made a 3 cone nuc in july I cant believe how they have increased came back from walking dogs this morning just getting light and there already working. I moved this nuc from an out apiary to my garden in September I had the entrance blocked with grass for one night within an hour they were returning with pollen I don't suppose this is strange but after 40 years keeping bees on and off they still amaze me.
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I was asked take a look at some hives by a local long term beek. It transpired he has lost interest and his home made hives had not been opened for months.
Unsurprisingly brace comb was tangled everywhere and getting combs out resulted in much breakage of wax with stores leaking onto his solid floors. I started on no1 and despite the lack of treatment the bees were not showing signs of poor condition. They were easy to work with for me but the owner had to keep walking away as he was being mobbed. I put that down to his old suit and leather gloves holding many stings.
The super was partly filled and we took four frames of capped honey, leaving five partly capped and four full brood frames of stores. Bias was evenly spread over 7 brood...
Today I removed the thymol treatment from hives 1 to 5. Hive 6 had been treated with MAQS at the start of the apiary treatment session. This was an experiment to gain personal experience of the use of MAQS I fitted rapid feeders to all hives and filled them with emulsified thymolised 2:1 syrup using Hivemakers recipe. As the bees are working flat out on the newly opened ivy which covers the sheds both at home and on next doors farm there may not be any real need but I want to get thymol into the winter stores as a nosema preventative.
I am a student living in Cambridge who is currently doing a design course in which I am looking to use real bees as my main motif for my jewellery.
As I am not a beekeeper myself I was wondering anyone could point me in the right direction to get hold of some dead bees, or if any of you had them yourself?
Thank you
Emilia
Today the varroa treatment at the Association Apiary ended so the theme of the session was giving the colonies appropriate quantities of 2:1 syrup. The syrup was treated with Hive Alive to prevent fermentation and other advantages claimed by the manufacturers. Whether the advantages outweigh the costs remains to be seen. My home colonies will be treated with Hivemakers thymolised recipe using the thymol/lecithin concentrate I made up earlier this year when giving the bees a springtime boost of 1:1 syrup to encourage comb drawing.
A combination of feeder types were employed today on the various hives. Miller feeders, large box sized plastic feeders, round rapid feeders and contact feeder. The usual problems of dribbling etc were...
Checked super contents on all hives. Some not worth taking (hardly drawn) so will leave them for the bees.Thursday fitted clearer board to No1 hive, Friday took off cleared super and fitted clearer board to No3 hive. Saturday removed cleared super from No3 then applied Apiguard to Nos 1 - 3 plus No5. Applied MAQS to No6. Waiting for post to deliver Apilife Var to treat No4. Varroa slides put under OMFs.
All frames capped in the harvested supers with a bit of uncapped in the No3 hive one that passes the shake test.
No significant externally visual effect on hives on Sunday with normal traffic for the conditions.
One of my hives swarmed yesterday at 4.00pm. I got the bees back from next door's garden and now have them in a brood box, with 10 undrawn frames of wax, located near to the original hive they left in such a hurry. There is no sign of activity from the collected swarm, with the entrance reduced to an inch wide with foam. What do I do next?
I use a Thorns modified template and charge £4.95 for 345gm in a hexagonal jar. Comb will be the same price in a clear 80z pack. Sorry I don't know offhand what that is in gm, though obviously I will have to print the correct weight in gm. when it is ready. Not sure what I will do about the lable for comb this year as I used a different container last year that held 345gm. just.
Nicky my new beekeeping friend joined me and we drove over to the association apiary where she met several of the other members. The supplies of Apiguard members had ordered were distributed and paid for then we all moved into the hive enclosure where application of treatments was demonstrated. Most were treated with Apiguard but the nucs and the wbc which did not have ekes were treated with apilife var.
We took the opportunity to inspect the problem hive which had had the dud queen squashed and a frame of brood introduced to raise a new queen. Queen cells had been raised and reduced in number three weeks ago. The inspection revealed eggs and larvae plus the queen was seen.
Following the session we called at Bishopwood cottage on our...
On Sunday I put the clearer board on no2 hive after having inspected all 6 in the Apiary. Took off the super, replacing it with an empty one on Monday. Put the clearer on no1 hive and harvested the super on Tuesday, again giving an empty super.
I extracted the honey from both supers and left the honey to stand in settling buckets. Washed out the extractor and filter with very hot water to melt the wax residues and left the resulting liquid in a covered bucket to allow the wax to form a cake and set so it can be used to make beeswax polish.
Wednesday afternoon I took the extractor over to loan to a newish beekeeper a few miles away. When I arrived we suited up and went to look at her hives. Consternation - I recognised the boxes as some...
Anew interesting afternoon. The bees were busy and the association hive with the test frame last week has drawn emergency queen cells. The bees in that hive are quite old and may struggle to raise a queen. Options were discussed including introduction of a mated queen, adding a couple of frames of brood with nurse bees or culling the cells and uniting with a strong colony.
A nuc which had lost its queen and was dwindling was shaken out. Most of the bees could be seen entering the next door hive on the stand but one or two fights broke out on the landing board.
Next session in three weeks time to put first Apiguard on. All harvesting of honey needs to be done before that time
The association are unwilling to try vapourising oxalic acid...
The piranha that has blood plate big mouth,tn requin, canine teeth as well as horror eyes was taken into consideration of the design theme of the latest custom paragraph. The vicious pair of shoe style that showed in front of you last year was designed on the basis shoe style of Nike Air Max 90 "Ocean Fog. ZhaoZhen who was the senior sports media people felt that the Egyptian Olympic Committee (IOC) was a bit amateur. ZhaoZhen said: "This has a relationship with the political situation, because the turbulent political scene will lead to the replacement of the IOC personnel change". Moreover, it was also his feeling that the commercial developers were not pretty professional. Such mistakes,Nike Shox OZ Femmes TN REQUIN, or else, were...
No 1 hive had two full capped supers and a third super being drawn and loaded so I ordered a Rhombus bee escape. It arrived and I made up a clearing board complete with a 90mm eke side and fitted it under the top two supers. As the third super was getting significantly heavy I also added a fourth super of foundation between the brood and the filling super. Putting the hive back together was hard work due to the height.
Planning to harvest the top two supers this evening or tomorrow as I am told the bees can learn the way back through clearers if left on too long.
Took a mid week day off, such an agreeable employer I have (me) !
Spent it removing 8 brimming supers and extracting them. Even swarms I caught in June have produced full supers...amazing really.
Still more to go....and I hope Peteinwilts has a strong right arm as he has more hives than me.....unless he wants to borrow my electric extractor.....a godsend this year..
All supers will go back on....the weather is still good, and there is plenty of yielding forage.
Happy days
National Hives and Nuk for sale - owner retiring call 07968 184624
Apologies for the gap in posting. Busy life I guess. News this evening having returned home to find the 2nd swarm of the year attracted by a bait hive.....more soon.
Yesterday managed to attend my 2 hr practical at Rand with Simon Croson. Many thanks for a fantastic experience.
Then today back to the out apiary with Claire and Richard. Unfortunately we forgot the smoker today and one of the hives was particularly feisty. As soon as we opened it up we were covered in bees. Still we progressed, found the queen and completed the inspection without getting stung. A testament to the kit we were wearing and the fact that Richard is very calm and inspires confidence. I have much to learn from both of them and am looking forward to it.
I run a gardening club at my children's school, and in January I was approached by one of the grandparents of one of the children about bringing bees to the school. I didn't think the head would go for it, but was pleasantly suprised when they agreed. We applied for a CASH grant, and won. Then the planning started. The school is situated right next to an allotment site, and there happened to be a very overgrown plot right opposite the school fence. We took the plot over and work began. The council cleared the site, and Manchester University architect students designed the plot taken from drawings the children had done to show what they would like the site to be like. As part of their course, the Uni students designed an edible pavillion...
Team building, or otherwise calling categories of people teams, is an extremely popular business practice and the T-Shirt and ball cap manufacturers are loving it. But wait, how many true teams are there? A team is really a group where individual actions are driven by way of a common organizational goal. A group builds a feeling of accountability and responsibility among its members for attaining those organizational goals. Just slapping a ball cap about the head of every sales representative does not mean that those sales agents are dedicated to the company_ objectives. Much more likely they're centered on how to make more income for their own reasons.
To get a true team, where there have been proven benefits of this model, a certain...
