What did you do in the Apiary today?

[TomH]

Got rid of my last colony of bees over the weekend. 18 to zero in 6 weeks. Taking at least a year off the hassles of beekeeping, and maybe a lifetime. Bye y'all, have fun!

Aw, sorry to hear that. Hope you do stick around, always found your replies/advice on here thoughtful and helpful. Best of luck with the year off!

 

[pargyle]

Got rid of my last colony of bees over the weekend. 18 to zero in 6 weeks. Taking at least a year off the hassles of beekeeping, and maybe a lifetime. Bye y'all, have fun!

That's sad news ...but, you are going to have a lot of time on your hands and you can always hang around here for some virtual beekeeping ..... There's a few on here who would probably be better off as virtual beekeepers ! Good luck with whatever floats your boat in the future. Philip.

 

[elainemary]

Yes my fault. I just united the colonies. Sheer laziness on my part. Demarees need a bit of work which I was trying to avoid. Still hadn’t got fiddling with systems out of my head; too much spare time. Learned my lesson.
At least with Demaree I don’t have to cope with colony increase, just varroa. But I have a plan there

Sounds good, like you I don’t want increase (other than temporary) though I’ve found with Demarees they do push back swarm control, but don’t necessarily prevent it. I just need to get some non swarmy genetics into my bees & then I’ll have cracked it!

 

[elainemary]

Got rid of my last colony of bees over the weekend. 18 to zero in 6 weeks. Taking at least a year off the hassles of beekeeping, and maybe a lifetime. Bye y'all, have fun!

Sorry to see you go. Problem with beekeeping is it easily becomes a work substitute. Planning, organising, evaluating, appraising, early mornings and late nights (cleaning!), little thanks or recognition, just the odd painful rebuff and even bee (beekeeper) politics to handle!

Enjoy your time off and do share why you decided to take this huge leap. Just don’t sell all your equipment yet my prediction is you’ll miss it
Best wishes
Elaine

 

[StephenT]

Checked two hives for space in the supers and all good. Just checked for QC’s by looking at bottom of top brood box and no sign of anything. Hive 3 is just going downhill with queen failing. They were doing fantastic on double brood a couple of months back but now limited brood and a peppering of bald brood. Loads of pollen being stored in bottom brood box. Will properly check for varroa and could reduce space and re-queen.

 

[Nik Edser]

After 4 years of learning bee keeping with many unsuccessful attempts and hive failures I now have 3 strong hives and 1 is filling our first super up.! Very excited to finally getting some honey out of the bees! It will be the most expensive honey in Kent

 

[jeff33]

Extracting, extracting, and more extracting as I have run out of deep frames and supers. Also starting to wonder what am I going to do with the few nucs I am not happy to sell as the bees are too twitchy and I don't want to increase next year!!

 

[JamezF]

Just been out to clear some of the nettles and hogweed that is starting to grow around and under the hive stands. It sounds like the bees have sneaked a few jet engines in between inspections.

After a heavily overcast 30°C today which has been like living in a sauna, sanity is forecast to return to the weather over the next few days (at least until the weekend when it looks like things are going to go completely bananas again) so I'm going to try to inspect all my hives before the end of the week.

James

 

[The Poot]

Got rid of my last colony of bees over the weekend. 18 to zero in 6 weeks. Taking at least a year off the hassles of beekeeping, and maybe a lifetime. Bye y'all, have fun!

I’m sad to hear that as I’ve appreciated your input here. I wish you all the very best for the future

 

[JamezF]

I just need to get some non swarmy genetics into my bees & then I’ll have cracked it!

I do sometimes wonder if attempts to create "non-swarmy" bees might be counter-productive, or perhaps even doomed to failure. Obviously it's not a behaviour that beekeepers generally want, but is it a good idea to attempt to prevent bees reproducing when circumstances dictate that it is a good survival tactic to do so? And if one should achieve that goal, without II or access to a remote breeding area, is it likely that any such genes would ultimately removed from the gene pool by the offspring of bees in the locality that are more likely to swarm?

James

 

[elainemary]

I do sometimes wonder if attempts to create "non-swarmy" bees might be counter-productive, or perhaps even doomed to failure. Obviously it's not a behaviour that beekeepers generally want, but is it a good idea to attempt to prevent bees reproducing when circumstances dictate that it is a good survival tactic to do so? And if one should achieve that goal, without II or access to a remote breeding area, is it likely that any such genes would ultimately removed from the gene pool by the offspring of bees in the locality that are more likely to swarm?

James

James, think that’s the challenge with selecting for most traits ith bees given their polyandrous matings. Can only select for and continue to breed from our best and cull our worst, in order to make improvements. Think a better strategy than doing nothing.

 

[linoleum bonypart]

Introduced three Jolantas to nucs yesterday

 

[Erichalfbee]

Introduced three Jolantas to nucs yesterday

Jolanta is sending me two when she gets back from her hols

 

[JamezF]

Inspected my hives at home this morning. Put another brood box on one of the swarms from earlier this year, possibly just in time as on a couple of frames they're just starting to build comb down into the space below (part of my bait hive floor). Hopefully my new floors should have "aired" enough by now and I can switch over to those very soon, just cutting off any "dangling" bits of comb from the frames. I should do that before they have the opportunity to make a mess of things, I guess. Didn't find the queen which would have been nice, but there were eggs so it all looks good. I have to say the comb they've drawn from starter strips looks beautiful. I can't recall the last time I saw anything quite so even. But for the occasional drone cell it could almost be used as a surface plate

One of my other colonies looks like it needs the roof switching over. Perhaps due to the recent weather the wood has split along one of the sides and the lower section is bending outwards.

Another I'm really sure I'm not going to get a crop from this year. They're looking healthy now and there's lots of activity, but it took so long for them to build up in the Spring that I think they're too far behind. Such is life. We'll see how they do next year after wintering on a solid floor.

And why, out of tens of thousands of individual bees, is there just one solitary little blighter that won't get out of my face when I walk away from the hives? Tempted as I was to squish her, I didn't. I guess her life will be short enough...

James

 

[linoleum bonypart]

Jolanta is sending me two when she gets back from her hols

 

[JimBee463]

Had a visit from the SBI this afternoon, as he was in the area and we've had EFB within 3km. Glad to say my girls got a clean bill of health, are very healthy and have expanded rapidly (2.5 frames of brood added since Sunday!) They were a nuc that I bought home 4 weeks ago on 3 frames.

The SBI recommended I add a super as they are doing so well, backfilling the brood frames and adding brace comb between brood frames and crown board.

So, they now have a super to keep them busy (and they are most definitely busy) and I might, just maybe, be able to have a small taster of honey from them this year - who knows I'll obviously leave the lion's share for them for the winter as, after all, it's the fruit of all their labour.

Very happy with my colony and the queen is doing a wonderful job.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Very happy with my colony and the queen is doing a wonderful job.

Good news and very rewarding.

 

[Erichalfbee]

How did your last years queen from jolanta do?

 

[JamezF]

Inspected swarm #2 this afternoon in my new out apiary. They've almost built out all the frames now with plenty of stores coming in and the queen appears to be laying nicely (though again I couldn't find her). The best thing though was that they were astonishingly calm. Despite going through the entire brood box and dripping sweat through my veil onto them (I forgot my neck fan!) I didn't have a single bee fly up at me. If they do well over the winter and still appear to have such a lovely temperament next year I think they could well be worth raising some new colonies from.

I have noticed that the barn over the road from the site has bees entering and leaving the roof space from both the top of the gable and at gutter level (nearest to us in the shot below). If that's all one colony I hate to think what's under that roof. Not that I imagine it will be much better if it's two colonies. I suspect it's where this swarm came from though.



James

 

[Wilco]

Got round two apiaries today. Mixed bag, one site two of the three hives are doing very well and have done a sterling job with the bramble flow. Sadly the third has failed to raise a queen after swarm control.

At the main site I merged a few nucs. Sadly one has swarmed after a being requeened only a few weeks ago which is a real shame (limited inspections last week due to life getting in the way). However I'm using some of the cells to requeen a difficult hive so hopefully not all is lost.

Garden hive have sadly decided that building comb below the brood area (where the camera is situated) is a better use of their time and effort than drawing out the second super I gave them a few weeks ago. Naturally, the comb they have built is at an oblique angle to the bottom bars of the brood frames rather than in-line. Sods.

Looking at things thus far, my production hives are doing a sterling job.

Several formerly decent colonies were not on their best behaviour today. Either the flow is just over or it's the humidity. Useful to note which were nice and docile though as that will feed into mext year's breeding plans.

Off to the heather site tomorrow, to be swiftly followed by jumping in the adjacent river to cool off!