The World Cup opened in Brazil with a swirl of colours, dance and controversy. In London it was blue skies and sunshine as Brazil Day landed in Trafalgar Square giving citygoers a taste of Rio.

Today the sun slept-in after shining all week and a spectacular show of solar flares captured by NASA. The weather was hot, humid and overcast when Emily and I got to the apiary to light up a smoker and start Saturday beekeeping.

Last week we had left the unnamed queens of our split hives to settle-in and lay. There was concern that neither had started to produce eggs, and that one queen looked small and unmated.

The first hive we opened was artificially swarmed from Chili’s hive. Chili is a good queen and I was pleased when we did spot her daughter walking confidently across the frame. The new queen is now bigger (she has mated) and inherits her mother’s tiger stripes and colours. Emily spotted eggs and the colony seemed content. We closed up as there was no need to disturb the queen further and gave her small colony more syrup for the week.

The second artificial swarm was split from Chamomile’s hive and her daughter was spotted by Freddy, a keen beginner beekeeper, only two weeks ago. She was a big dark beauty, again like her mother. We didn’t see her today, but her bees looked more purposeful and eggs were seen, so the queen has started to lay. Emily spotted cells that had two eggs inside them, although the eggs were at the bottom of the cells, where only a queen could reach with her long abdomen. It might be that she is just getting used to her queenly duties, rather than a laying worker inside the hive.

I’m glad we gave the new queens more time to settle-in before deciding to combine the colonies. It can take a new queen longer to mate and begin to lay than the books say. Other factors can affect her egg-laying, such as poor weather, lack of forage and stores. In these circumstances, the workers might feed the queen less to slow down or stop her laying. This might be because they don’t want more hungry mouths to feed during times of scarcity.

Myrtle, our favourite queen, was next. Her hive is almost bursting with bees and I feel that the shook swarm at the beginning of the year worked to reinvigorate this slow-moving colony. The brood frames were lower on stores than I would like, although when the foragers returned home at the end of the day this hive would be quite crowded. The workers can’t fill all the cells with stores because the queen needs space to lay. So, for the first time in two years and with great excitement, we decided to put a super on this hive!

There was also another development. Emily had successfully caged Myrtle and was keeping a close watch on our escape artist queen. This was when we saw signs of queen cells being built in the middle of frames, although there were no larvae inside them. I suspect Myrtle’s bees might be planning to supersede her, because she is over two years old and her laying pattern is becoming patchy. It is something to keep an eye on.

Three hives down, we had a tea break and enjoyed a slice of marmalade cake made by Emily. Then it was back to work. I oversaw as Freddy inspected Chamomile’s hives and Emily helped Jonesy with his hive.

Freddy has the makings of a good beekeeper and he would like to keep fierce bees to learn how to handle them and to get lots of honey. We are thinking of selling him Chamomile’s hive. However, I would prefer that he does a few inspections on this colony first, and find out whether he can get along with this feisty queen.

He did very well and Chamomile’s colony was recovering from the artificial swarm and building up nicely. I pointed to a worker with blobs of shiny red propolis on her hind legs, which the bees will bite off and use to disinfect and insulate the hive. Freddy was surprised when I told him that London bees might collect propolis from tree resin or roof/road tar, whichever source is more convenient!

Chili’s hive was next and both queen and bees were happy to perform today. Her colony is also recovering fast and well from the artificial swarm. We will have to wait another two or three weeks, I think, before deciding which hives to combine or which queens and colonies to sell. But that’s a nice problem to have.

Our beekeeping done for the day, and some teaching fitted in, we visited the other hives. Sadly, we heard that David’s fierce ‘Welsh’ hive has gone as the bees were sick. It is a shame as the colony was well-established and fondly thought of, I shall miss them.

Thomas has been experimenting with natural comb in his supers, but his bees haven’t quite got the hang of it. While Jonesy was hovering about vying for queen cells to requeen a nasty-tempered hive. He was taken by the ‘cuddly’ Italian bees, although I have noticed that their gentle temperament can turn within a couple of generations, usually when the new queens mate with local drones, and become ill-tempered. Another reason I prefer our mongrel, dark, homegrown London bees.

The sun came out for the end of the afternoon and I was satisfied that the bees were much happier than last week – they even let us finish-up in time for the football. Tonight’s big match is England vs Italy, Emily is supporting Italy and I’m for England, the bees aren’t bothered. I wonder who will win?