Newbee question

[jenkinsbrynmair]

have you tried anusol?

Horrible chemicaly stuff - you can shove that up your...................

 

[OXFORDBEE]

Nuisance crop. Wrong again. Any crop for the bees has to be good

Oliver

imho that is such an aggressive post.....

richard

I have to agree. All about 100% wrong does seem rather a put down.

 

[IBeeHere]

It is worth asking the farmer which type of osr he is planting spring or autumn, planting this will make a large differance to flowering times, autumn planted flowers a number of weeks earlier, (lots of spring planted rape in this area this year) also ask variety planted as some modern varieties are planted with 5 rows of non producing flowers and 1 row of pollinator eg (synergy). This is bad news for bees and any thought for a honey crop.
A slightly old but stll relivant paper -
www.hgca.com/publications/documents/cropresearch/RD_roadshow_1998_paper_3.pdf
It is also worth starting your bees off early with pollen patties or trickle feeding so they are up to strength for the flowering, aim for 2 brood cycles =42 days building up time before the expected flowering period I aim to start pollen pattie feeding around mid to end Feb so poly hives can be an advantage for this.
Good luck and fingers crossed for next year

 

[drstitson]

i'm with rab - the questions posed by ICHI were all essentially statements of assumptions needing clarification. so they can be "wrong".

OSR is not a nuisance crop. For those of us in the east midlands it is essentially the ONLY (significant) crop.

it just needs thought.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Does the general 3 mile rule apply.. or will the bees be so engorged with a superflow not even consider flying home?
How many colonies per acre... for how long?
How often and how quickly will the supers need spinning off.
Should I label the jarred honey as for cooking only... or something else OSR honey?
Will it granulate readily in the jar.. if so is it better made into set honey?

What is it worth?

Complete novice!

So did we get answers to the above mistakes?

 

[Tom Bick]

OSR is not a nuisance crop. For those of us in the east midlands it is essentially the ONLY (significant) crop.

QUOTE]

Thats a shame I always think that although it may be exciting for a few weeks what is left after its gone always seems to be something close to green concrete.

 

[ail901]

I have been approached by a local farmer who is going to sow 10 acres of Oil Seed Rape in the Middle Tamar Valley and has asked if I could supply pollinator hives for him next year?

Pretty much I have considered ORS to be more of a nuisance than a major crop.

Does the general 3 mile rule apply.. or will the bees be so engorged with a superflow not even consider flying home?
How many colonies per acre... for how long?
How often and how quickly will the supers need spinning off.
Should I label the jarred honey as for cooking only... or something else OSR honey?
Will it granulate readily in the jar.. if so is it better made into set honey?

What is it worth?

Complete novice!

pls let us know what you decide to do and how it goes, good luck

 

[pargyle]

You will all notice how quiet I am ....

But JBM ... one of my colleagues at work came in one day and asked in a loud voice where he could buy his wife some of that perfume she liked ... "Anus Anus" ... actually it's Anais anais - no work done for an hour with people collapsed at their desks ...

 

[charlievictorbravo]

Show some consideration

In the USA, lots of beekeepers are paid lots of money to provide colonies to pollinate the almond crop, etc. In the UK, the boot seems to be on the other foot - beekeepers pay farmers to keep their hives on a farmer's land (payment is often in honey) while in general the farmer benefits with increased yield from his crops - as much as a 15% increase, apparently.
So, Icanhopit, come clean - are you paying or being paid or is your venture into freelance pollination of South East Cornwall cost-neutral?

 

[user 6228]

I have been approached by a local farmer who is going to sow 10 acres of Oil Seed Rape in the Middle Tamar Valley and has asked if I could supply pollinator hives for him next year?

Pretty much I have considered ORS to be more of a nuisance than a major crop.

Does the general 3 mile rule apply.. or will the bees be so engorged with a superflow not even consider flying home?
How many colonies per acre... for how long?
How often and how quickly will the supers need spinning off.
Should I label the jarred honey as for cooking only... or something else OSR honey?
Will it granulate readily in the jar.. if so is it better made into set honey?

What is it worth?

Complete novice!

still can't see how these are assertions (100% wrong)rather than questions . His statement of his to date opinion "more of nuisance crop" is the closest we get to an assertion. Three of the questions are requesting values rather than yes no answers.

 

[Swarm]

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

You will all notice how quiet I am ....

But JBM ... one of my colleagues at work came in one day and asked in a loud voice where he could buy his wife some of that perfume she liked ... "Anus Anus" ... actually it's Anais anais - no work done for an hour with people collapsed at their desks ...

Ah - a good friend of mine's dad worked for a major toiletries company and was around when the first 'stick' deodorants were launched, they had to withdraw the first lot and re'write the instructions as they'd caused a bit of a fuss - they confused the less intelligent of their customers: 'to use, remove cap and push up bottom'

 

[farbee]

All about 100% wrong.

Far better for hives to be on station - shorter the flying time, more collected. More pollination, too - although OSR is around 90% self pollinating anyway.

Umpteen per acre (well, hectare) as the crop is huge but relatively short lived. They will likely need moving soon after the crop starts to go beyond the flowering stage.

One spinning may well be enough in a normal season (not the last two!) It might depend on the weather and the strength of the colony.

Label it as whatever you please. It will not affect the honey one iota. But do not jar it, is my advice.



I sieve mine into 10l buckets and allow it to granulate. I can then deal with it at relative leisure. It can be soft set, allowed to make a coarse soft set (yummy if you like that slightly gritty texture), blended with other honey types or however you might like your honey. Left to granulate a second time may take much longer than the inital setting in the bucket and can be consumed as runny honey, although granulation may set in as LARGE crystals.

From someone with OSR within reach of the bees every year. It has been a nuisance these last two seasons as the weather in 2012 was so poor and the crop was so late this year (coupled with the colony development being slow) has led to too much OSR in the hives at cropping time. I can cope with it easily - just leave it on the hives - but the bee farmers will have had to work that much harder to avoid this.

Although the start is a little strong this is a great response with really good information.

 

[BeeJayBee]

In the USA, lots of beekeepers are paid lots of money to provide colonies to pollinate the almond crop, etc. In the UK, the boot seems to be on the other foot - beekeepers pay farmers to keep their hives on a farmer's land (payment is often in honey) while in general the farmer benefits with increased yield from his crops - as much as a 15% increase, apparently.

As I understand it, in USA some single crops cover areas greater than the British Isles. There is nothing for bees outside the crop plant's flowering season - so few, if any, feral colonies would survive which means that without the bee farmers there would be little or no pollination, and little or no crop. The bees need to be moved to and from the crop areas, and that sort of vehicle/stock movement doesn't come cheap.

In Britain things tend to be a bit closer together, and crops are more varied, there are field margins and hedgerows. It's rare to have a single species of plant covering an area greater than a bee's average foraging range, which is a circle of about 3 miles diameter.

 

[mbc]

.

"Does the general 3 mile rule apply.. or will the bees be so engorged with a superflow not even consider flying home?"

Why not leave a hive or two at home to pick up any returnees?

"How many colonies per acre... for how long?"

With the modern varieties of osr I would stick to 1 or 1.5 colonies /acre...and from the start of flowering to petal fall ~ a month


"How often and how quickly will the supers need spinning off."

Its usual to harvest the honey just the once at petal fall, its best to extract them ASAP as granulation accelerates once they are off the heat of the hives.

..