The siren song from abroad....

[Poly Hive]

BEWARE the siren song of the videos and books from overseas. We are a Maritime climate not a Contenential one.
It took me 5 years to realise this and goodness knows what pain I inflicted on my bees in the meantime with the best of motives but also true ignorance.
So example. I took a cell and some bees and made up a mini nuc. Something I haver done many many times but this was different I wanted to see if I could build them from purely their own resources into a colony. No supers of needs added or any clever tricks, just basic bee keeping.
The answer was yes. A year and a half later I had a good going 10 frames of brood supered colony. So now I am in Ontario in late September looking at a skep sitting on a bathroom scale reading 112 pounds. I was asked to lift it but declined as for one I had no veil on and two lifting it was bound to damage some combs making the lack of a veil even more important... not a complete idiot eh??
So, the story was this in late June that year the skep was given a brood frame of bees double shook so the flyers were shook of then the non fliers shook in to the skep along with a ripe queen cell. So do the arithmetic. If we call late June week three.... how many weeks to the third week in Sept? I make it 12.
So 12 weeks from the start to a colony, compared to in the English Midlands 70 or so.
I rest my case... and do note the 28C in the 3d week of Sept.... oh I wish.....
So beware the siren song from abroad as they honestly don't know how easy they have it. I'll just add I was colder on the beach in NE Scotland at plus 2 than I was in Niagara at minus 16C... why? Canada was a very dry cold, snowballs were impossible as the snow was too dry.

 

[enrico]

BEWARE the siren song of the videos and books from overseas. We are a Maritime climate not a Contenential one.
It took me 5 years to realise this and goodness knows what pain I inflicted on my bees in the meantime with the best of motives but also true ignorance.
So example. I took a cell and some bees and made up a mini nuc. Something I haver done many many times but this was different I wanted to see if I could build them from purely their own resources into a colony. No supers of needs added or any clever tricks, just basic bee keeping.
The answer was yes. A year and a half later I had a good going 10 frames of brood supered colony. So now I am in Ontario in late September looking at a skep sitting on a bathroom scale reading 112 pounds. I was asked to lift it but declined as for one I had no veil on and two lifting it was bound to damage some combs making the lack of a veil even more important... not a complete idiot eh??
So, the story was this in late June that year the skep was given a brood frame of bees double shook so the flyers were shook of then the non fliers shook in to the skep along with a ripe queen cell. So do the arithmetic. If we call late June week three.... how many weeks to the third week in Sept? I make it 12.
So 12 weeks from the start to a colony, compared to in the English Midlands 70 or so.
I rest my case... and do note the 28C in the 3d week of Sept.... oh I wish.....
So beware the siren song from abroad as they honestly don't know how easy they have it. I'll just add I was colder on the beach in NE Scotland at plus 2 than I was in Niagara at minus 16C... why? Canada was a very dry cold, snowballs were impossible as the snow was too dry.

I agree, our damp cold is a killer, and not necessarily for bees!