The third apiary demonstration of the year took place under glorious sunshine, the demonstrators were Eddie O’Sullivan and Noel Power. The bees were in a much more placid mood that the previous week, this was probably due to the warm sunshine. The demonstration was well attended and the attendees were grouped into beginners, taken by Eddie O’Sullivan, and more experienced beekeepers, taken by Noel Power.

Eddie, assisted by Christy Harrington, took the beginners through 3 hives in total, taking great care to demonstrate the different types of brood (worker and drone) present in each hive. There were a number of drones identified in each hive as well as sections of drone brood on a number of frames in each hive. The frames containing the most drone brood were moved closer to the outside to be first in line for replacement, as once the bees have drawn out the cells on a frame for drone brood the queen will then never lay worker brood in these cells. This will of course reduce the possible available space for worker brood in the hive. An uncapping fork was used to lift out a section of almost fully developed drone brood to check for varroa. No varroa was found in the examined brood.

A number of queen cells were found, these cells contained no eggs/larva and were suspected to be last years cells but were broken down as a precaution.

The second hive examined was found to have a super 2/3 full and the decision was made to add an additional super to this hive.

Queen Rearing

In Noel Power's parallel demonstration on queen rearing, the focus this week was on the art of grafting young larva into synthetic queen cups. This section of the demonstration was held outside the apiary entrance gate to allow the beekeepers to practice grafting without the need to wear the full protection required inside. A variety of tools were required for grafting including a magnifying glass and a Chinese grafting tool. Only larva less than 24 hours were used for grafting to increase the possibility of a healthy size queen.

Approximately 20 Queen cells, mounted on an adapted frame, were prepared and then inserted into the queen-less half of a hive with a double brood box. Noel put alot of emphasis on the preparation required up to this stage and even used Roy Keane’s quote “Fail to Prepare. Prepare to Fail”. Next week Noel will be checking the progress of the Queen cells and preparing mating nuclei to take the cells.

- P. Ó' Murchú