Earliest ling is about a week away in the part of Aberdeenshire we go to, but the Bell is also running late and although the roadside patches are full bloom to even going over, the real stuff for the bees, the big lots further up the hill or away from the heat island of the roads, are just going to peak in the coming week. The bees have brought in precisely zero so far, and this is a generally pretty reliable crop.
Many areas south of the Grampians look like a washout for 2015 as the flower spikes are rotting, and even more storms and heavy rain forecast for well into August.
Starvation is now a more pressing issue than the heather........my teams will put 5 tonnes of syrup on today when they should have been doing heather preparation and supplementary supering of hives on the bell. Double hit. No crop AND a major unexpected cost.
Was with bee inspectors yesterday as they examined an apiary of our that had been caught within the 3Km circle round an AFB outbreak (2 hives I understand of another beekeeper in Perthshire). Nothing was found and they got the all clear to go to the moors but gee, in several there was not a cell of honey left, and they had had no honey at all taken from them. Sitting in a nice little sheltered spot between a 90 acre OSR field and 50 acres of beans, had flowers available to them since early May. Most sitting with two Lang deeps full of bees and brood, so in perfect nick for the hill, and the others have young queens and are now at about 7 bars of brood so will peak nicely in late August, but they have NO food. Departure delayed and a gallon of invert syrup going on today.
Not a bee race thing. The group contains both native and non native stock, both badly hit by hunger.
