It seems to have been a tough winter/spring on the poor old bees.
We keeping hearing about people losing bees over the last month or two. We’ve even heard of a few wipe outs. This is so disheartening.
The general concensus seems to be the causes are a combination of a poor summer in 2015, poorly mated queens, no or very little ivy forage last Autumn and the late cold spell for most of April and into early May.
At Mill Lane we lost some of our colonies too and will undoubtedly be quite late with our nucs this year, because it’s only in the last week or two that the conditions have favoured our girls.
So I hope our customers will bear with us while we do our best. One thing we will guarantee is that we won’t sell a nuc until we are satisfied that the queen (2016) is fully proven and that there are eggs, larvae, sealed brood and flying bees.
Our nucs all come on National frames and more often than not you’ll get 6 frames, certainly no less than 5 frames.
Everything here is very far behind. The Hawthorn which would be blooming around 1st May on a good year, is still a good few days off flowering (writing this on 16th May!)
We’re hoping the weather will be kind to us this year!