Norfolk Honey - Apiaries
Spixworth apiary
Situated in a small privately owned farm off Spixworth road the apiary was started with two hives in 2012 that increased to three before the winter 2012/13.
Out of the three, one had a new queen bred in Spixworth. The other two had old queens. The winter 2012/13 was long and hard and only two out of the three survived. One of the two old queens failed to make it through the longest, hardest winter I've seen since I started beekeeping some twenty or so years ago.
The new queen made a good start in 2012 and it was fairly obvious that by the time the winter arrived that she was one of the better queens mated in 2012 - a wet, bad year for queen rearing
By June 17th (the inspector's visit) a swarm had arrived and taken up residence in a spare super on top of a hive that had two queen cells taken from the colony with the new queen.
The new queen's colony built up well in the spring 2013 and the bees were easy to handle - easier than the mother's colony had been - but they wanted to swarm. First I removed queen cells before eventually moving out the queen and uniting the swarm queen with her colony. The swarm queen wasn't much good and was replaced by the new bred on site from the first queen cells I removed.
The colony with the old queen, although it had survived winter, was very small by the time spring got underway in 2013 (spring was very late!). The bees eventually superceded that queen and built up to a reasonable colony with a new queen by the summer of 2013.
Two new queens were bred in 2013 and the queen of 2012 superceded after being removed as an artificial swarm.
By August 2013 there were four colonies in four hives. Three from the 'gentle' queen of 2012. One colony was a little on the small side. All the bees in Spixworth seem to be good to work with - so there seem to be good natured drones in the area for the virgin queens to mate with.