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Nipped out to the “leak” apiary after lunch today to install a screen under the roof of the last hive I had to move and remove the supers (not necessarily in that order 😀

Then this evening I went back and closed up the hive. Whilst I could normally lift a double brood over the fence there was no way that has happening with this one. I had to barrow it about 100m down a bumpy slope to the gate at the bottom and then push it all the way back up to within 10m of where I started. It was exhausting.

Once installed in my home apiary I removed the ply that I used to close the entrance in the dark. I’ll remove the screen and put the super back on tomorrow.

Last night I moved the first colony of bees from the “leak” site to home — only two miles, but I’m hoping it will be far enough. It turned out to be an easy enough job. The under-floor entrance closes off easily enough by screwing a scrap of ply over the front and I used a ratchet strap to hold everything together, putting it into the boot of the car. Given the horrible weather the bees didn’t seem interested in making a fuss at all.

Double brood with super tomorrow. That’s going to be more tricky. But that’s tomorrow’s problem 😀

I received a message this morning that the hives in one apiary site were in the way of the water company, who needed to get access so they could dig a large hole in an attempt to find out why one of their water mains is leaking. Today is Thursday. They’d like to start on Monday. Eeek!

I discussed it with the engineer and the landowner, who thought it might be possible to move the hives little-by-little until they weren’t in the way. I was doubtful, but went to have a look anyhow. After I had been standing next to a hive for a minute or two, cogitating, a single bee flew out and made it quite plain that she didn’t want me there. Not even when I started to walk away. I got perhaps ten metres before she went straight for my face and stung me on the left cheekbone. Fortunately I rid shot of her and the sting pretty sharp-ish and whilst there was a bit of a red mark for half an hour or so there’s no obvious sign of it now. I suspect that because it was quite a dull day there wasn’t so much forage coming in and the guard bees were a bit tetchy.

That pretty much convinced me that the hives will have to be moved away from the site.

I have a site almost three miles away they could go to. This is like some sort of comedy of errors. Unfortunately there’s a tree collapsed across the entrance and the landowner believes the dead tree is now occupied by nesting blackbirds, so they must be left alone. I may risk moving them to home as we’re still two miles away. Two weeks ago I could have put both hives in the car, but one is now double-brood and has a super so quite possibly won’t even fit in the car. That’s not a problem. I have a trailer. But the trailer is full of stuff that I don’t really have anywhere else to put 😀

Anyhow, I need to get it all worked out over the weekend. As well as all the other stuff I planned to do 😀