Inside the Hive From today

[grizzly]

I took some pics on my phone today of the bees, particularly for Hivemaker to see and comment on, but its as usual open to comment from anyone.

Getting the CB off was quite a struggle, as you can see they did not make it easy. the point of the exercise was to see how many frames the cluster was on and get feed back on others observations, they look fine to me, but i have never seen bees at this time of year before.

The third image is my favourite, they look fantastc, very healthy.

But as always a second opinion is nice.

Andy

 

[bobandbec]

I personally wouldn't want to be lifting the CB at this time of the year unless it was essential to do so especially during this cold snap. The only time I go into a colony during Winter is for Oxalic shortly after Xmas and on a nice day, unless I think there is food shortage or no bees.

What was the origin of your bees?

Peter

 

[Finman]

.
Jep. It is not wise to disturb bees.
For small reason cluster rises its temp from 23C to 42C.
It takes 24 hours to settle down.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Andy looked at the bee's because he was worried.and when you treat with oxalic its usually a lot colder than about 11c,which it was yesterday in fact where i live it was 12c, is this the temp you wait for in jan to treat your bee's with oxalic? Or do you wait for the temp to be much higher than 11c? did mine last year and it was 5c and they seemed fine,am i doing this wrong.

 

[BKF Admin]

Ampshire bees are still flying,we are nearly in France.

 

[grizzly]

The CB was off for no more than 2 minutes, it then went straight back on, i dont think they would have been adversely affected by that.

Very mild down south still, added to that they are sheltered in their current location.

 

[bobandbec]

Only putting my point of view.. no more than that. It's everyone to their own in beekeeping. Was not trying to say what I do is any better or more correct than anyone else!

Peter

 

[Hivemaker.]

Thats okay Peter,did not mean to come over abrasive, i would agree with you for anyone living up north or in the far east,looks like its been aweful weather there,round here the bee's have been working on the ivy still,think thats going to change in the next few days though