Birds and Bees event

This coming Sunday we're hosting our 'Birds and Bees' event. All welcome. Look out for Anna's lovely poster:

Testing times

Very soon after the excitement of the swarms we had cause to be rather worried: we noticed some open cells in a couple of the hives with a lump of white sticky stuff at the bottom: it looked as though the bee larva had melted. Observe the cell in the bottom middle of the photo (and another to the centre right):

This 'melted' appearance is one of the signs of a disease called foul brood, of which there are two strains: European and American. Jenny ordered some test kits to test the larva for the diseases. We tested both hives.

...and the result: negative. Phew! We were all so relieved.