Oh the joys of seeing sunshine and feeling its gentle warmth against your skin. Over the weekend it was the first real bee-keeping weather and at last a chance to have a good look inside the hives. Both of the hives that were moved on St Patrick's Day were both in fine form with plenty of brood plenty of bees and plenty of food. The colony that over wintered at Snakey lane was also in fine form. The sad news is that the largest colony that overwintered at Hatton Road seem to be in bad shape and seems to not have a laying queen (although I am not convinced there is no queen) there is no brood in any stage but plenty of food still quite a few bees. I will leave it for further inspection next weekend (weather permitting) In the meantime I have taken a sample of bees for analysis so I can look at merging the remaining bees to assist the more successful colony if they don't look like being able to continue.
There are 2 diseases that that I have checked for Nosema which infects the gut of the bee caused by a protozoa (a unicellular parasite from the fungi family) it requires a sample of bees (killed by freezing) mashed into a paste with a little distilled water and sampled under the microscope, I am pleased to say there was none to be found ( this hive was checked last September and was positive and treated with Fumadil) this is a picture from that September inspection
The other problem is Acarine which is a extremely tiny mite that infests the trachea of the bee you will be interested to note that a bee does not breath through its mouth but a series of spiracles on the side of its body the mite lays her eggs in these airways, seriously affecting the bees breathing, the hatched mites climb out and transfer to other bees via the hair.
The only way of checking for this is to decapitate the dead bee and check the trachea if it creamy coloured it is fine if is marked and dark in places you have a problem ( You need to check a few bees and it is a fiddly job)
Here is a photo of one of the dissections
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