TWO WEEKS OLD

The chicks are two weeks old their eyes are open and they are stretching
their wings. It's not all been good news in the box there has been a
couple of deaths, mums tried to remove the bodies but has failed
and you can see them lying in the bottom right hand corner.

EATING, SLEEPING, POOING.

They're a week old now, eyes are still shut the feathers are starting to
grow on their wings and just check out the poo removal!

AAARRRHHHHHH....check their eyebrows

SWARM
To keep you up to date on the bee front, a lot has happened this week.
Last Monday I came home and my bees had swarmed. I'd planned to do an artificial swarm but they beat me to it and had decided to hang out in the holly tree.

With rookie beekeeper crew; Lin, Sarah & Leo we managed to get them into a nuc. Having never collected a swarm before it didn't go completely to plan but we finally got them to the allotment apiary site at 10pm that evening.

As you can see they seemed happy on Tuesday but by Thursday had decided to move out. Who knows where they are, though there has been a reported swarm in the Erdington area

THEY'VE HATCHED!

What a lovely surprise yesterday morning some of the chicks had hatched.
Take a look at this.

EGGS ELEVEN



The final total for eggs laid was eleven the final egg being laid on 20th of April. For the past 11 days she's been sitting on them popping out for the occasional bite to eat.

FOUR EGGS




It's Tuesday and we have four eggs, that's one a day since Saturday.
She lays one every morning then spends all day out and about returning between 7.30-8pm fussing around the eggs then sleeping on top of them. There can be anything up to 15 eggs per breeding pair. The average amount of eggs however, tends to be 7-8 per nest. Once she's finished laying she'll pluck the feathers from her belly to create a brood spot she'll incubate the eggs alone.