2007 weather

April mean temperatures were the warmest on record across England (series back to 1914), with well above average sunshine. Very dry too, with most stations over SE England and East Anglia recording less than 3 mm of rainfall.

May - a wet month with some areas setting new rainfall records for the month. Mean temperatures above average, despite sunshine amounts below normal.

June - a warm and dry start to the month but becoming increasingly unsettled. A sustained spell of heavy rain over Lincolnshire, most of Yorkshire and the Midlands on 24-25th, with widespread flooding reported.

July - another generally unsettled month with a notable rainfall event on the 20th.

August - largely settled at first and for the last week, but very unsettled around mid-month. Temperatures close to average, but still the coldest August since 1993. Floods in central England. Mostly a cold and wet month.

And finally....

35 lbs of light honey extracted. A total for the season of 362 lbs.

Yet more....

A further 116 lbs of a light straw coloured honey were extracted. There may be another 50lbs yet to go but it is now getting late in the season and I need to get the Varroa treatment on soon....

327 lbs to date. Not too bad!

New extraction

115lbs runny honey

More extraction

40lbs of runny OSR honey taken off from a combination of the hive in the garden plus hive 2 in the apiary. Some honey setting in the frames.

Exraction

56lbs of thickening OSR honey was extracted from three supers (2 from no.2 and 1 from no.1).

Gave Mary a filled super from her hive.

End April

April was unseasonably warm (~20ºC) most days and almost no rain for the whole month.

The two hives in the nearby field will be referred to as no. 1 (previously xxx) & no. 2 (previously yyy) counting from the house.

These were joined by a third on loan from Mary B. This hive is also WBC but with regular brood frame. The queen was very strong with good brood coverage. It had two supers. Queen cells were present so a new brood box containing 11 undrawn 12x14 frames was placed between the existing brood and the supers. The new comb was soon drawn out and the queen started laying in the upper box. The queen was trapped in the upper brood box (between two queen excluders) and one of the frames containing a queen cell was donated to hive no.1.

Hive no. 2 - new brood box...tbc

Hive no. 1 - poor lay. Despateched Q and put in comb from Mary's hive....tbc

31st March

All three colonies over-wintered but with varying strength. Last year's strongest colony is doing very well with the queen laying on 3 brood combs. The second colony is of average strength and I have noticed a few bees suffering from Deformed Wing Virus. This is as a result of varroa infestation. I will treat this colony with thymol. The third colony was quite weak so a frame of brood was moved from the strongest colony into this one to add strength.

Two hives were moved two hives to a field about half a mile away. Covered the entrances with grass so as to confuse the flying bees and get them used to their new location. Some still returned to their original spot.

OSR is in the adjacent field and will flower in the next week or two.