Quick note – Good news from the hive. That hive where I was doing a frame change, and she wasn’t laying. Well after I changed the order so the new box was on top, they started building comb for her and she started laying when I checked last saturday.
Phew. Well now I can get on with doing it to two other hives.
In other news,
that queen seems to have lost a middle leg…
the WBC in matching green had more queen cells, and I plan to bailey comb change to artificial swarm this weekend.
I finally got some more frames so I can start patching the gaps I had, and swapping out broken / hole-y comb
the two other hives at matching are still not building up. I am thinking of using the below recipe to see if that improves matters.
1 x Tsp Tea tree oil
1 x Tsp Wintergreen oil
1 x Tsp of Spearmint Oil
10 drops lemongrass
Put a cup of water in a blender and then the oils. Blend to emulsify the oils
make up to 1.8ltr with water.
Pour 40 ml of this into 1.5 ltrs of 1:1 syrup shake up well.
I’ll see if that improves anything