Bees smoked for 19 hours!

[Primitive P]

We've just had a major forest fire here, with really heavy continuous smoke and falling ash since midday yesterday until mid morning today. All of the houses in the village have been properly kippered and my brand new TB hive bees got the brunt of it.
They had been going flat out creating comb, but early this morning I saw no signs of life when there are normally some comings and goings. Fearing the worst I got up on the flat roof to do an inspection mid-morning, were they dead or buggered off??? Nope - 10 bars of comb absolutely carpeted with bees sitting very still! They looked bloody petrified. I don't even have a smoker! Given the trauma I didn't bother trying to clear them off the comb to look at it.

As I checked them the rest of the smoke disappeared, the sun was out and they slowly relaxed and started moving about and flying a bit. They are now flying normally.
I installed them on the 28th by chopping and cropping 6 BS Nat frames and they have now almost completed 3 new bars and are 1/4 way on a 4th.

 

[greatbritishhoney]

Glad your bees are OK. You must be relieved!

 

[northernsoul]

Glad to hear your bees were okay.

What do bees look like when they're petrified?

 

[Midland Beek]

Many parts of the UK are like a tinterbox; and high winds are likely to spread fire far and wide. How long before we get proper systems in place in this country to help prevent fires?

 

[hedgerow pete]

i set fire to outside of the bee shed grass on the weekend, but that was my own fault.if we dont get some rain soon i can see some very big wild fires happening soon

 

[MJBee]

Glad to hear your bees survived and stayed put.

Everyone is on full fire alert over here too. All the deciduous woodland is tinder dry with a 6" deep layer of dry leaves if it goes it will be a nightmare.

 

[Hughesie]

Are there any guidelines about lighting a fire and Bees.
Close to our apiary we have cleared some land and there is a lot of material that we need to burn .

Is this a complete No No ?

thanks

H

 

[Erichalfbee]

From our local paper

Fire chiefs are warning people to be wary of wildfires during the ongoing hot weather after a large blaze broke out across moorland in the western Lake District.

The fire, on Saturday, spread for 50 acres on Muncaster Fell near Ravenglass and needed four fire engines, four fire and rescue service Land Rovers and 30 firefighters from Bootle, Seascale, Egremont and Keswick to tackle it.

In the last week there have also been wildfires near Ambleside, Keswick, Staveley, Walney and Allonby.

Muncaster fell is beautiful this time of year.....lots of rhododendrons
Some twit threw a fag out while travelling on Ratty probably

 

[alynewbee]

So glad your bees are ok, the poor wee lambs must have been terrified.

 

[victor meldrew]

Fire has destroyed a 30 year old forest at Belmont Lancashire! The moors above Anglesark are on fire

John Wilkinson

 

[bee ginnner]

i set fire to outside of the bee shed grass on the weekend, but that was my own fault.

another one for the book eh frank...

 

[picton farm]

All these forest fires will be pleasing out current government! Lovely building sites for them!

 

[For want of a better word]

All these forest fires will be pleasing out current government! Lovely building sites for them!

probably not affordable homes or social housing then?

 

[Vortex]

The problem with forest and heath fires is down to the "modern" philosophy of managing them. A classic example is Australia when the government banned the indigenous population from setting forest fires in the 50's ... they then reaped the rewards in the last 20 years.
The American did the same in Oregon, but after the worst forest fires in history in the late 90's they re-instated the policy of controlled burns.
The problem we have is the mono-cultural policy of planting acres of nasty corsican pine that has no value and then complaing that after 30 years of needle drop we get rampant uncontrollable forest fires. People should really learn their history lessons especially from one of the most successful forest managers around, the native Australians.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

We can see the pattern over the last few days - the national park in our area seriously discourage heather burning (which has been done sensibly since time immemorial) so now, instead of a group of farmers going up on a fine March day and controlling the burning of a specific block. One p****d off farmer will sneak up in the evening dump a gallon of diesel, torch it, walk away and put the blame on some kids - the fire will then rage over hundreds of acres which does nobody any good.Then l the next time the growth gets out of controlsome P* (you can guess the rest).
I'm not saying that's whats happened this week but at the moment Scotland aren't getting it half as bad as the rest of the country as all the grouse moors have regular controlled burning which now means there are ready made firebreaks which help control wildfires and contain them to a smaller area as there isn't as many huge areas of old dead growth around.

 

[enrico]

At the end of the day we use smoke to simulate these fires and cause bees to eat. I think your bees were probably petrified and very very fat!!!!!

 

[Primitive P]

@Northern Soul
- What do they look like when they are petrified? - exactly that, very very still!"

Thanks to all for the well wishes.
Unsuprisingly the Queen has stopped laying entirely and uncapped brood can be counted on one hand. I'm not panicking yet, it's also been very dry, and she could well resume.
I'll put the QE screen on the entrance and leave it for a week.