What did you do in the Apiary today?

[louiseww]

I was singing and dancing around the garden (not naked) because three of my hives now have good laying queens - after waiting for what seems like months but is probably four or five weeks after they swarmed several times due to neglect on my part (long story.....). Even my new swarm collected from one of my hives just under three weeks ago has a couple of frames of brood so they are doing okay too. What a joy to inspect and see good news at last.
Louise

 

[Chris Luck]

Always a great pleasure when things are working well Louise.

Chris

 

[Box]

transferred a swarm into my first warré hive

 

[susbees]

Spent a straight seven hours on the apiary catching up.

Sorted out a commercial box, took off the frames of Nat BB stores from them to make up some nucs at the w/e, and put on a super instead. Checked the little s*ds next door and in spite of the acres of polished cells (still) gave them a test frame and they gave me two stings to the fingers. Quick check of the mountain....four supers, none with much in now, but still pollen going in at the door.

Then....transferred nuc with new queen laying nicely into a National box and made them a de rigeur Kingspan wide dummy board. And painted on the wrong number . One for tomorrow! Fed the large swarm from last Tuesday...pollen going in.

Checked small swarm with several half drawn frames and some eggs/young brood. Couldn't find her and several occupied QCs. Wonderful :S.

Then....checked and did some housework on three top bar hives. One (AS) has eight frames of eggs, the other half on polished cells.

Popped the last litre of syrup into another AS....and got three to the back of the hand from the last lot....just as I'd taken off my nitriles. Hmm...I'll speak to them tomorrow. Ungrateful or what?

And put in six greased boards for varroa monthly count.

 

[Ely]

Today in the apiary Tonybloke kindly showed me how to correctly feed a hive. Instead of the bodged awful state I fed them in

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Also transferred a 14x12 nuc into a full sized box on a new-fangled floor (bees were struggling to get in and out via the small round entrance !.)
Confused them a little , some still are .

Jo

Is that the 'Dartington inspired' floor JW I decided to use them from the start - bees seem to like it fine, they can sit in the entrance porch and watch the rain!!

 

[MuswellMetro]

spent a pleasant afternoon with the bee inspector looking at my hives and others in the location

quite nice to see other beekeeper bees when all you have to do is keep the smoker going and watch at a rate of 6 hives per hour

luckily no AFB but is has been reported y in my area

i had a patch of DWV but then that hive had a drop €last autumn of 5000 mites

 

[YorkshireBees]

Finished putting together 3 flat pack supers (the last of my winter sales purchases). Just have 5 to sand down (after filling knots etc.) and paint and then all my assembly work is done!

Looked at one hive that I demareed 4 days ago but didn't see Q to check that she is in the right place. No sign of eggs and when I removed the crownboard from the top of the upper BB I was greated with a few bees carrying out bodies, not sure if they are natural casualties or the bees didn't like the movement of the frames containing brood. Still there were only a couple of frames of brood and I wanted to get the hive bak down to one BB.

 

[Jimmy]

I watched the ~1ha horse paddock in the neighbouring field that is currently full of flowering white clover be sprayed with a herbicide to bring it back to being grass dominated

Cleaned up some old brood frames, tried to encourage one colony to clean up a super with solidified OSR honey, listened for the phone with hope that it was going to be a swarm call (in vain, alas), warmed some bottled honey to keep it clear, had some toast with 4 different honeys from 2010 and 2011(polyfloral spring + summer, OSR, heather cut comb)

 

[victor meldrew]

Is that the 'Dartington inspired' floor JW I decided to use them from the start - bees seem to like it fine, they can sit in the entrance porch and watch the rain!!

The very one I slightly altered the design to incorporate a slope on the landing board plus making it easily removable/exchangeable !
I made 1/2 a doz from a pallet , don't know what the timber is but knot free slats 1.5"x5"x5'. Pallets originated in China !

John W

 

[Chris Luck]

I watched the ~1ha horse paddock in the neighbouring field that is currently full of flowering white clover be sprayed with a herbicide to bring it back to being grass dominated

Certainly here in France horse owners, (many are Brits), are becoming one of the worst enemies of wildlife, bees included, with their so called "land improvement". Then again, a lot of bee keepers aren't very wildlife friendly.

Chris

 

[For want of a better word]

Inspected a bait box in the top acre, full of black feral bees that moved in on the 5th June, already on 7 frames and building foundation out on the bottom of 2 half frames I put in for the perpose!

As is has not been good foraging days recently, put on a 1 pint nuc feeder, little girls pulled that down within 2 hours, so refilled.

 

[susbees]

I watched the ~1ha horse paddock in the neighbouring field that is currently full of flowering white clover be sprayed with a herbicide to bring it back to being grass dominated

It imbalances their soluble carbohydrates....whatever that adds up to! Mind you the temp is sitting neatly below nectar temp whilst ours flowers. Doesn't encourage me to sow any more this year but got about 1/2 kilo to put somewhere.

 

[Polyanwood]

I collected another small cast this morning. I wonder if it is a cast from the mininuc of carniolans I collected 4 weeks' ago. They were a tiny colony in the first place and they had plenty of room as I had put the Kieler super on top - very swarmy bees.

 

[tonybloke]

added a frame feeder of 1.1 syrup to a swarm I hived last week. there is a dearth of nectar at the moment here in sunny east norfolk.

 

[victor meldrew]

The very one I slightly altered the design to incorporate a slope on the landing board plus making it easily removable/exchangeable !
I made 1/2 a doz from a pallet , don't know what the timber is but knot free slats 1.5"x5"x5'. Pallets originated in China !

John W

Oh!, and I reduced the depth of the back bar so as to give a reasonable distance to between mesh and monitoring board ! Not much use inserting a monitoring board only to scrape off the evidence on removal ?

John Wilkinson

 

[Poly Hive]

Had a neat bit of beekeeping.

Had a drone laying queen in a nuc so killed her off.

Two days later went to check on things and found one of the days tasks to switch a nuc getting a bit strong said nuc had swarmed. My fault as not around really with a very busy week. So... hived swarm, checked nuc and found very ripe cells. Watched antennae appear out of the cell and strode across to the queenless nuc, whipped off the roof in time for the virgin to emerge and with a prod of the finger drop into her new home.

About as neat as it gets really. LOL. Left the nuc with ONE ripe cell to get on with. Job done.

PH

 

[Ellem]

Made up some syrup and fed the girls. (Didn't want to be too long as diggers just at the back of the hive and didn't want to disrupt the bees too much!)

 

[Flatters]

I made a version of the Dartington underfloor entrance floor for a plywood National I am making. In the original plans I did not like the flat piece of ply for the landing board as I thought water would sit on it when it rained so I redesigned it with a sloping entrance.

After I made it I realised that the landing board bottom edge is lower than the rest of the floor so it will not sit on some of the stands I have made. Also if I want to restrict the entrance I can’t just sit a block of wood on the landing board. I will have to use some other means. All the same a functional floor and I don’t need to worry about mouse guards in the winter.

Next time the slope will be shallow and it will be above the bottom edge.

 

[tonybloke]

had to feed another colony today


nice floor btw flatters!!