What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Ellem]

Tromped over to Ludlow and picked up a lovely new queen who has now been introduced to the rest of the rabble. Now it's just time for crossed fingers!

 

[tonybloke]

entered some honey and a cake in the NBKA stand @ the Norfolk Show

 

[MuswellMetro]

with the farmers permission in heavy thundery rain , i looked around the farm out biulding and hay lofts and removed five Wasps nest all within 500 yds of my hives mainly using a dustbin linnerwith quick tie tapes then burning once the rain stopped ,did another under an old portocabin with rentakill powder then found another in an enclosed roof space that required foam, but as you may have guessed that one was still going strong tonight as though it had not been treated

any view of dealing with a wasp nest deep into a flat roof with multple exits

 

[TJSnapper]

Emptied my dad's hive out that had had drone laying workers in it for the last 5-6 weeks as per BI instructions and watched the cloud of bees go everywhere, eventually into another hive or two on site. Then caught a plane to Helsinki, guess I will see how things are going on Monday next week... PS it is midnight here and still bright daylight outside... strange sensation.....

 

[YorkshireBees]

Checked through the 5 hives in my home apiary. 1 had swarmed, last Saturday whilst I was away unfortunately, so I removed all sealed QC's and left just one with a grub in it. 2 others are awaiting new queens to start laying and 2 are doing great with their new queens.

Plan to get round the other 7 hives in the next 2 days!

 

[Mike a]

Went to check on some one apiary after the thunder had past.

No issues or problems with any of them since my last inspection 3 weeks ago, some supers being filled nicely, others still being drawn out and starting to be filled. One colony is reasonably strong but still refusing to go up through the plastic queen excluder and draw out the combs (not a th*rnes excluder) so I removed the excluder.

The colony that I'll be moving to the heather at the end of July is building up nicely and covering 7 frames. Whilst there I took some video of the swarm colony in the nuc, very nice looking bees and I'm glad to say they seemed to of calmed down again. No followers or guard bees buzzing me the whole time I was there even when I got up close to them.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSLkUJdqK4A"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSLkUJdqK4A[/ame]

 

[nonstandard]

I looked at my refurbished WBC and felt very pleased

I bought two items for about £30 off ebay last winter

 

[kighill]

Filled a brood box with 12 frames of bees. I am taking them to my out Apiary where I will introduce four Buckfast Queens into Nucs in the morning.

The Buckfast Queens arrived this morning. Very excited.

 

[nonstandard]

And turned them into this and then added a swarm

 

[Mike a]

Very nice !

 

[susbees]

Tromped over to Ludlow and picked up a lovely new queen who has now been introduced to the rest of the rabble. Now it's just time for crossed fingers!

Wonder who that was from...

 

[Mike a]

I confess to not ordering enough super foundation but in this case I don't think the colony will mind as they will have more space.

2010 Queen, the colony are showing no signs of wanting to swarm but since the last time I opened them up they have filled a super and capped it. So I've added another BS National chamber instead.

Super - full capped.
Super - full capped.
14x12 - half full of uncapped honey.
BS National - Added today (plastic foundation).
14x12 - 8 frames of brood, 2 frames of stores, 6 frames are wall to wall brood in all stages.


Top Bar
Started another comb on the 13th bar, I cut off the small section that was cross combed to the next bar.

I find it strange how two colonies can build up so big yet the 3rd colony on the same site <mother of the other national colony> is very content with a national chamber and has a normal sized colony.

 

[Swarm]

Looking good! Can you reach the top ok?

 

[Mike a]

Looking good! Can you reach the top ok?

Reach yes, lift full supers at the moment no.

 

[Swarm]

I know what you mean, I have one level with my face. I'll be doing some extracting on the weekend.

 

[nonstandard]

I saw lots and lots of eggs without squinting or having to resort to using a magnifying glass mind you walking down the path to the apiary was an interesting experience.

At the tender age of 46 I have my first pair of varifocals.

 

[YorkshireBees]

Checked my Poly hive and nucleus yesterday, they were full to bursting!
Considering that they were swarms, the full size poly hive went from 5 frames of eggs to 9 frames of brood and the 10th frame 50% drawn I was amazed. The nucleus went from no brood to 5 frames of brood and the 6th containing stores and all of that in the space of 10 days!

Super-ed the main hive and transferred the nucleus into a full size hive.

Compared to the swarms that I hived in wooden national brood boxes, which are doing well, the poly hive has almost double the brood.

I bought the 2 national hives to compare and so far I am more than convinced that they work better than wood.

 

[drstitson]

"Looking good! Can you reach the top ok"

Ged marshall has a nice picture showing poorly performing hives used as steps to allow him to reach the top of his best performers (10 supers).

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

(yesterday) took an interested friend out to have a look.

Job1 was to introduce a bought in queen into a nice gentle nuc, left the cap over the plug as I've managed to lose a few queens this season but they seem quite keen so I'll remove that today.

Job2 check mother colony of the nuc, again nice and gentle but a few queen cells and no sign of eggs or queen (both normal for me) or more worryingly larva. Left a couple of the cells in and crossed fingers.

Job3 was to investigate grumpy hive, now with new self generated queen. Temper not improved and managed to put my friend off becoming a beekeeper I suspect. Didnt really delve into the hive.

 

[Ellem]

Wonder who that was from...

Someone who was recommended by a very experienced beek in Solihull