Petra

The single change that did more than all the rules combined was a probe thermometer. Poultry is done at a temperature, not at a colour or a time, and once you can see the number you stop guessing and stop overcooking everything into cardboard out of fear. Twelve quid, and it settled about six kitchen arguments.

So the fact that it happens is evidence I brewed it properly rather than badly. That is a relief.

Six drawn frames with a good laying pattern in mid July from an April package is a perfectly normal first year, and the people talking about supering in June are usually running overwintered colonies or splits on drawn comb, which is a completely different starting line. A package starts with no comb, no foragers of its own for three weeks, and a queen the bees have only just accepted. First year you are building a house. Second year you get honey.

One thing that made mine count for more without making it harder: I stopped taking the flattest, most direct route home. Same effort, slightly longer way with a couple of gentle rises, about seven minutes more each evening. It never feels like training and it added roughly an hour a week of riding that I do not resent. Going home the long way is a lot easier to sustain than going home fast.

Check what else is in that cupboard too. Green tea next to coffee or spices picks up everything within a fortnight.

Review their first fifty replies before they go out, then their first fifty after that as a sample, then stop. Editing every reply forever is how you end up doing the job twice and resenting the hire. The point of the first fifty is to build the saved replies and the never say list from real cases, not to police them.

The variable nobody mentions is that caffeine comes out fast and early. Hotter water and longer steeps pull it quickly, so your first two infusions carry most of it. If you want the ritual without the load, do the first two steeps, tip them, and drink from three onward. You lose some flavour and you lose a lot of the caffeine.

One more possibility, less pleasant: if they are congested downstairs and refusing to expand upwards, keep an eye out for swarm cells. Sometimes the refusal to go up is a signal, not a preference.

Good point. A colony rearing lots of brood in June can consume nearly everything coming in and look like a flow from outside the hive.

A pallet on edge or a few straw bales on the windward side costs nothing and does a surprising amount. Wind stripping heat off the box is a bigger drain than the ambient temperature over a whole winter.

So take the honey first rather than treat around it. Does that mean I have to leave them what is in the brood box?

Capped cells on the bottom bars in June means swarm preparation, and capped means you are late rather than early. In practice the prime swarm usually leaves around the time the first cell is capped, so there is a real chance the old queen has already gone, which would explain not finding her. Do a proper inspection tomorrow looking for eggs specifically, holding the frame so sunlight falls into the cells over your shoulder. If there are eggs and the queen is present, do an artificial swarm now. If there are no eggs and there are capped cells, she has left and your job is to pick one good cell, destroy the rest, and leave them alone for three weeks.

Yes, or the first virgin out will lead a cast swarm and you lose half of what is left, then again. Pick the biggest, best-shaped cell on the frame with the most attending bees, mark the frame, cut the rest out cleanly. Then close up and do not open the hive for three weeks except to heft it.