What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Newbeeneil]

Were they discounted at the Honey Show? I've been thinking about getting one but haven't been able to justify the cost.

The gasvap works ok but everyone is saying these are a game changer. Are they really worth the money or just for people with 50+ hives?
Or deep pockets?!

No they were not discounted. They are much easier to use than either the gasvap or the Sublimox but I would have found it difficult to justify if I didn’t have as many hives as I have.

 

[BeeKeyPlayer]

Were they discounted at the Honey Show? I've been thinking about getting one but haven't been able to justify the cost.

The gasvap works ok but everyone is saying these are a game changer. Are they really worth the money or just for people with 50+ hives?
Or deep pockets?!

My pockets have holes.

I struggled with the GasVap for years and got mightily frustrated. Others say they have no problem. But if you're not happy with it and vape 10 or more hives at a time, then it's a life changer.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Had to visit a couple of hives that I was late treating for varroa because of poor weather, to remove the treatment strips. For a change it's a pleasant sunny day out of the wind and the bees were flying and as calm as you like, which made it a far easier and more relaxed job than I was expecting.

I'm not saying we've had a lot of rain, but I have to walk down a sloping pasture to get to the hives. There is standing water on the slope.

James

Sounds like a good place for water skiing

 

[North End Bees]

I find the gasvap ok, not brilliant but do-able. I upgraded last year to the better torch and it works fine doing 8-10 at a time.
But I would like the security of knowing the temperature is not too high. It's a balance with the gasvap to get it low enough without it going out.

A fellow beek had a problem a few years back and killed a load of bees. He's been keeping bees for 60+ years and has tried most things but reckons the uncontrolled temp of the vaporiser he was trying out formed high levels of formic acid.

 

[JamezF]

Sounds like a good place for water skiing

I very nearly did. More than once.

James

 

[BeeKeyPlayer]

I find the gasvap ok, not brilliant but do-able. I upgraded last year to the better torch and it works fine doing 8-10 at a time.
But I would like the security of knowing the temperature is not too high. It's a balance with the gasvap to get it low enough without it going out.

A fellow beek had a problem a few years back and killed a load of bees. He's been keeping bees for 60+ years and has tried most things but reckons the uncontrolled temp of the vaporiser he was trying out formed high levels of formic acid.

Done the torch upgrade. Done the worry about OA becoming formic with heat.

Done with the GasVap.

 

[JamezF]

I can't find a reference at the moment, but I'm sure I've read somewhere that to turn OA into formic you need more than just heat (or perhaps so much more heat that the OA wouldn't even be there by the time the heat could be produced) and as such it was unlikely to happen in a varroa treatment vapouriser. The best reference I can find at the moment is that the reaction requires a catalyst in order to take place. On a small scale glycerol appears to be the catalyst used.

I'll keep looking.

James

 

[pargyle]

I can't find a reference at the moment, but I'm sure I've read somewhere that to turn OA into formic you need more than just heat (or perhaps so much more heat that the OA wouldn't even be there by the time the heat could be produced) and as such it was unlikely to happen in a varroa treatment vapouriser. The best reference I can find at the moment is that the reaction requires a catalyst in order to take place. On a small scale glycerol appears to be the catalyst used.

I'll keep looking.

James

You are right .... I did the research years ago, it's a non-issue - it has to be heat under pressure to make the conversion. The gasvap gets nowhere near. The additional vents in the outer tube make a lot of difference to the torch going out issues.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Were they discounted at the Honey Show?

….

 

[JamezF]

Been having a bit of a tidy up in the home apiary today, and getting wet in the process. The swarm that moved into a couple of boxes of empty brood frames about four years ago sadly didn't make it through this year despite my efforts to encourage them into a new box, so I've split the boxes and set them to one side to have the comb melted down and do some repairs on the boxes. There are a couple of poly brood boxes that need a small amount of work too, and my poly nucs could do with a fresh coat of paint. At the moment that looks to be all the repair work that needs doing. Perhaps no surprise after the frenzy of work back in May when I ran out of usable kit to put swarms into. I have queen excluders to clean, but they can wait for colder weather.

I found my first queen wasp of the winter in one of the boxes as I was moving it. She won't be coming out the other side as I didn't see her until it was too late.

Shame I'm not trying to rear woodlice though. If there were money in that I'd be rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

James

 

[Newbeeneil]

Shame I'm not trying to rear woodlice though. If there were money in that I'd be rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

James

You and me both! I must have at least 20 in every hive I own!!!!

 

[Erichalfbee]

And how do they get into the house? Our sunroom spiders get fat on wood lice.

 

[Moobee]

Been having a bit of a tidy up in the home apiary today, and getting wet in the process. The swarm that moved into a couple of boxes of empty brood frames about four years ago sadly didn't make it through this year despite my efforts to encourage them into a new box, so I've split the boxes and set them to one side to have the comb melted down and do some repairs on the boxes. There are a couple of poly brood boxes that need a small amount of work too, and my poly nucs could do with a fresh coat of paint. At the moment that looks to be all the repair work that needs doing. Perhaps no surprise after the frenzy of work back in May when I ran out of usable kit to put swarms into. I have queen excluders to clean, but they can wait for colder weather.

I found my first queen wasp of the winter in one of the boxes as I was moving it. She won't be coming out the other side as I didn't see her until it was too late.

Shame I'm not trying to rear woodlice though. If there were money in that I'd be rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

James

Ive got tons of woodlice and quite a few false widow spiders which look scary and can give you a nasty bite if you're not careful....

 

[Moobee]

In a lull in the relentless rain yesterday, I wanted to try to rescue the three colonies most affected by exhaust fumes from a couple of weeks ago (two hives and one nuc) and found very small colonies in both hives clustered under the fondant - one with an intact queen, one with a dead queen on the floor and the nuc was bereft of bees except for about a dozen plus the queen on one comb. I thought she was dead but as I picked her up, she waved her legs. So I have put the hives in a poly nuc each and run (put!) the weak queen from the dead out nuc into the entrance of the queenless colony with some air freshener. The bees were attentive and trying to feed her so hoping all might be ok now they have less space to heat. All now have extra stores & fondant to keep them going.
Fingers crossed.

 

[Swarm]

Very best of luck, I hope she makes it.

 

[Amari]

Visited my apiary this morning. Very windy but sun was shining on the hives, T=14C. Bees busy and bringing in pollen - no idea what from - ivy is finished and only three nearby dwellings with gardens. Wasps are still invading my poly hive despite deploying the HiveGate

 

[Antipodes]

Visited my apiary this morning. Very windy but sun was shining on the hives, T=14C. Bees busy and bringing in pollen - no idea what from - ivy is finished and only three nearby dwellings with gardens. Wasps are still invading my poly hive despite deploying the HiveGate

Down here we'll have lots of wasps this season, because there is no way our winter this year would have killed off the nests.
What's the coldest minimum you're likely to get there in Suffolk over winter?

 

[Garry R]

Did a bit of hefting and all ok. A quick peek as it was about 15C showed good strong colony. No worries there. There was a queen wasp under the roof.

 

[Amari]

Down here we'll have lots of wasps this season, because there is no way our winter this year would have killed off the nests.
What's the coldest minimum you're likely to get there in Suffolk over winter?

Without looking up the records: unusual to go below -5C, rarely as low as -10C. How about you in Tas?
The last big freeze as far as I remember was in 1982/3, T -20C. I was at university in 1962/3 when the Thames froze over so did R. Cam in Cambridge so that you could skate from the town up to Granchester three miles upstream. The winter of 1947 was bad esp as there was a miners' strike = no coal and I remember big blocks of ice on the pavements that I wished I could use as a sledge. I don't remember the winter of 1814 but bonfires were lit on the frozen Thames and an elephant was paraded.
https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/frost-fairs

 

[Antipodes]

Without looking up the records: unusual to go below -5C, rarely as low as -10C. How about you in Tas?
The last big freeze as far as I remember was in 1982/3, T -20C. I was at university in 1962/3 when the Thames froze over so did R. Cam in Cambridge so that you could skate from the town up to Granchester three miles upstream. The winter of 1947 was bad esp as there was a miners' strike = no coal and I remember big blocks of ice on the pavements that I wished I could use as a sledge. I don't remember the winter of 1814 but bonfires were lit on the frozen Thames and an elephant was paraded.
https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/frost-fairs

Central highlands in '83 at -13c for me. Wet socks frozen solid in a tent in the morning, but that's up around 1000m. All the little lakes and tarns were frozen solid enough to walk on. Not these days.
In the valleys here , -3c seems to be about it now. More often a frost is just 0c to -1c.
Records show -7's in the 1960s at low altitude occasionally though, but you just don't see that any more, although there is generally a frost up high all through the year if it is cloudless and still.... you get decent frosts up there in the middle of summer and sometime snowy blasts if a front comes up from Antarctica.