🐝 5 Hives Become 6! Queen Split, Mated Queens & Hive Inspections at the Farm & Allotment 🐝

In this week's beekeeping update, we head up to the farm to inspect all of our colonies and check on the queens. What started as four hives has now become five after carrying out a successful queen split. 🐝 Hive 1 (New Split) We created a new colony by removing the queen from Hive 4 and introducing her into a new setup. We added a frame of eggs, a frame of brood, a frame of food, and shook in plenty of bees to give the new colony the best possible start. 🐝 Hive 2 Queen right with eggs, larvae, and brood in all stages. A healthy and thriving colony. 🐝 Hive 3 This was the colony we were waiting to see if the new queen had successfully mated. Great news – she has! We found eggs, larvae, and capped brood in all stages, confirming she is laying well. 🐝 Hive 4 This hive was used to create our latest split. After removing the queen, we left the colony to raise a replacement queen from fresh brood and eggs. 🐝 Hive 5 Another strong colony with brood in all stages. We also confirmed that the queen we had been monitoring has successfully mated and is now laying well, with eggs, larvae, and brood present throughout the hive. Back at the allotment, we found a queen cell and removed it. The plan now is to prepare another hive for the farm and move the final allotment colony over. If the colonies continue to grow strongly, we may carry out another split in the near future. Thanks for following the journey as we continue to grow our apiary and learn more about beekeeping every week. 📦 Please like, subscribe, and follow the journey as BB Outdoors UK continues to grow. #Beekeeping #HoneyBees #BeeKeeperUK #BBOutdoorsUK #ApiaryLife