This month’s meeting at Cranage began with a bit of drama – the code had changed for the village hall door and we could not get in! All sorted in the end. We began in the apiary with a demonstration of how to perform an alcohol wash for varroa, avoiding including the queen in the process. This was followed by inspection of an interesting colony with a drone-laying queen – we were unsure if this may have been laying workers as it had some features of that, but the queen, previously elusive, appeared and the explanation was obvious. Pete demonstrated how to uncap drone brood to count varroa. We also chatted about the various ways to clear supers of bees prior to harvesting the honey.
Retiring to the village hall, we had refreshments, followed by a brief talk from Stuart Hatton about the various options for chemical varroa control – a potentially confusing subject made much clearer, I think. A good evening, led by Isabel, our Chair.