First batch of new queens arrived

The hives below are some of the colonies I have split, they are on the Rape and you can see it is at about 60% to 70% out, so we should will have a few more weeks of nectar flow for the new colonies to build up on.







The 20 New Zealand Queens (Italian) arrived today as planned, delivered by the postman in their plastic shipping boxes



I had previously put brood frames above a queen excluder so I was able to separate the two brood boxes and make two colonies from each hive. The queenless half was then given a new queen which will hopefully be accepted and start a new colony. Seen here are the same colonies as above which have been split and requeened.





All we need now is some sunshine.