The month of May sees us well into the early crop and all the new Queens have been introduced. The supers have been on the hives for the last month now and the early signs are looking good. Most hives and their colonies have each produced about 30lbs of oil seed rape honey. The majority of the colonies have been moved toward field beans and other crops, and some are awaiting the summer flowering rape.
With this last week of warm muggy weather we have been carefully checking for Queen cells in the hives as part of our swarm prevention measures. So far we appear to have been lucky in that once again there are no signs of any disease in the hives and the second and third supers are on the hives. All we need is some more warm humid weather and we may have a good UK crop.
The signs in our European hives are looking really promising, with great early results across Central and Southern Europe. In New Zealand results have been poor for the third year in a row. This is going to mean that Manuka Honey prices will be hitting record highs.