When March comes in like a lion and goes out like a Lamb....Well I guess we had Storm Eunice or was it her successor at the start of the month, then the winds dies back, the bees suddenly became visibly active and a week of gradually finer weather with plum and now pear blossom out....and then today it starts snowing as I filmed the bees coming and going in 9 degree heat...you couldn't make it up.
And the fuel seems to have jumped up again after such a generous cut in fuel duty of a whopping 5p and it seems it's almost back where it was a week ago. I was too busy trying to shake the hose out at the pump today into the diesel sipping Landrover that I completely forgot....to put the blasted filler cap back on and only discovered this when I got home this evening. Yes, I had a Basil Fawlty moment of utter rage at myself and the world and everything bad that wasn't fault which was actually triggered not by the realisation the filler cap was missing as I locked the truck, but after I managed to drop BOTH my chocolate digestives on the floor after making a mug of tea leaving them in pieces.
A very helpful chap at Sainsburys garage popped out and retrieved my filler cap from the pump where it had been sitting for 5 hours after a telephone call.
Phew.
Last week I did get through about 50 colonies - most were doing well with plenty of brood, pollen and even a small flow in places. Most had demolished the Christmas fondant I'd popped on the top. Only one apiary seemed to have suffered with dysentery in 5 colonies which did for them and two more isolation starvation for no apparent reason. The dysentery affected colonies were closed up and removed and the frames will be melted down, and the boxes and floors thoroughly scorched.
Looking more into the causes of dysentery, Randy Oliver on his website cautions against instantly thinking Nosema is primary cause. He suggests fermented yeasts coupled with an inability to fly to void the gut contents can and is often as much to blame. Looking back at my notes, for some reason the apiary in question didn't receive thymolised sugar syrup like the others - I used up spare standard sugar syrup I had to hand - and I wonder if this had begun fermenting as it can do if in a less then clean feeder or container.....This could be the root of the problem.
Note to self - thymolise all syrup and do a better job of cleaning feeders !
Hey ho, I'm off to dig my skis and bobble hat out
KR
Somerford
And the fuel seems to have jumped up again after such a generous cut in fuel duty of a whopping 5p and it seems it's almost back where it was a week ago. I was too busy trying to shake the hose out at the pump today into the diesel sipping Landrover that I completely forgot....to put the blasted filler cap back on and only discovered this when I got home this evening. Yes, I had a Basil Fawlty moment of utter rage at myself and the world and everything bad that wasn't fault which was actually triggered not by the realisation the filler cap was missing as I locked the truck, but after I managed to drop BOTH my chocolate digestives on the floor after making a mug of tea leaving them in pieces.
A very helpful chap at Sainsburys garage popped out and retrieved my filler cap from the pump where it had been sitting for 5 hours after a telephone call.
Phew.
Last week I did get through about 50 colonies - most were doing well with plenty of brood, pollen and even a small flow in places. Most had demolished the Christmas fondant I'd popped on the top. Only one apiary seemed to have suffered with dysentery in 5 colonies which did for them and two more isolation starvation for no apparent reason. The dysentery affected colonies were closed up and removed and the frames will be melted down, and the boxes and floors thoroughly scorched.
Looking more into the causes of dysentery, Randy Oliver on his website cautions against instantly thinking Nosema is primary cause. He suggests fermented yeasts coupled with an inability to fly to void the gut contents can and is often as much to blame. Looking back at my notes, for some reason the apiary in question didn't receive thymolised sugar syrup like the others - I used up spare standard sugar syrup I had to hand - and I wonder if this had begun fermenting as it can do if in a less then clean feeder or container.....This could be the root of the problem.
Note to self - thymolise all syrup and do a better job of cleaning feeders !
Hey ho, I'm off to dig my skis and bobble hat out
KR
Somerford
