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Hive A was roaring last night. It had been a hot day* - maybe up to 30C - so I think that they were just cooling the hive. My concern is that they may be queenless.

* hot for England. We're supposed to be temperate in every way.

I looked into Hive B a few days ago and found no brood and no Queen. The colony is quite small so she probably wasn't hiding.

Is there a virgin Queen waiting to take over? That would be reasonable following the supersedure which I saw in progress at the start of the month. I will have to look again to see whether brood returns. What happens if the colony is unable to create a new Queen? I'm unsure.

The colony in Hive B is small and hardly thriving compared to other colonies I'm working with. It appears to have been a cast swarm and this fact - followed by the hungry gap - may explain a lot.

The bees were angry today. They attacked. They followed. They found the gaps around my shoes and stung my feet. They stung through my gloves. They were cross.

Hungry bees are angry bees. The bees are hungry so I'm feeding them.

There may be other reasons for them being so defensive.

1. I haven't been using smoke. That's because I want to do very quick peeks rather than full inspections. The colonies on the roof are small so it doesn't take long. Smoke makes them gorge on stored honey so it may be for the best during a dearth of honey to avoid smoke.
2. Two of the colonies are from feral stock. The other is from an unknown source. I've no idea what their behaviour will be like when they're well established. I haven't heard anyone say that feral stock is more likely to be defensive but it wouldn't surprise me.
3. I might just be inexperienced.

Whatever the reason for them being angry, it is unnerving when they start to attack. I don't stop but I do make mistakes. Sometimes I have to walk away for a bit.

I see the following alert from the Nation Bee Unit (part of Defra)

Beekeepers may wish to monitor their colony food levels closely over the next month as many colonies, particularly those which are strong and had their spring honey crop removed, will be at risk of starving. In some parts of the UK, the weather is still cold and foraging opportunities for large colonies are few and far between. It is important to check and monitor all your colonies feed levels, if you do not wish to open them up because of poor weather, lift below the floor, in turn, on both sides of the hive to see how much it weighs.

I checked the three hives in my out apiary today. All are short on stores. I have fed them with honey from Hive A.

Feeding with honey from another colony is a risky business. Honey can contain pathogens which lead to serious diseases. AFB is one.

I believe that Hive A is only showing diseases associated with Varroosis: DWV and at least one of the paralysis viruses (K-Wing; Acute and Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus). I hope that my assessment is correct.

The honey in question is largely crystallised and stored from last year.

This is my mea culpa. I strongly suspect that I shouldn't be feeding old honey from a different colony to my bees. If it turns out OK then I've got away with it, but this is not best practice. Better to make mead with older, less palatable honey and feed the bees with syrup.

Today I was reminded of one of the unexpected joys of bee keeping: the smell.

I have a crown board in my kitchen which has lots of propolis on it. I caught the smell and it was fabulous. The smell of the hive at the entrance and top vent is also captivating.

We took some honey off our long established Hive (A) over the weekend. It amounted to 12Kg including extracted honey and comb. As always, it tastes fantastic. It's so strong that I can't eat very much.

I use National frames but mostly without foundation. There is evidence that chemicals leach from the wax in foundation and get transported around the hive (NB: I don't have a journal article reference for that claim, so treat with care please). I wanted to avoid that.

I was nervous because I haven't often extracted without foundation. I tried to use baking trays this time to support the frames but they blocked extraction and cut into the wax. I removed them and found that the comb didn't burst. I just spun it gently. Extracting the frames twice for each side - one gentle and one vigorous spin - is effective. It does take a longer to extract though. The most dangerous part is where there is a full side on the inside.

I don't feed the bees, except occasionally with their own honey. Everything comes from local flowers. I'm very grateful to the bees.

I had another peek into hives B, C and D today. I found brood in all 3 hives. This is not the same as the brood which I moved. It's new brood on the new comb. The brood in D must have been there last time I looked.

The bees are building fresh comb. Over time they line brood cells with propolis, causing it to darken. When it's fresh, the comb is very white and gives almost no contrast to the larvae. That might be why I missed it.

Brood should mean an active Queen and a hive ready to build up it's strength. That's welcome news.

I received some useful comments from my bee group about swarms: the first swarm to emerge from a colony is the prime; subsequent swarms are casts. A cast swarm will have a virgin Queen so it will take longer to build up because the Queen has to mate.

My intervention of putting brood into Hive D - which appeared to have no downsides - was probably at least premature. It was pointed out that brood must be cared for. They need warmth and food. This takes bees away from foraging and other duties. This can be difficult for a small cast which is slowly building up. The introduced brood can partially die by chilling or starving.

I think that this cast was strong enough to cope with the shallow frame of brood which I introduced. Much of that brood was already capped, which should give them a quick boost. Be that as it may, there's a good chance that my move was unnecessary.

I had another look into Hive D to see whether there was a Queen. I didn't see one but I might have missed her. I looked carefully for young but saw only honey and stored pollen.

My bee group have suggested that the swarm might have left their parent colony with a virgin Queen. In that case it could take time for her to mate and produce brood.

I decided to give the colony some choices so I put a frame of brood in from Hive C. There were eggs, young and sealed brood on the frame so, if there isn't a Queen, they can make one. If she is there then they've got extra bees to help them.

I gave careful thought to the risk of disease, given the local alert for AFB. Both colonies come from the same parent. Both have been given a week to use up the honey in their stomachs making comb. Neither show signs of AFB that I can recognise. I decided that the risk was sufficiently low to go ahead.

I had a quick look into hives B, C and D yesterday afternoon. The news is mixed.

The best news is that I see no evidence of AFB. I'm not experienced enough to be certain so I'll continue to keep a lookout. I'll also review the NBU Foulbrood Diseases advisory leaflet.

Hive C is going very well. They're building in the super, rather than the deep box. They've almost filled the frames with comb. There are lots of brood. I saw sealed brood alongside recently hatched cells. The uneven pattern of hatching suggests that I need watch, to ensure it isn't an early symptom of AFB. The hive has plenty of stores. I saw the Queen, who is unmarked.

Hive D is definitely smaller. It has good stores and has built comb. I saw no evidence of laying: no eggs, larvae or capped brood. I didn't see the Queen (although that's not decisive). I'm fairly confident that they don't have a laying Queen.

Hive B has been there for only 6 days. I didn't see a Queen but it's too early to say what their condition is.

I'm thinking about the next steps. Hive C is fine and just needs monitoring. I need to confirm that Hive D is Queenless. If so then I have options: combine them with Hive C; buy a Queen or give them a frame of brood from Hive C in the hope that they'll grow up a Queen.

My preference is to add freshly laid brood into their Hive and let them create their own Queen. They come from the same mother colony so I'm less concerned about disease. They'll get a slower start to the year but that's ok. I now need to find freshly laid eggs in Hive C.

I made a foolish and unforced mistake today.

The bees have been really easy going. I've had the lid off without smoke and been around them without a veil. Just not at the same time.

Today, just before dinner and just before a thunderstorm, I decided to quickly put a crown board with butler bee escapes in between two of the top supers on Hive A.

I did this without a veil and without smoke. I tried to rush. The bees were furious.

I was stung on the ear and the eyelid. Maybe somewhere else on the head but I can't tell because my eye and my ear hurt more.

A sting in the face is quite unpleasant.

I collected my third swarm yesterday. I was called in the late afternoon by John. The swarm was in his back garden in Headingon. They had settled on a Mahonia bush at about eye level.

This ought to have been a very easy collection. The difficulty was that I could see that they'd started making comb on the stem of the bush. There were obvious waggle dances on the outside of the cluster and behaviour which I was sure was foraging. If I took the swarm immediately the foragers would return and cause a nuisance to John. I agreed to return towards dusk when the foragers were in.

At 9pm I cut through the stem of the bush and put it, with bees, into a nucleus box with 3 empty frames. There were a few flying bees but these quickly settled into the nuc. Lid on; strap it up and off I go.

If the swarm had not been foraging things would have been easy: tip them into B Hive and let them settle in. Unfortunately John's house was in range of my Headington apiary so I took them down to my out-apiary.

Today I settled them into B hive in the out-apiary. The bees had mostly abandoned the Mahonia stem which we'd placed in the nuc. I moved the frames across and gently shook the bees in. I even saw the Queen, which was nice. She is unmarked.

I had a look in the other two hives. They were both fine - developing comb; storing pollen and honey. No sign of brood yet, as far as I can tell. It's noticeable that C Hive has made more comb than D.

I'm not being sufficiently careful about hygiene, given the current risk of AFB.  I open hives in sequence without disinfecting. Not good practice and I'll have to improve my process.

The point of this website is to collate information about Varroa biology, controls and treatments. I want to understand how to cope with Varroa.

My participation in the ReViVe project requires that I do not treat or control for Varroa. This does not mean leaving them entirely alone. I will continue to monitor the two hives for mite drop and for other bee diseases. I probably won't use the more invasive methods of swarm control. I will hopefully take some of the surplus honey.

This is a deliberate decision not to treat or control. It feels like quite a bold step.

BBKA News ran an article in June about a new project to study Deformed Wing Virus in untreated hives: the ReViVe project*. This is part of Professor S. Martin's research group in University of Salford.

I contacted the PhD student who is undertaking the study and offered my two new hives. These have come from a feral swarm and have not been treated or controlled for Varroa.

The two hives are now part of that study. I have sample tubes to fill with bees for testing. I'm wondering how to persuade the live bees into the tubes. It's going to be tricky.

* Rolling out the Evolution of resistance to Varroa and DWV

I visited C and D in central Oxford today. Both hives are building comb. They were both very calm so I didn't need smoke. I just gently opened each hive up and took a look.

Neither hive have any brood yet, so there's no way to be sure whether they have AFB.

I didn't see the queens in either hive.

C Hive

C was populated before D. The bees are building in the super, which is unwelcome but expected. There is lots of new comb partially filled with honey. They've building toward the front of the hive (shown by the wax drop on the hive floor).

D Hive

D is the second hive in my out apiary. The bees are building in the brood area. There's lots of new comb and everything is developing nicely.

I put in made up frames in the super but need to put in 4 more.

I'd expected that the new bees would bring Varroa. Today I found a dead mite from the colony which I hived earlier this week. It was on the floor of their hive.

The feral colony from which both casts came has apparently been there for 3 years. Today I could see their entrance which had lots of activity. It would appear that they are very strong despite this infestation.