What did you do in the Apiary today?

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That’s because you hang on to everything - “it’ll come in handy one day”. Sometimes you just have to be brutal and get rid.
(That‘s what always brings on the day you do actually need it!)
Yes but the minute you do, someone says, ‘have we still got that thingyummyjig that we use to defrost the freezer/adjust the bike spokes/defluff the cat?’ or whatever and it’s already gone….
 
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I acquired two large hinges off my wife's grandfather, they would come in handy one day. I did finally use them on a gate only forty years later. His extension lead is still going strong and that's even older.
I think that comes close to the 40 years it took me to find a use for the metal stand that was originally part of my wife's Pifco Hood hair Drier .. the drier failed in about 1976 but the stand was a lovely folding, screw together metal stand ...that finally found a use with some modification as a stand for my iphone camera filming me and the bees in my apiary. It gets used now for a variety of other things....just took awhile to make use of it.

I have an extension lead and an inspection lamp borrowed from the steelworks I worked in during my school holidays ... 1967,although they were old even then ... still going strong - although the colours of the inner cables rather confused my son when he wanted to put a new plug on it !
 
I store the supers in a conservatory before extracting to get the water content down. Results for this year are between 16 to 18% water content. Also as an experiment I had a thin layer of honey on a tray in the conservatory to see what I could get it down to, I stopped at 12% water content.
Do you find that nectar/honey that comes in in a rush on a good flow (and then capped) is more often of a higher water content then honey coming in more slowly?
 
Do you find that nectar/honey that comes in in a rush on a good flow (and then capped) is more often of a higher water content then honey coming in more slowly?
I find the stronger colonies have a lower water content, than the colonies that build up slower.
 
I find the stronger colonies have a lower water content, than the colonies that build up slower.
Interesting thanks. That sounds right. I am finding perhaps a pattern here that a strong colony on a strong flow can/will cap higher water content honey, whilst a strong colony on mediocre offerings will take out more moisture before capping.
 
I have spent the last two days dismantling my 'new' seondhand shed for the apiary.
I will have to replace the roof and a couple of boards at the bottom of one side.
Today I go shopping for roofing felt and some shiplap boards and one or two other pieces of timber.
Sunday my friend is bringing his flatbed truck to move the pieces to the apiary. Hopefully Monday and Tuesday we will be able to re-erect it.
May have to leave the re-erection for a week as I have cataract surgery on Wednesday!!!!
 
May have to leave the re-erection for a week as I have cataract surgery on Wednesday!!!!
No bending for two weeks, surgeon advised my wife last week after her cataract op. No heavy lifting. No looking downwards.
Neighbour opposite ignored that advice last year: he ended up with pain and had to rest for a week.
 
Just watching lots of busy bees bringing in pollen today. Mostly almost white pollen and a couple of other varieties. Even the lazy mongrel nuc bees decided it was warm enough to come out. Was beginning to think there was a problem with them.
 
Spent half the day refilling old clean frames with foundation and making some new ones up, fixing a few battered brood boxes that I’d not got around to last season, and finished off by making up the end leg supports for 10 triple hive stands.

Decided to finish the assembly in the field as it makes it easier to transport them rather than hefting them in and out of the trailer.

Only another 25 stands to assemble before end of March - some replacements and spares the rest for new colonies/splits but more on that in my next blog post

S
 
The weather's been a real mixed bag today. At one point I was sweating in the Sun shovelling compost and then the next running for cover from the rain, but when it was dry all the hives in my home apiary were active. Some pollen coming in, though not a huge amount. I suspect some was snowdrops though I'd have said it was perhaps more yellow than I'd expect; some was a grubby white and I've no idea what that might be at this time of year. There is some hazel twenty yards or so from the hives, but the catkins were pretty much brown and dried out already and I think it would be the wrong colour anyhow. It was a bit chaotic if I'm honest -- more than a few bees failing to hit the landing board at all, having to "go around" and try again, and others coming in clearly a bit heavy, crashing onto the board and rolling up it to the entrance.

Then later on after we'd had some drizzle I was out in the veggie plot contemplating what needs doing and I heard one of the girls flying behind me. I looked around and she'd found a little clump of grass with tiny droplets of water resting on the leaves to collect from.

James
 
Weighed my five hives (all double boxes in various configurations) 10 days ago: average weight loss since 20 November = 4kg. Total hive weights 32-38kg.
Inserted sticky paper on varroa boards.
Today: checked varroa boards: 4/5 hives have 8-10 seems of dross. One weaker. No hive had more than one varroa per board!! I've never previously had such a low drop. Apivar (amitraz) early August 2022 for 8 weeks. Single OA vape end of November.
BTW: Looking at dross cappings on the boards, is it possible to distinguish between uncapped brood v. uncapped stores?
 
I got my first sting of the year after I forgot the traditional beekeeping habit of zipping up your veil before opening up to add fondant....on the plus side, the exercise that preceded the sting will have been good for my overall health. ;)

I was concerned about this hive as it seemed the lightest going into winter. Paradoxically, it had the healthiest number of bees of the five colonies I topped up judged by the appearance above the cluster, and it was certainly the feistiest. One colony from a swarm that seemed great going into winter, but which had had problems establishing a good queen during the summer, now with a tiny cluster, looks the most likely to fail.

None of the above should surprise me, beekeeping is a very unpredictable activity. :)
 

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