One and a half hives

Progress so far :

• we received a swarm from Richard, Hive A. This seems to be growing steadily with eggs and larvae. We have not seen the queen live, but have identified her in photos later.


• a second swarm from Richard went into the top bar hive, but absconded. The remnant did not survive


• the third swarm in in Hive C, and appears to be queen less after 3 inspections. We have multiple eggs per cell, the odd drone cell and brood.

Our initial plan was to take a frame of brood from Hive A and put it into Hive C, but we did not want to weaken Hive A. We have now just purchased a fertilised buckfast queen from Scotland and are going to introduce her in the supplied cage.

Rayburn

The Rayburn

We plan to install a rayburn solid fuel cooker in the kitchen for a number of reasons.
1) we want an alternative to electricity if the mains goes off
2) oil and solid fuel are getting more expensive. Solid fuel ( wood, coal ) is locally sourced.
3) we have a spare coil in our cylinder for a log burner/cooker.

To help us, we found that there was an existing flue next to the place in the kitchen that is ideal for the Rayburn.
This position happens to also be next to the hot water cylinder and therefore the recommended gravity feed should work.

I bought a second hand Rayburn Supreme solid fuel cooker in Matt black from EBay for £350, and had it delivered from Lincolnshire using the wonderful Paletline for £55.

On inspection, it needs a good clean, new firebricks and a little rust removed around the flue box. I need to test the boiler before we install it, and fire up the whole unit before we spend too much money on it.

Inspecting the flue coming into the kitchen shows that it contains a 4" liner, and this is concreted into the top of the chimney. I can either use the 4" flue and adapt it to the 6" Rayburn, or preferably install a 6" flue. I hope to go for the latter option.

The intended location for the Rayburn is currently occupied by a kitchen cupboard. This will need to be moved, and holes opened up for the plumbing.

The hot water is going to be a gravity system, where the hot water from the Rayburn naturally rises into the cylinder. I will need to add a header tank and cold water feed together with overflow.