May has been a busy month in the apiary. Almost overnight, we found all our colonies were on the increase, some swarm control measures we had taken failed to achieve the objective, and the bees swarmed anyway.
We have set up a few mini-mating hives for our small-scale queen-rearing operation, and we have made a few nucleus hives up for friends that had a lousy winter and lost their bees.
The bees have done well on the OSR (Oil-seed Rape); this honey will be harvested in the next few days as it will set hard in the beehives and make removal difficult if left. We tend to use this for our set honey.
Looking forward, we hope the June gap doesn't happen (June gap In Ireland and Great Britain, beekeepers face a challenge known as forage shortage or dearth. This occurs when there is not enough food available for honey bees, which is a common occurrence in and around June.)
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