Last Friday I was in the rain on a biulding site at Borough wating for the last stragglers of a swarm to go into a box at 7.30. It took me 3.5 hours in all with travel, to collect a smallish swarm.
Then today the fine for not paying the Congestion Charge came.... £120. I am so, so fed up.
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Friday night I eventually collected a cast from near Borough High Street. It was stressful rushing there straight after work through heavy traffic. Looking around they must have come from a hive on a nearby high roof, but I couldn't see the hive. I wonder if the neighbours know there are hives there? I have been thinking about the negative publicity following the swarm on Regents Street last week too. So whose bees were they? Understandably there has been no admission of responsibility.
Saturday I delivered the bees to the recycling company. They were soooooooo happy! I was pleased that they had taken my advice to mark the hives and to move them away from the boundary fence to reduce the risk of theft and vandalism. I learned...
The honey flow is on.
Put my 1st clearer board on and added another super.
Right Hive.
6 frames of brood
Top Super 3/4.
2nd Super 1/5.
Left Hive.
10 frames of brood
Top super. Full. Put C/B on
2nd super. 1/3.
3rd super. Empty.
The honey flow seems to be on at last.
Found eggs and capped brood in the right hive.:willy_nilly:
Saw the queen then lost her and could not find her again to mark her.:banghead:
I also collected a small swarm 3 days ago.
I guess a cast with a virgin Queen as there was only around 1000 bees.
I added this swam to my right hive 2 days ago.
I put paper on top of the super and added another super.
Put a QE on top, then an empty super.
Did that so I could smoke the bees down and find and removed the Queen.
They must have found a gap in the paper as there were around 100 dead bees on the floor in front of the hive next morning.
Swapped the supers around today.
Right Hive.
4 frames of brood
Top super. 3/4.
2nd super. Empty.
Left Hive.
10...
I ran the virgins into the mininucs this morning. One flew away and 2 had managed to escape in the nursemaid colony. Took nucs to other apiary.
The nursemaid colony were still bad tempered. They were stinging me through the latex gloves, so I put on another beesuit on top and put on the Marigolds because I wanted to go through the brood box thoroughly. There is still just one charged queen cell and eggs and the laying Cypriot queen. Left the queen cell because I would love to have bees that supersede rather than swarm. They've never been grumpy before until this week. Weather has been bad and I was inspecting at 8am today, but still does not fully explain it.
There were a few wasps about today, which is early, but this colony...
The home owner had said they were 20 foot up in an oak tree, but that wasn't true. They were 45 foot up in an ash tree. I was fed up when I saw them. The garden was about 50 metres from one of my apiaries and it was a cluster the size of about one and a half footballs. I was well fed up, because the only time I have not inspected all those allotment bees was last week when the film crew were around them and I couldn't get to them all. I've been keeping my fingers crossed since and was quite pleased that the weather has been poor. It has not been great swarming weather today either, in fact there have been showers on and off all day, but that didn't stop them swarming.
I spent over 2 hours trying to get them down, including...
Well after some little complications with location, i finally have the cast swarm at a decent location where i can leave it to do its own thing :D. I previously had it round a family members garden which was fine, there really friendly bees i was expecting a sting due to mistakes as a beginner considering as a couple of times i used no gloves.
2 Days ago i placed them on a piece of land i have permission to keep my bees on and i opened up the nuc and left them to it, as i believe she was yet not mated so i had to let her fly. Ive been feeding them on 1:1 sugar syrup as they were a small cast and i wanted to help them get started, when i palce them on land 2 days ago i had a quick look inside and they were clustered/space all over the...
I charged the mini nucs with bees yesterday and have put them in a cool dark place to chill, draw foundation and settle down before I put the virgins in. All the virgins were still present and correct in their rollers/cages, which was good news.
Suddenly the air was full of bees. They were all rushing into the entrance of the hive that I took all the virgins out of on Saturday. I had thought that there was probably an emerged virgin in there, so I hadn't left them any cells. It was orginally the queenless half of an artificial swarm, so not a huge colony anyway.
These were different bees going in. A different colour. At first I thought it was a mass robbing frenzy, so I popped in an entrance block to even up the odds a bit, so...
First open water triathlon tomorrow morning, so I was keen to check all the bees at least one site, so I can do the other apiary tomorrow afternoon.
With the help of 3 students, I combined 2 of the artificial swarms and checked half the hives, but with the showers and wind we were all getting stung, so I called it a day and went back later. I remember it wasn't good last weekend either and I had to do some of the inspections in the rain then too. I went back after the thunderstorm and opened one box that I had done an artificial swarm on last week and realised straight away that there was a problem. The box had about 10 drawing pins on top of the frames. When I need to do an AS I like to mark all the QCs and then decide which...
I had a little cast swarm in the garden at 8am this morning. It was about the size of an orange. I suspect it is from the carniolan casts I collected 4 week's ago, but not 100% sure as I lent the queen from one of them to a beebuddy who was desperate and in the other I marked and clipped the queen. I'll look more closely tonight if I can find a way of doing so without attracting the attention of the neighbours who worry about insects. I was only keeping them in the garden until I was confident they were disease free. Given they are carniolans, and so prone to swarming, if the cast was from either of these already tiny colonies, they are defintiely getting moved out of the garden as I don't want anymore neighbour problems. I thought...
Still no honey coming in.
No eggs in the right hive yet.
No change, so nothing to report.
Right Hive.
0 frames of brood
Top Super 3/4.
Left Hive.
10 frames of brood
Top super 4/5 just the outside frames needs capping.
2nd super. Empty.
Went to the wasteland bees after work as I am still sore thinking that swarm on Friday might have been mine and knowing that would have been fair enough because I didn't inspect all the boxes last week. Found 5 queens in 5 boxes, including a virgin that has replaced the one I paid good money for. The recycling company want their bees in 2 weeks', but they said they didn't mind about the virgin thank goodness. I put a test frame in the nuc as there are no polished cells yet in there and it is feeling like there ought to be by now.
I got stung quite a lot through my suit because although I have smoker and fuel at the apiary, I had no way of lighting it and by 8pm the foragers were all back and mardy. It seems that every fresh round...
It was very windy and rainy again today, but I had'n't gone through all the allotment colonies to try to work out if that swarm on Friday was mine and if so where it came from.
It wasn't obviously one of mine. I found no newly emerged QCs and no colonies with capped QCs apart from the ones that I'd done an AS on and should have been queenless. I clip my queens anyway...so if anything it could have been a caste with a virgin or it could have been a swarm that had no queen, because she couldn't fly or it could have been someone else's.
I was looking for EFB again today after the alert. It was no fun at all shaking frames in the wind and rain, so that I could have a proper look at the unsealed brood. Got a few stings.
I marked and...
Well my first ever attempt at writing a blog so here goes...As posted in the forum We went recently to an old apiary, not visited or used to my knowledge for at least some 12 to 15 years ago, the bee keeper had long since gone. We visited just to see if there were any serviceable hive parts remaining...What we found was a lot of rotten wood and a few roofs and the odd brood box.
One of the hives remained at a precarious angle and on further inspection still contained bees! Were they left over from that long ago? Were they a new swarm? We couldnt leave without invetigating. We suited up and puffed some smoke in the entrance which was off to the side of the lower brood box with the floor section long since rotting through. When we...
Having used the forum more I know that external links are not allowed so quite understand about those above being changed. However, I do think it is a pity that non commercial links aren't allowed. On the other blogs mentioned, a much more visual approach is possible as the image allowance for free accounts is a whopping 3 Gb. In my BKA and on the other blog I have recommended this forum because being able to share in the widest sense seems to be so positive. I'd like to think that my links from my other blog to this forum has allowed others to find this so it is a pity it does not work both ways. I'm hoping this sounds like a discussion point rather than a moan because that is how I intend it.
Tricia:)
It came back to me that a talk I gave about beekeeping in London seems to have gone down badly with some natural beekeepers. I thought it was just common sense and not very contentious. I was talking about if you keep bees in London it is important not to keep aggressive bees and it is important to inspect for diseases (because we are keeping so many bees in London now - we are really cheek by jowl) and it is important to try to do your absolute best to avoid your bees swarming. These things seem self evident. I don't think it is fair on the bees, to the local community or to other beekeeprs to do otherwise.
Through word of mouth this has seemingly been reinterpreted as me saying that I am against natural beekeeping and the use of...
Still no honey coming in.
Queen Cell in right Hive was gone.
As normal I could not find the new Queen.
Right Hive.
4 frames of brood
Top Super 3/4.
Left Hive.
10 frames of brood
Top super 4/5 just the outside frames needs capping.
2nd super. Empty.
I got the BBKA newsletter in the post with the ***** proof instructions of how to log on, which I did last night. My old blog has gone. There are no blogs.
It is true that I am a technoprawn and may have got all mixed up, but I couldn't see other things like a membership list or whose online either.
I found out from my Mum (when she asked for my log in name and password for this forum) that she has been logging on all those years to the BBKA as me... so when she has been rating my blogs as excellent from time to time.. it will look like that I have extreme immodesty and have been rating myself as excellent!!!
Due to the film crew being at the allotment on Sunday, I didn't manage to go through all the hives, so I have been...
