Contemplation and plans

[bpmurray]

I did it all wrong this year - tried to mix growth and honey with forays into queen rearing and nothing worked quite as planned. I grew to 6 hives but had to unite one that never quote thrived, and requeened one nasty one. The weather gods conspired against any honey crop so that the bees ate the honey and I had to start feeding early, although they now have wall to wall ivy stores. And I found out I'm crap at grafting.

So plans for next season: focus on honey with some queens on the side! Without getting the hang of managed queen-rearing I'll be at the mercy of whatever the bees decide to raise themselves.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

I did it all wrong this year - tried to mix growth and honey with forays into queen rearing and nothing worked quite as planned. I grew to 6 hives but had to unite one that never quote thrived, and requeened one nasty one. The weather gods conspired against any honey crop so that the bees ate the honey and I had to start feeding early, although they now have wall to wall ivy stores. And I found out I'm crap at grafting.

So plans for next season: focus on honey with some queens on the side! Without getting the hang of managed queen-rearing I'll be at the mercy of whatever the bees decide to raise themselves.

Sounds like a challenging year. You'll probably have heard adversity is supposed to be good for the soul
Did you start out thinking beekeeping would be a relaxing hobby? I did but pretty soon realised that was a myth

 

[Tremyfro]

Did she leave ay brood/bees behind? Was it clean?

Well the hive was clean as a whistle.....no brood....no bees!
It seems a season of mixed blessings.
Last year I played at being God...doing some grafting...which my bees laughed at and went on to make a bunch of lovely queen cells themselves.
I made some good increase and ended up with a lot more honey than required.
This year...learnt a lot about how the colony works together and how to recognise disease. I did get some honey...just about enough for the family...as we still have some from last year. I have a tub full of rock hard honey which needs to be processed...I left it on purpose to watch what happened.
One conclusion I did come to has been about the type of hive I prefer to use. I have 5 beehaus and 2 wooden dartingtons. Only 3 beehaus in use ATM which I would like to change for next year. If all my colonies come through then I can move bees into the 4 beehaus and one of the dartingtons. Although, I find the Dartington more difficult to use...it being all wood makes each component heavy and finger pinching.
My OH is 70 and has always been great about doing the lifting required in beekeeping but when we had the double broods I could see it was a struggle. I can manage a beehaus on my own and with the plans to expand the bees sideways this coming year....then the supers will not be required either. We had one beehaus doing this during the summer this year and it was so much better. Very little disturbance during inspections in comparison to vertical double brood hives.