What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Garry R]

I'm off or a few days fishing so down to the apiary with a nuc from home which for some reason decided my wife was a legitimate target yesterday afternoon in the garden, They were like lambs to me after so not sure what went on. Metal sheep gates across the lane when I went down to re-site so shifted a couple to get access and got the job done before the farmer returned to do his inspections and manipulations. Ready for breakfast then away.

PS Offers will be accepted on progeny from the nuc with special properties .................

 

[SWHives]

Here are a few photos. The main "pole" is straight so cut a notch and bend it to the correct angle and weld it. Use the plate that the seat of the chair is bolted to and that is then bolted to the main box of the wax extractor. Grease it well and it will swivel no problem. Also after sealing the correx I put a strip of the silver aluminium foil - the stuff for sealing kingspan insulation over the end for a great seal. Hope this helps.

Hi Garry, I like your version of solar wax melter and thinking of making one myself. May I ask what have you used for the inside bottom, where you place the frames with old wax etc.

 

[Parsonage Bees]

Two more hives off to a new beekeeper. Downsizing. Missing them already.

 

[Garry R]

The box is moisture resistant chipboard and lined with kingspan. The "drip tray" is an aluminium tray with a slot in the bottom, The lining of it is a sheet of pond liner which stops the rubbish welding it self to the tray. Hold on - I'll go and get a photo or two. I have a couple of struts across supporting the frames. I stuff the slot with J cloth and that is a final filter. Sometimes I do not put the frames in - just cut the comb out and put it into one of the Lidl veg bags and that into a leg of a pair of tights and chuck the whole lot into the tray on top of the pond liner. The carcass is painted with Ronseal woodstain -several coats. Collect wax in a silicone tray. Must go - off to Ireland in 10 mins for a few days

 

[SWHives]

The box is moisture resistant chipboard and lined with kingspan. The "drip tray" is an aluminium tray with a slot in the bottom, The lining of it is a sheet of pond liner which stops the rubbish welding it self to the tray. Hold on - I'll go and get a photo or two. I have a couple of struts across supporting the frames. I stuff the slot with J cloth and that is a final filter. Sometimes I do not put the frames in - just cut the comb out and put it into one of the Lidl veg bags and that into a leg of a pair of tights and chuck the whole lot into the tray on top of the pond liner. The carcass is painted with Ronseal woodstain -several coats. Collect wax in a silicone tray. Must go - off to Ireland in 10 mins for a few days

Fantastic! thanks. Good luck with the fishing. I'll be out fly fishing myself later today.

 

[joebeewhisperer]

My brother kept time logs.l just let the time go by,l just take the pleasure,bee farmers have to get there skates on but I think that’s a different outlook.l take the honey sales and divide by the number of days,usually a day a week in the season,l used to deal with 40 hives in a day but now that is too much,in a reasonable year the days and the honey crop was a satisfactory ratio.The UK weather is very variable but some beekeepers sell honey honey for $9.37 per pound and that makes it worthwhile.

Thanks for the detail. Honestly, I haven’t been concerned with time until now, but this year is getting to be taxing. Also realizing my other projects (some needful) will likely be put off another year if I don’t scale back.

Going through 40 in a day would almost seem like a punishment now. Hats off to you. Out of curiosity, what were your brother’s conclusions?

 

[Curly green finger's]

My spring superseded queen is doing ok .

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

last year's colour?

 

[Curly green finger's]

last year's colour?

I have 4 pens white gold yellow and pink we’ll more than that but I use which ever comes out of my pocket first

 

[Dr. Abe]

Are you not concerned it will get into the honey?

No, I never treat when there is a honey flow or anytime when honey that will be consumed by people is in the hive. (My major honey flows are usually May 20 through July 10)

Also, I only treat at the advice of a neighbor who has several thousand hives.

 

[Dr. Abe]

Yes I know. Is it ok to have antibiotic in USA honey?

No, it is not legal to have multiple antibiotics in U.S. honey.

I always try to be on the safe side with the honey partly because I eat it and don't want to consume "poison". However, it seems like not all beekeepers in the U.S. do everything right/ethical.

Any large sellers of honey get the honey tested and must meet requirements.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

so why pile in loads of antibiotics just for the sake of it?

 

[Dr. Abe]

so why pile in loads of antibiotics just for the sake of it?

Come on. Your making me sound like some crazy American!

I only ever treat if I notice some decline in brood health and I only ever treat with terramycin. Last year I got 0 honey crop because of brood issues and I almost lost 2 hives until I treated with Terramycin. Then everything turned around and all the hives I had last fall lived through the winter.

I appreciate input!

 

[JamezF]

I've had one of those days that makes me feel like not a very good beekeeper

A swarm arrived in my home bait hive this lunchtime. I suspect it's from one of my own hives. I guess that's both positive and negative in that it hasn't escaped into the wild, but it shouldn't really have happened in the first place. I can perhaps blame the weather making regular inspections awkward, but that's more an excuse than a reason.

Inspecting my home hives this afternoon I found one that was doing an emergency requeen, I assume down to my cack-handedness somewhere along the line. I doubt that's the one that's
swarmed though. Another has BIAS and a sealed queen cell and I suspect that's the source. I couldn't find the queen, but that's hardly news. The other "problem hive" at home, with wild comb
drawn amongst boxes of empty frames are showing no interest in moving up into the box of
foundation that I gave them.

A hive at an out-apiary that I'm setting up went into winter very strong, but came out the other side looking very weak for reasons I can't determine. Whilst the colony is currently very small, there is BIAS and I FOUND THE QUEEN!!! Not only that, I even managed to mark her! I had to use a "crown of thorns", but at this point I just don't care. She seemed to wander back off into the hive quite happily once the paint dried so I'm hoping I can call that a success.

I did a demaree on three hives a few weeks back and last time I visited I split off a nuc with a queen cell. That appears to have emerged now and the QC was half torn down. The hive it had come from was a disaster Lots of very pissed-off bees, a couple of queen cells in the top box, but no eggs anywhere, top nor bottom. Clearly I missed some queen cells in the top last time and the original queen has gone AWOL. I've removed the demaree and put the two brood boxes back together under the supers in the hope they can sort it out.

The second one had eggs in the top box and wasn't in a great mood either. There's been no time to raise and mate a new queen, so I assume the old one somehow ended up in the top box though I've no idea how. By this time I had bees going mental trying to sting a marker pen with a black lid that was in the breast pocket of my bee suit and I was probably honking of bad pheromones, so I decided to put a super on top of the upper box, but otherwise delay the decision on what to do with them and leave the third hive for another time once my suit has been washed.

Finally I visited the colony in the tree branch. They're also showing no interest in moving up, which is quite disappointing. I was really hoping that with loads of OSR nearby they'd be desperate for more space by now.

James

 

[Swarm]

Went through nine gorgeous colonies and added extra supers. Found our last elusive, unmarked queen and what a beauty. Huge and black like her mother and a big, busy colony, I really do like this line of farm queens.

 

[The Poot]

I’m with you @JamezF …..
Today was day six from last inspections. I was preparing my stuff, intending to inspect and open up the brood nest to avoid swarming, when my wife hollered “swarm” from the back door. Sure enough a swarm was airborne from said colony!
It settled in a multi stemmed cornus about two feet off the ground - too low to get a nuc box under. So I moved a bait hive close to them and sure enough they started investigating it. I left them to it while I went through the main colony. I had my daughter and the grand daughters with me. The colony is still very large and we found and destroyed three queen cells and left one large open cell which had a very large larva in it. I must confess the girls saw the queen cells quicker than me!
The brood box stunk of dandelion nectar having been partly back filled and the two supers were almost full. One was, one nearly.
The bees were very calm despite being queenless today. So, once done, reassembled and added a third super.
I just hope we found all the queen cells…..four doesn’t seem enough somehow.
Meanwhile the swarm stayed put. So, I decided to cut away a couple of stems to give me access to the cluster, so I could scoop them into a shallow box and transfer to the hive. As soon as I touched the stem away they went. Over the hedge and away. We foolishly ran after them but they very quickly disappeared.
All very disappointing and a result of not finding what would have been small started queen cells six days ago.
View attachment IMG_3894.MOV

 

[The Poot]

Other hive was all good though and here’s her majesty…

 

[JamezF]

I've got to admit that I think I'd probably have gone for the swarm first, but they must already have had a pretty good idea of where they were going to go when they came out of the hive and you might not have caught them even if you did attempt to deal with them first.

I've only shortly got in from moving the box with the swarm away and setting up a new bait hive in its place. I'll give them a few days to settle in and then see what's going on. I've had a peer through the clear crownboard and it's not a huge swarm. Probably about three and a half frames of bees. I might fancy my chances at marking another queen

James

 

[Redcap]

I've had one of those days that makes me feel like not a very good beekeeper

An all to familiar feeling...when I have those days, I remind myself of a quote from the late Bill Turnbull (BBC and avid beekeeper), and that is "In order to become a good beekeeper, you first need to be a bad beekeeper!" Such a true statement, and one I take heart from .

 

[JamezF]

Perhaps so. I have been sitting here writing up my notes thinking on what went wrong and how I can avoid it.

The emergency re-queening I'm sure must be down to my carelessness. I needed to swap them into another brood box and probably "broke" her when I was doing that. Being able to find and mark the queen would mean that I could have quickly found her first and made sure she was safe before starting to move the frames.

The possible (probable) swarmed hive is likely down to a poor inspection schedule. I've not inspected that colony for two weeks because on the rare occasions when the weather had been sufficiently good I really needed to get other things done. I'd honestly expect to get away with two weeks between inspections in this location during April, but clearly not this year.

The messed up demarees might well be down to inexperience of doing them. I don't know why the first appears to be queenless. Could be my cack-handedness again. The one with eggs in the top box I suspect is down to accidentally transferring the queen into the top box. I think I need a better plan for how I organise all the boxes and hive parts as I remove them from the during a demaree. Things would probably have been less messy if I'd been able to inspect when I initially planned to, but the weather just wasn't good enough.

As for the two colonies where the bees won't move up I'm wondering if putting a frame of brood into the upper box might work by drawing nurse bees up and the queen with them.

James