my bees are EFB-free. The not-so-great news is that two of the colonies appear to be about to swarm, so I need to get back to them, ideally tomorrow, and split them. I’m not surprised by this, if I’m honest. My beekeeping routine has been pretty chaotic so far this year for reasons that are probably quite clear from my other posts.
The surprising news is that we found a queen with a scrap of red paint left from when I marked her in 2023. She was easy to spot because of the walking frame 😀