Finally the weather has cleared, I am beginning to see a pattern where by it either rains or is cold on a Tuesday evening. I blame Murphy and his crazy law...
The evening was very nice and warm and thankfully comfortable for the bees and us. So as per routine we started by lighting the smokers. Once again it was stated to light it without your veil on, these can burn quite easily so best avoided :)
Today was the day of handling the hives and frames ourselves. I was with a hive that had a new virgin queen and a fairly small number of bees. The instructors had used this hive to make up three additional nucleus boxes which I think are going to be the bees we will be given at the end of our course (can't wait). For a hive without a laying queen the bees were surprisingly calm, maybe they were as glad as us the weather had cleared.
After going throught all the frames a number of times and showing the instructor we were getting comfortable reading the frames (ie, what can we see on the frame). We got a very nice demonstration of setting up an artificial swarm and I even managed to spot the queen in one of the nucleus boxes.
Looking forward to our next hands on, should be even better.
O yeah and no stings (yet).
