Not such great March weather

We had a look through the side window to see whether the bees had started to build any of that nice straight comb onto the top bar we'd inserted two weeks previously. They hadn't touched it, or the honey on the floor, and were sluggishly huddled together. The weather had got colder and wetter since that first week in March when they were bringing all that pollen in. That would explain why their activity was much diminished, in spite of abundant blossom to be had. How things can change depending on the weather!

Straightening up

A week after we'd prepared the new tops bars, it was mild and the bees were bringing lots of pollen in.

We opened up the hive. The comb was curved and overlapping across the top bars so they could not be separated. The layer of comb furthest out from the nucleus was partly empty and Jenny trimmed it with a bread knife to even the side up.

We placed one of our new straight starter top bars against the edge and left some bits that still had honey in them on the floor of the hive for the bees to hopefully retrieve and store in a nice straight new layer of comb.

The beginning of year two for the Glengall bees

We met to do a couple of jobs at the garden on the first of March. Lukasz painted the inside of the spare hive with shellac (I was surprised the bottle of liquid had a chemical smell - the shellac is mixed with spirit).

Lucasz paints shellac onto a divider board

In the shed, Alastair, Ann, Jan, Jenny, Josephine and I prepared some new top bars. We cut some strips of foundation layer and placed them in the gaps, held in place with melted wax.

Strips of foundation layer held in place with melted beeswax

We also prepared a variant, where we glued triangular sections of wood to the underside of the top bars, then dribbled melted wax along the sharp top edge. The idea is to encourage the bees to build their comb nice and straight, so that we will be able to lift and move each bar separately.

Gluing the triangular sections of wood onto the top bars

It was fairly mild that day and we discovered the garden's newest resident, a fox, sunning itself on the grass.