Topped off

Took the decision to add the top (human honey) box. The dandelion blossom is just too tempting. By placing a metal grid between the middle and top storeys, only the worker bees can get through. The queen and male drones can't so no eggs or brood in the combs.

I filled the top box with the combs we harvested last year. The bees do have to clean and repair them but it saves a lot of time and energy for them having to build everything from scratch. To produce a kg of wax, the bees need to consume 8kg of honey themselves.

I was a bit alarmed in the early evening not to see any bees flying. Quickly had a look inside and was relieved to see lots of activity in the penthouse. Assume all hands had been called to get things cleaned up and ready for a full days flying tomorrow.

The Blip shows the chickens enjoying my digging in preparation for a bee "meadow" I hope to sow in the next week or so. Will have to put up fencing to keep them out but with some 4 acres of fields for 20 odd chickens, they ought to survive. The chickens and bees get on very well. The chickens ignore overloaded bees that miss the runway and crash land on the ground and don't even eat the dead bees that fall out of the hive.