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.

THERE'S AN EGG!
Yesterday Polly laid her first egg...how exciting

IT TAKES TWO

The lady's (Sarah's named her Polly) husband was seen in the box today (Sarah's named him Angus)

SUNDAY ROOST
We came home this evening and she's spending her first night in the box.
Funny thing is all that soft moss and she's sitting on the hard wooden floor

SUNDAY IN THE NEST BOX
More moss and more waggle dancing.

NEST BUILDING SATURDAY 27th MARCH
Today was a busy day for our Blue Tit she was in and out of the box all day.

Early in the day she bought in dry grass followed by huge amounts of moss.
Each delivery came with a celebratory waggle dance.

MORE TIT ACTION!

Yesterday was a good day on the tit front.
Lady tit bought in some bits of dried grass.

LOOK AT THIS TIT
We've had visitors in our new video bird box...check this out.
The female has been having a tidy up, how exciting.
Hopefully there will be more to follow.

CROCUS POLLEN.

It's been 10 months since my last posting.
I'm back!
In a nut shell.....got my bees.
This week the bees have been real busy, sun on the hive coming and going legs full of pollen. Tuesday morning they're on the crocuses in the front garden I made myself late for a job by getting distracted with my macro lens.