My new apairy.......

[ratcatcher]

well, a few of you may have read about my good luck as a new beek and being offered an area on an allotment, I had caught a cast swarm over there just under two weeks ago and placed them in a 6 frame nuc, a week later, earlier than I would have normally transferred a nuc (but did due to the committee) I transferred them into a newly built top bar hive that could accept two national frames at the start, all the top bars had wax starter strips attached, I took the best two frames from the nuc and put those in the tbh, plus I gave them four top bars before adding a follower,

so then the allotment committee were to erect the screening the next day, I left it another 3 days then took a visit today to check on everything.

IM OVER THE MOON WITH IT.....
the bee's are coming out the entrance (periscope) and rising to 6ft before going foraging, using the phone app "beehive manager" that darren 73 kindly posted, we have 30 bees per minute returning, which equates to over 6000 bees, the drop down bottom door works brilliantly, bees are total undisturbed and we could look up inside, need a red torch for future visits to be able to video it, but they had already built comb on all four top bars in a nice straight line, so the wax strips did there job

heres a short clip of the apairy, still some onion sets to clear from the left, but its still looking good
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdhUNuZ_NLA[/ame]
http://youtu.be/RdhUNuZ_NLA

 

[alanf]

So far, so good. Hope they do well for you.

 

[always weeding]

i have got my hive set up on one side of the allotment but am thinking of putting more ina fully enclosed fruit cage. will they fly through or walk through the netting or is it best to let them fly up 6-7 feet and away.obviously i would have to remove the netting on the roof?

 

[ratcatcher]

depends what size the netting is, bit silly cutting holes in, if its protecting fruit trees/bushes

 

[starcana]

What 'bee app', sounds good!

 

[ratcatcher]

What 'bee app', sounds good!

download it here



https://play.google.com/store/apps/...S5naG9zdGFwcHN0dWRpb3MuYmVlaGl2ZW1hbmFnZXIiXQ..


took me a while to get the hang of it, if you get stuck, gimme a shout

 

[Davelin]

i have got my hive set up on one side of the allotment but am thinking of putting more ina fully enclosed fruit cage. will they fly through or walk through the netting or is it best to let them fly up 6-7 feet and away.obviously i would have to remove the netting on the roof?

They won't like flying through netting, in fact I doubt if they will. Better to use a finer mesh and make them fly up.

 

[alanf]

i have got my hive set up on one side of the allotment but am thinking of putting more ina fully enclosed fruit cage.

Because a fruit cage happens to be there? Is it not full of fruit? Or is this a security idea to build a cage around it?

 

[always weeding]

it should have been full of fruit but this year has been crap for fruit and veg.
i have got strawberry plants in the cage and they are due to be replaced so i am thinking of siting 2 or 3 hives in there.

 

[alanf]

i have got strawberry plants in the cage and they are due to be replaced so i am thinking of siting 2 or 3 hives in there.

In an active fruit cage you would always be working around the bees to get to the fruit and working around the fruit to get to the bees. Not a long term strategy that I would be looking for.

 

[ratcatcher]

seems we have gone from my apairy post, to a post about fruit cages

 

[BeeJayBee]

I think your new apiary looks brilliant.

With regard to keeping bees within a fully enclosed area - if it's made of insect-proof netting then the bees won't be able to get out, and taking off the roof would rather defeat the object of having the netting there in the first place.

 

[alanf]

seems we have gone from my apairy post, to a post about fruit cages

As threads often drift. Bees and allotment siting generally isn't that far away. Back to your original site, I'd say one thing to check is if the posts and netting are still secure going into autumn. Wouldn't want winter winds blowing them over on the hive.

 

[ratcatcher]

As threads often drift. Bees and allotment siting generally isn't that far away. Back to your original site, I'd say one thing to check is if the posts and netting are still secure going into autumn. Wouldn't want winter winds blowing them over on the hive.

I'll keep check on it, although the committee did a very good job of fixing it up