Well the season progresses at pace
Here in N Wiltshire the OSR is fading and the winter field beans are flowering producing their watery dark nectar and I’ve heard Lime is also flowing - will check on an apiary this week that has 100 or so in neighbouring parkland to see if it is indeed in flow..
We had a flow from hawthorn - the one year in 5 and it’s left some colonies on no fewer than 6 supers and one with 7. And it’s only 31 May...
Worrying to me is the blackberry starting to flower. It seems 2-3 weeks ahead of last season and the white clover is also out in places too, looking lush at the moment but unless we get some decent moisture it’ll soon burn off, and the summer flowers will also struggle as it’s very dry.
At my paddock the springs have dried up and the flow off the old airfield drain has almost stopped which is rare.
Plenty of activity in the bee-yards. No sooner than I relocated two swarms from beside my lock up that had found their way in to old nucs full of fusty framed ready for rendering, than two more appeared...one into a langstroth nuc and the other into an empty nuc which soon had frames installed.
I’m pretty sure one of them is from my temperamental hive, a large 14x12 in an experimental (for me) Abelo hive. I switched it’s floors for the pollen trap this weekend as they always bring in a lot.
So to the week ahead - 10 nucs with new queens will need moving on to larger accommodation and I’ve got a batch of buckfast style queens from a new supplier I’ve not used before, but recommended by a mate, so will be fun making nucs for them - and I have just the hives to use to populate them.
Helped out a couple of new beekeepers who needed an extractor and had bought unwisely on Amazon and it had turned up broken and bent and threaded screws throughout - so they have my old manual extractor for a few days to clear a couple of supers on their first hive.
Plenty of honey orders flooding in and the old customers are returning as lock down begins to lift at last. What a disaster it has been for the economy and employment ... we’ll be paying for this for half a century and I don’t actually think the NHS have struggled at all. The issue is cleanliness and obesity. Sorry to rant but so many ‘other’ conditions have been left to their own - oncology, eye departments, dentistry, my own Optics industry and the job losses are just beginning.
A worrying end to one of the best Spring flows for a while...
Here in N Wiltshire the OSR is fading and the winter field beans are flowering producing their watery dark nectar and I’ve heard Lime is also flowing - will check on an apiary this week that has 100 or so in neighbouring parkland to see if it is indeed in flow..
We had a flow from hawthorn - the one year in 5 and it’s left some colonies on no fewer than 6 supers and one with 7. And it’s only 31 May...
Worrying to me is the blackberry starting to flower. It seems 2-3 weeks ahead of last season and the white clover is also out in places too, looking lush at the moment but unless we get some decent moisture it’ll soon burn off, and the summer flowers will also struggle as it’s very dry.
At my paddock the springs have dried up and the flow off the old airfield drain has almost stopped which is rare.
Plenty of activity in the bee-yards. No sooner than I relocated two swarms from beside my lock up that had found their way in to old nucs full of fusty framed ready for rendering, than two more appeared...one into a langstroth nuc and the other into an empty nuc which soon had frames installed.
I’m pretty sure one of them is from my temperamental hive, a large 14x12 in an experimental (for me) Abelo hive. I switched it’s floors for the pollen trap this weekend as they always bring in a lot.
So to the week ahead - 10 nucs with new queens will need moving on to larger accommodation and I’ve got a batch of buckfast style queens from a new supplier I’ve not used before, but recommended by a mate, so will be fun making nucs for them - and I have just the hives to use to populate them.
Helped out a couple of new beekeepers who needed an extractor and had bought unwisely on Amazon and it had turned up broken and bent and threaded screws throughout - so they have my old manual extractor for a few days to clear a couple of supers on their first hive.
Plenty of honey orders flooding in and the old customers are returning as lock down begins to lift at last. What a disaster it has been for the economy and employment ... we’ll be paying for this for half a century and I don’t actually think the NHS have struggled at all. The issue is cleanliness and obesity. Sorry to rant but so many ‘other’ conditions have been left to their own - oncology, eye departments, dentistry, my own Optics industry and the job losses are just beginning.
A worrying end to one of the best Spring flows for a while...
