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Hive A is a little embarrassing. It got too tall. I over wintered it with a National deep box and five supers. There were reasons, of course. Now has come the time to reduce it to a sensible height.

A little about those reasons first.

I took out the queen excluder. The idea was to allow the bees more freedom within the hive. I was trusting them. They did the most sensible thing: moved the brood nest to the top of the hive where the temperature was most suitable. Every time I put a super on they moved upward. It's now so remote taht I'm not even sure whether the deep box is in use.

I should have reduced the height last summer but the hive is in a suburban garden where the gardens are used a lot during the weekends. I did open up enough to inspect for brood and disease, but I never managed to reconfigure things to move the brood and the queen down. I'm not sure that I cared very much about the height. I just trusted the bees to do their thing.

This season has to be different.

I was given a lovely Canadian clearer board. It works! I have already recovered a super which was over half full of honey (see Wonky comb. I've put it back on to get another full super. That's definitely an upside.

I took the roof off Hive E today. This is the late swarm from 2016 which is housed in a small derelict greenhouse.

I had put an insulating box between the brood box and the roof. I'd seen ants going up and down the hive. What I hadn't expected was that the ants had set up a nest in the insulated roof. There were lots of black ants, some eggs and a few immature grubs.

I can see now that the insulated roof would be ideal for an ant nest. Defensible; warm, well ventilated and with an immense food store nearby.

I took the insulating box off - the colony doesn't need it now anyway - and put a super on. I put the ant colony under a pot with the straw which they'd made their nest in. It may be interesting later in the season.

The insulation was damp, particularly near the ant nest. I suspect that these insulating ekes need to come off in spring.

I stopped putting foundation in my hives a while ago (see Frames without foundation). Foundation seems unnecessary to the low intervention bee keeper. Its principal benefit is to make extraction and inspection easier. I outlined in the article how shallow frames can be extracted without wired foundation. Inspection is also much the same. You just have to be slower and more gentle.

The hive still has frames, so I still want to be able to take them out. That means I need reasonably straight comb. Each frame has 2 lolly sticks which act as guides and anchors for the comb building.

The lolly stick guides have generally worked well. I've seen some very straight comb. I've also seen some wonky comb, where the colony built more slowly. I'm not sure why, although the wonky comb was in a persistently small colony whilst the straight comb was in a busy one.

I also hastily put in a super without any foundation or lolly stick guides. The result can be seen in the image. Very wonky, so that the comb is anchored to two frames. I harvested early so that I could reduce the height of Hive A. I couldn't put wonky comb in the extractor so I just cut it into slabs as comb honey.

EDIT 04/052017: Paul from my bee group tells me that bees build straighter comb when there is a consistent nectar flow. When the supply is stop-start the comb is built in stages and may be less straight and regular.

I visited the out-apiary today and opened the 3 hives there. There is evidence of brood, new comb and stores in all of them. There's evidence of a nectar flow, which isn't much of a surprise given that Oxford is swathed in spring blossoms.

Hive B is still relatively small but ticking along nicely. There are plenty of stores and reasonable coverage of brood. I haven't added space because there are empty frames in the brood area.

Hive C was busy and rather aggressive last year. They seem calmer now, but a couple of bees tried to sting my gloves. I over-wintered them with a National deep and a super box. This was partly because they hadn't built comb into the deep and partly because there was brood in both. They've definitely built comb into the deep box now.

Hive D produced so much brood last year that I wondered whether they would starve for lack of stores. I even caved and fed them at the end of the season. A fair number of bees died of unknown causes and were littered outside the hive. This hasn't stopped them. There are a lot of flying bees and they've nearly filled a super in 3 weeks.

I added a super without comb, separated by an excluder to Hives C and D. Hopefully that will keep them busy for a while.

I saw a quite large number of wax moth cocoons during the extraction of the feral bee colony in South Leigh. Paul and I were talking about what happens to very old comb. He says that the bees eventually cut the old comb and let it fall. It occurred to me that cavities must eventually become clogged with sections of old comb, unless something else eats it. One candidate would be wax moth.

If wax moths operate around the edge of colonies and in its litter then perhaps they provide some service to the bees, rather than simply being a pest.

I joined my local bee group on Saturday 1st April for some demolition work. A feral colony had established in the space between 2 walls where a window had been bricked up.

The day was quite hard work but very interesting. At the end of it we had a Warre hive with some brood; plenty of bees and maybe a queen. We never found her so we can't be sure until the hive settles down.

It was a lot harder work than taking a swarm. I wonder whether it wouldn't have been better to make them voluntarily vacate the space. Maybe smoke and heat would make them abscond?

The day progressed like this:

We chopped the plaster until we found the infill for the window. We then started chopping out the brick and plaster, which was easier than I'd expected. We started at the opposite side from the colony entrance and so it was very quiet. There was a big sheet of propolised comb which seems to have been abandoned. There was a lot of wax moth and at least one big spider within the cavity.

We continued to chop out the bricks, clad in our bee suits. Very few bees came out, and nobody was successfully stung. They were surprisingly calm. We found layers of heavily propolised comb. It had access holes through, and was joined in places.

We cut the comb in large sheets until we exposed the brood area. These sections were cut and passed to Paul and Ann who tied them into Warre frames. These are small, and I prefer Richard's method of passing large sheets into a Langstroth hive, with bamboo canes to separate them. The tying method was slow and fiddly but it does mean that the hive should be fully operational from the outset, which is a bonus.

As we cut away more comb we may have missed opportunities to catch the queen(s). More bees retreated to the gaps in the brickwork and at the back of the window's lintel. We used a bee hoover to extract these.

Eventually the cavity was empty, apart from bees which were returning from foraging. All the bees which had not been stricken in the extraction were in the hive. We moved it about 100m from the original site.

Ann explained that it is possible to move medium distances (between 3 feet and 3 miles) if you gather returning bees at the old site and put them into the hive at the new site. Putting an unexpected obstacle by the hive entrance also encourages them to go on orientation flights. Three repeats was considered enough.

Hive B has a wax moth problem - or they're unusually good at coping with it. I'm betting that it's a problem. I'll know when it's warm enough to have a look inside.

I have found 4 wax moth larvae on the removable floor of the hive. I've been keeping the floor clear of debris so I don't think they hatched on the floor, unless there is more debris that I can't see.

My expectation is that this colony is tolerant of wax moth. That's not a good thing. This colony is small and has superseded at least once. It hasn't shown any characteristics which are obviously good from my point of view. I'm not going to destroy it but I wouldn't be sad if the hive became available during swarming season.

There was a strong wind last night - warnings of gusts up to 40mph. Thankfully my hives remained upright. The weather was still windy when I visited Hive D this morning at 11am, but it was just about warm enough to lift the lid.

I had been concerned that the bees were too cramped in Hive D. I also found wisps of the hessian which I've used to contain the straw in the insulated box. I imagined that the bees were brimming over and chewing through the hessian.

My fears were unwarranted. The cluster was toward the front of the hive. There was even space toward the back where they haven't built comb on the frames.

The bees were apparently unconcerned when I took the roof off. Some stayed on the excluder which I'd used to separate the brood area from the insulating box. The rest ignored me. I added a super which has 8 frames with comb and 4 without.

I'm surprised that there is a brood box frame which hasn't been built up with comb. I'd like them to fill all the volume. Perhaps the volume of a Commercial box is more than they need. I could probably encourage them to fill it by feeding, but then they'd also build up loads of stores and maybe make the brood nest cramped with stores. The super which I've just added makes it likely that they'll fill vertically.

As my bee group would suggest, I'm not going to try to manipulate the bees to build here or there. They'll work it out for themselves.

Colonies can fail over winter. Surveys suggest that about 10% fail in a good year; more in a bad one. At the moment, none of my colonies have failed. I'm happy.

It's too early to be certain that all will survive into summer. Each colony will strike a balance between brood production and foraging. If they make too much brood when the forage is poor, they may starve.

Failure can happen because of disease, starvation or an external event. There are lots of diseases and lots of events. There is only one cause of starvation.

My big event this year (the knock-down during Storm Doris) could have been fatal for the two hives if they hadn't been secured with hive straps. The exposure caused by an unsealed hive would have chilled and killed some of the bees; brood might have died from exposure and consumption of stores would have risen[1]. Instead the damage seems to have been slight. The hives toppled so that the frames were end on (rather than face on). The hive body stayed together. I arrived soon after the event.

Disease does not seem to have adversely affected them. There is Varroa in all five colonies. Four of these are untreated, but were only established last year. One was treated in Spring last year before I resolved to stop. It's too early to be certain that all have become Varroa tolerant but I have reason to hope. There are signs of CBPV and a worrying pile of rotted bee bodies outside Hive D. We'll see how that hive fares.

Even the late swarm in Hive E seems to be ok. I'm optimistic coming into 2017.

[1]: An article published by Thorne in Nov 2016 suggested that weekly consumption of stores by a colony would double if they are disturbed.

Do some of my bees have CBPV? Today I watched 5 bees at the entrance to Hive D. They were on the ground below the landing board. They weren't moving much. Two or three of them were considerably darker than I'd expect.

Could it be the weather? Perhaps these bees were just chilled. Am I a Bee Hypochondriac? Certainly I have no idea whether this hive has this disease.

I took a moment to read the CBPV factsheet from Beebase. The virus is often present in the European honey bee at low levels. Stress causes the expression of the virus, usually in 'the peak of spring and summer'. I don't think that today is the peak of anything. There is a litter of decaying bee corpses outside Hive D. The hive was notable for its' prolific production of brood at the expense of stores. I hefted the hive and it feels ok for stores. What, if anything, could be causing this stress? Could they be too cramped?

There are more questions than answers. I shall revisit the bees and try to take pictures. I'll take an extra super and put that on. If they're too cramped then extra space could ease the problem.

I've been keeping an eye on the two hives which were blown over during Storm Doris.

Neither is showing any significant visible sign of damage:

• There were no dead bees on the floor of the hive (as far as I could see).
• The fall of wax cappings appears to be the normal.
• Hive D had some drops of honey on the removeable hive floor, but only just enough for me to taste (yum)

I'll see in a couple of months how these hives have fared. I'm still seeking data on the peak wind speed.

Storm Doris blue through yesterday. Two of the three hives in my out apiary where knocked over. Fortunately all had hive straps so the boxes did not separate. The stand for Hive C cracked when I righted it, but it stayed upright.

The lesson for hives in exposed positions would seem to be:

1. Always fit a hive strap. I used a strap bought from Thorne. I'm very glad that I have the version with the ratchet. The extra tightness certainly ensured that the boxes stayed together.
2. Take hives off their stands, if possible. The disadvantage is that there's a greater risk from damp. This could be mitigated by moving them only during storm conditions. There are more stable hive stands than the type which I'm using. Multiple hives can be placed next to each other but this has disadvantages during summer because of drifting and robbing.
3. Tether the hives to something stable, if possible.
4. Keep hive height to a minimum by removing excess super boxes at the end of the season.

I'm trying to find out the peak wind speed for the apiary.

I returned today to the out-apiary and hefted all 3 hives there.

I used a digital scale to weigh each side. The reading varied considerably during each heft - maybe by as much as 250g each way. I did my best to get an average reading. I think the variability must have been due to the way I was using the scale.

The results show more or less what I expected:

The weight of each type of hive, given for shipping information by Thorne, is:

My conclusion from this is much as I expected: Hive B is small and may not have enough stores for the spring. Hive C has tons of stores and is fine. Hive D may have enough and needs monitoring.

I checked the varroa floors. All hives are consuming stores as expected. Hives C and D are making new wax, shown by wax scales amongst the capping detritus. Also C and D had a couple of Varroa each, which is quite a high fall rate.

It's a warm day today (10C-12C). The bees are flying from all 3 hives in my out apiary. Presumably they're going on purging flights. I didn't see enough activity to rule out pollen collection but it seems unlikely.

I keep the removable floor in, so I was able to see tidy mounds of chewed cappings. There were some flakes of fresh wax amongst it in hives C and D, suggesting that there has been some brood rearing. I didn't establish how much, nor whether it's going on now.

There were a few stranded bees outside hive C. They'd grabbed the bright yellow hive strap and then become too chilled to move. I moved the strap so that it was out of sight. There was no way to save the stranded bees. There were quite a few dead bees outside the front of hive D. It's a bit more worrying because the undertaker bees usually dump the bodies away from the hive. I removed the floors and looked up at the Varroa screens. There were no dead bees on the screens, showing that the undertaker service is still working within the hives.

It's a good sign that all the hives have flying bees, but it's not a guarantee that they'll survive the winter. Spring is a time of expansion. They need stores for brood. If there isn't forage, or they can't get it because of cold then they can starve. Foolishly I forgot to heft.

Temperatures around 8-12C meant that the bees went out on purging flights today.

There've been some high winds lately. The temperature has been fairly cold but I've only needed gloves when cycling on a couple of mornings. I think that means > 5C for at least a fortnight. Benson's weather suggests it hasn't been down to 0C during December

I tried hefting a couple of days ago in my out-apiary. I haven't felt it was necessary before. Hives C and D seem well supplied. Hive B is rather light, but it was always a smaller colony.

A bee got cross when I hefted hive D. It tried to attack me but was whisked away by the strong wind of Storm Barbara. Windy.

Hive A is unlikely to need any hefting as it's massive. I haven't tried Hive E, but I ought to. It's the most likely to be in need of help.