The second apiary demonstration of the year took place under greying skies. Our demonstrator for the day was Noel Power.

A distinct change in the mood of the bees was observed - they were considerably less happy than the previous week! This could be attributed to the weather, though Noel also mentioned that the bees are often more agitated when working the oil seed rape, which they seem to be at the moment.

Our first job for the day was to find the queen who escaped detection on the first day. While Noel searched for the queen with a little help, a frame of eggs and very young larvae was handed around. Having found the queen, Noel clipped her (she was already marked), and the hive was closed up without further ado.

Earlier in the day a demonstration hive had been set up for a garden show in Ballincollig, and to accomplish this a queen with some bees had been removed from one of the hives. When this hive was opened to replace the queen and bees, a tremendous roar could be heard throughout the apiary, and flying bees took to the air in droves. With the queen replaced the sound level dropped a little, and the hive was closed up. It was interesting to note the change in the bees behaviour without their queen, the previous week this hive had barely taken any notice of our inspection.

Queen Rearing

To finish, Noel explained a little about the queen rearing program being undertaken this year. On the previous evening, Noel had rearranged the double brood chamber hives so that the upper chamber contained plenty of unsealed brood above a queen excluder. This means that in a weeks time (8 days in total), the upper chamber will have a huge force of young nurse bees and no means to produce a queen of their own. They will have to raise queens on Noel's grafted larvae - grafting takes place next week