A check through the Nuc with the old Queen in residence and extra supers for the huge colony. Spring bird song, tales of my visit to hear Nightingales.
00:06
Welcome back to a Beekeepers Diary podcast. We're a week later. In fact, what is the date? Where are we at? 26th of April, 2026. I'm back. It's a bit earlier in the day. It's 10 o'clock. I've got afternoon appointments. So I've come for an earlier inspection, which is probably good as it's quite hot today.
00:35
I black caps singing off to my left. get an idea of what the temperature is. It's only saying 12 degrees but it feels a lot hotter than that. I was sweating during my inspection. Yeah so where are we at? My nuke. I don't like these bees I have to say. I've opened the nuke up and normally nukes are...
01:04
you know, very meek and mild. But this gang, as soon as I got onto the second frame, they were all investigating my veil and I don't know if you've ever experienced that banana-y smell. Normally you get it from quite defensive hives. After you've had a good rummage through them, you get a banana smell, which is the pheromones they release. Very rarely smelt it, but I'm getting it off these bees nearly every time.
01:36
not fun, um although they're not stingy they're just followy and up in your grill um and as I keep the bees maybe 120 meters from where someone likes to garden I just can't have that. I don't want to accidentally you know bring bees to his garden.
02:02
that are aggressive and defensive. So I've got responsibility to make sure I don't keep those types of bees. So I'm going to see if I can, I need to requeen these bees because the generation after this are going to be worse. So yeah, I went through that. The queen was on the first frame, which has been still being built out as a foundation frame, a frame with just like a guide for wax that the bees build out. If you're not aware of what foundation is.
02:32
and yeah she was having a scuttle about on there. I went through the other frames there's stalls coming in there's still space for her to lay there's pollen so I'm going to leave him in the nuke for another week. I've just slightly moved the frames around so a plain foundation frame that was on the outside I've moved it inside as there's a good flow on there's nectar on I've moved it inside the pollen barrier
03:00
where the pollen begins but not broken up the brood nest which is what I like to do if you're trying to get frames built out you can do it either side and yes I pop that in and so that's good for another week but I need to start building frames when I need to bring them on to a full hive then I went into the main hive there obviously this is week
03:26
two after Queen Ageddon or week one after Queen Ageddon so god knows what's going on below the Queen excluder but I'm not going to look for at least another week or two to give the Queens a chance to fight it out get mated settle down and start laying there's nothing to be gained from thrashing through there currently so above it I have now I had
03:57
123 I had three supers the smaller boxes we use were collecting honey I had put a super on last week not all three are full of glistening nectar nothing's capped off yet I'm wary of oilseed rape setting in the frames but I've not seen any locally and they don't seem to be getting overly yellow pollen bees coming back but they've obviously had a good week of collecting stores so I've added on a fourth super
04:26
Plain super so I've got three full of stores being evaporated down so I've given them space to be able to move the nectar about and reduce its water content and then start sealing it off so there's potentially
04:46
least you know 60 pounds of honey there already so that's a good going so already better than last year so yeah I'm gonna go home see if anyone's selling Queens yet
05:04
and enjoy the rest of the beautiful weather. Just sitting here now, as I say I heard a black cab off to my left, robins, there's the old swallow zooming about and there was a crow mobbing a buzzard overhead as I came in. Black birds singing away, a lovely little spot when you're not being harassed by grumpy bees. I had an amazing experience last weekend.
05:34
I heard Nightingales for the first time. There's a guy down in Sussex that organises evenings where you go sit around a campfire and various musicians come and play and he sings. He's a folk musician, an English folk musician, sings songs about nightingales and the like.
05:59
and then you'll walk out into the woods in complete silence and darkness to find the singing nightingales who call all night at this time of year. And then the musicians settle down, we all sit down around the nightingale and the musicians play and the nightingales sing and it's an incredible experience. I was lucky enough to enjoy that. So yeah, if you're in the UK.
06:27
look that up, singing with nightingales it is down in Sussex, I think there's one in the Bedfont area as well but it's not run by the same guy but if you like natural history and music it's amazing. There's also tawny owls screeching around, barn owls scaring everyone, yeah was brilliant. Highly recommend, I can hear skylarks as well now.
06:53
to.
06:57
yeah brilliant and the M25, the local motorway. Right I'll stop waffling on and hope you enjoy your weekend. Thank you to everyone that's listened as I think I'm up to 217 different cities people are listed from now. Madness but welcome, hello, how's it going? I'll catch you next time.