What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Moobee]

One hive has been queenless for three weeks. No idea where the queen went & a nice QC I left them with appears to have come to nothing so popped a frame of eggs in from my best hive to check.
All the rest ok, one hive romping away with four extremely heavy supers so may move those to other hives before it becomes the leaning tower of Beeza.
Approached another nice local cafe about selling my honey and they’ve taken 10 jars straight away. At this rate I’ll have to do another extraction PDQ

 

[Michael Palmer]

Caught queens. 109/128 nucs. Then re-celled the nucs.
Then united the 4 cell builders that were grafted five days ago, with the queen-right mother hives.
186/192 grafts viable. A good day.

 

[user 22908]

After 2 years of keeping bees i managed this morning for the first time to spot an unmarked queen, catch her, mark her and return her to the hive …..and shes still in one piece.

 

[Erichalfbee]

After 2 years of keeping bees i managed this morning for the first time to spot an unmarked queen, catch her, mark her and return her to the hive …..and shes still in one piece.

Well done. Scary at first isn’t it?

 

[user 22908]

Well done. Scary at first isn’t it?

Yes it certainly is , repeating over and over “dont squash her dont squash her “ and breathe

 

[Newbeeneil]

Yes it certainly is , repeating over and over “dont squash her dont squash her “ and breathe

Ah but did you clip her? The next scary mission - should you chose to accept!

 

[madasafish]

Finally this year managed to be able to graft consistently and successfully every time. Not 100% - think 60 to 75%.. but an achievement. I am happy with. Lots and lots of trials (8 this year) but since I have a simple to use setup it's easy just to try in the odd 30 minutes. put it down to a far stronger headtorch making visibility easier and better choice of larvae coupled with a much better built set of Chinese grafting tools.

Or just sheer sanguinary mindedness ?

 

[user 22908]

Ah but did you clip her? The next scary mission - should you chose to accept!

No i didn't , 40+ years a nurse but I'm not even going to attempt it

 

[JohnRB]

Finally this year managed to be able to graft consistently and successfully every time. Not 100% - think 60 to 75%.. but an achievement. I am happy with. Lots and lots of trials (8 this year) but since I have a simple to use setup it's easy just to try in the odd 30 minutes. put it down to a far stronger headtorch making visibility easier and better choice of larvae coupled with a much better built set of Chinese grafting tools.

Or just sheer sanguinary mindedness ?

Where did you find the better chinese grafting tools. I've tried loads, but all useless so I've moved on to a brush. I don't understand why someone doesn't make a better quality one

 

[Garry R]

Bit of a shock - the poly long hive I made and is the avatar photo I opened up and it has 30 national frames full of bees- gosh. Took 6 national frames of sealed honey and replaced with the same of foundation.

 

[Garry R]

Forgot to mention this is the hive based on two Swienty brood boxes stuck together but effectively 3 broods allowing the spare ends infilling the two x 3 sides. Seems to work well - good tribute to C. Wynne-Jones who supplied the brood boxes. It also has the reinforced polythene as a cover/crownboard directly on the top of the ftried rames which peels back a treat and they have not even tried to nibble it (well they may have but not managed as yet and it's been on for almost the whole season!!)

 

[Dr. Abe]

I checked a few hive this afternoon and had several surprises. (Or shocks!)

On the good side, one hive now has 2 medium (Langstroth) supers almost entirely full of capped comb honey with a 3rd box started. another hive has a little over one box with good comb honey.

Also, Basswood trees are in full bloom.

On the unfortunate side, I found 2 hives with no queen or eggs. Lots of good sealed brood and good populations but no queen. The smart little insects already took care of the situation with supersedure. One hive had several vacated cells and I imagine the war was on! The other hive has lots of capped QCs and it looked like I might as well let them take care of themselves. Both hives with missing queens were pure bred Carniolan.

If I should do something about the situation feel free to give ideas.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

The smart little insects already took care of the situation with supersedure. One hive had several vacated cells and I imagine the war was on! The other hive has lots of capped QCs and it looked like I might as well let them take care of themselves. Both hives with missing queens were pure bred Carniolan.

They swarmed, not superseed, and unless you reduce the QCs to one, they will throw out casts leaving you with a severely depleted colony.

 

[pargyle]

Bit of a shock - the poly long hive I made and is the avatar photo I opened up and it has 30 national frames full of bees- gosh. Took 6 national frames of sealed honey and replaced with the same of foundation.

Ir's incredible what bee producers Long Hives are ... I hope you left them with enough stores to keep them going ...big colonies can starve even at this time of year if we get a few days of inclement weather.

 

[Malcolm B.]

Well dear readers, I've not been to have a chat with either of my two colonies for several days. We nod to each other in passing when I go to feed the chickens but all the bees seem rather busy at present and they don't seem to have the time to stop and show me what they have been up to in the hive. Even if I sit on a log near to the hives they will usually hurtle past me with barely a glance. I guess they are far more skilled at running a busy hive than I will ever be, so I will leave it a few more days before I go and have a look inside again.

I've never used Hoffman frames. Always the standard type of frame with spacers. I've been making my own spacers for a while now with the 3D printer. I did have the idea of using different colour spacers for (for one example) knowing the age of the wax but I have never fully implemented the idea.

Since I have a considerable number of ordinary frames, changing to Hoffman style is not an option at present. So for the past two or three days I've been working on a slight change of plan with frame spacing. Back in the 80's when I first started with bees, all the boxes that made up the two WBC hives that I bought (complete with bees) had the remains of metal strips with castellations to separate the the frames. As each one eventually disintegrated I replaced them with plastic spacers on the frames. I'm now tweaking a 21st century equivalent - its plastic, its a continuous strip and its printed on the 3D printer.

Each box (brood or shallow) uses four strips - two per side. My 3D printer bed is 200mm x 200 mm so I have to print half of each one at 45 degrees to be able to fit onto the bed. I'm using PLA filament since it is cheap, easy and environmentally friendly.

The advantages I can envisage are:-
(1) - They don't rust.
(2) - They are not sharp.
(3) - They don't wait for you to look away before falling off the frame and into the grass.
(4) - They are not difficult to remove from a frame. The frame simply lifts off it.
(5) - At present they are loose (but secure), but they could be secured semi-permanently by double sided sticky tape if necessary.
(6) - Bees cannot get trapped behind this type of spacer.

It remains to be seen if the bees glue everything together with propolis and make these unusable.

I've put a couple of photos below showing the castellated strips installed on a new brood box. I still need to make one or two minor adjustments before I ask the bees to 'road test' them for me and decide whether they like them or not. I'd be interested to hear your comments too, in case you can see problems that I've not had the foresight to consider.





Thank you for reading this far.

Malcolm B.

 

[Newbeeneil]

Well dear readers, I've not been to have a chat with either of my two colonies for several days. We nod to each other in passing when I go to feed the chickens but all the bees seem rather busy at present and they don't seem to have the time to stop and show me what they have been up to in the hive. Even if I sit on a log near to the hives they will usually hurtle past me with barely a glance. I guess they are far more skilled at running a busy hive than I will ever be, so I will leave it a few more days before I go and have a look inside again.

I've never used Hoffman frames. Always the standard type of frame with spacers. I've been making my own spacers for a while now with the 3D printer. I did have the idea of using different colour spacers for (for one example) knowing the age of the wax but I have never fully implemented the idea.

Since I have a considerable number of ordinary frames, changing to Hoffman style is not an option at present. So for the past two or three days I've been working on a slight change of plan with frame spacing. Back in the 80's when I first started with bees, all the boxes that made up the two WBC hives that I bought (complete with bees) had the remains of metal strips with castellations to separate the the frames. As each one eventually disintegrated I replaced them with plastic spacers on the frames. I'm now tweaking a 21st century equivalent - its plastic, its a continuous strip and its printed on the 3D printer.

Each box (brood or shallow) uses four strips - two per side. My 3D printer bed is 200mm x 200 mm so I have to print half of each one at 45 degrees to be able to fit onto the bed. I'm using PLA filament since it is cheap, easy and environmentally friendly.

The advantages I can envisage are:-
(1) - They don't rust.
(2) - They are not sharp.
(3) - They don't wait for you to look away before falling off the frame and into the grass.
(4) - They are not difficult to remove from a frame. The frame simply lifts off it.
(5) - At present they are loose (but secure), but they could be secured semi-permanently by double sided sticky tape if necessary.
(6) - Bees cannot get trapped behind this type of spacer.

It remains to be seen if the bees glue everything together with propolis and make these unusable.

I've put a couple of photos below showing the castellated strips installed on a new brood box. I still need to make one or two minor adjustments before I ask the bees to 'road test' them for me and decide whether they like them or not. I'd be interested to hear your comments too, in case you can see problems that I've not had the foresight to consider.

View attachment 36786

View attachment 36785

Thank you for reading this far.

Malcolm B.

I like the idea Malcom as I’m a castellation user.
Unfortunately I think that the bees will propolise it up pretty quickly with all those surfaces to connect the frames to. I made a similar system in wood that I put in a bait hive with the afore mention results!

 

[Superlativesoul]

Really enjoying your bee story long may it continue to entertain us .let us know how the castellations perform, time will tell if the bees propolize them
John.,

 

[plain_hunt]

I decided I needed to check on my amalgamations, I knew one had too much space and would be drawing comb where I didn't want it. So got both those sorted, and down to one brood box each. I have an old hive I keep my washing soda, tools and some spare kit in. Took the roof off when I got there, but it was only when I was packing up, and looked at it properly, there seemed to be quite a few wasps flying around it. The roof is falling apart and has a plastic bag under it to keep it waterproof, and found this... It's about the size of a small football at the moment..... under the plastic bag.

 

[North End Bees]

Since I have a considerable number of ordinary frames, changing to Hoffman style is not an option at present. So for the past two or three days I've been working on a slight change of plan with frame spacing.

I inherited some very old boxes of DN1 frames with studs pinned to the side bars where the Hoffman spacers would be.
Worked perfectly well.

 

[Wilco]

Well dear readers, I've not been to have a chat with either of my two colonies for several days. We nod to each other in passing when I go to feed the chickens but all the bees seem rather busy at present and they don't seem to have the time to stop and show me what they have been up to in the hive. Even if I sit on a log near to the hives they will usually hurtle past me with barely a glance. I guess they are far more skilled at running a busy hive than I will ever be, so I will leave it a few more days before I go and have a look inside again.

I've never used Hoffman frames. Always the standard type of frame with spacers. I've been making my own spacers for a while now with the 3D printer. I did have the idea of using different colour spacers for (for one example) knowing the age of the wax but I have never fully implemented the idea.

Since I have a considerable number of ordinary frames, changing to Hoffman style is not an option at present. So for the past two or three days I've been working on a slight change of plan with frame spacing. Back in the 80's when I first started with bees, all the boxes that made up the two WBC hives that I bought (complete with bees) had the remains of metal strips with castellations to separate the the frames. As each one eventually disintegrated I replaced them with plastic spacers on the frames. I'm now tweaking a 21st century equivalent - its plastic, its a continuous strip and its printed on the 3D printer.

Each box (brood or shallow) uses four strips - two per side. My 3D printer bed is 200mm x 200 mm so I have to print half of each one at 45 degrees to be able to fit onto the bed. I'm using PLA filament since it is cheap, easy and environmentally friendly.

The advantages I can envisage are:-
(1) - They don't rust.
(2) - They are not sharp.
(3) - They don't wait for you to look away before falling off the frame and into the grass.
(4) - They are not difficult to remove from a frame. The frame simply lifts off it.
(5) - At present they are loose (but secure), but they could be secured semi-permanently by double sided sticky tape if necessary.
(6) - Bees cannot get trapped behind this type of spacer.

It remains to be seen if the bees glue everything together with propolis and make these unusable.

I've put a couple of photos below showing the castellated strips installed on a new brood box. I still need to make one or two minor adjustments before I ask the bees to 'road test' them for me and decide whether they like them or not. I'd be interested to hear your comments too, in case you can see problems that I've not had the foresight to consider.

View attachment 36786

View attachment 36785

Thank you for reading this far.

Malcolm B.

Surely bees could still get trapped/squashed in those?