What did you do in the Apiary today?

[BrianO]

18 degrees here ... !* !!! 18 Degrees... 10th November..

I remember checking daily August temps and was happy when it got to 16 degrees !

 

[For want of a better word]

Mild but muggy here in the semi sub tropical great grey green greasy mighty Tamar river valley all set about with social housing......
See the Environment Agency has been out cutting Himalayan Balsom... and another great stand of Larch has been felled by the Forestry Commission...
Now if some or that ( our) money could have been used to fill in the potholes in the A399 I think I would have been happier!

Bees still out and some bringing in big bags of ochre pollen!

Yeghes da

 

[Erichalfbee]

18 Degrees... 10th November

I picked the last of my raspberries in the apiary and made a jar of jam

 

[denise washington]

wheeled 18 barrows of bark trimmings to put round hives dodging bees, hope its same tomorrow and get some more in

 

[Goran]

Or, "The more I know, the more I know I don't know".

Maybe I told this story, but will repeat anyway. One beekeeper which was very experienced and deep in bee science was telling other beeks: If someone come to you and is very old and said he knows everything about beekeeping, tell him there must be some new findings he didn't heard of..
If someone come and is little older than you, tell him there must be some book or interesting reading he didn't read of.
If someone come to you and is same age or younger and tell he knows everything about beekeeping, tell him freely that he is just ordinary lier..

This story told me my mentor.

This is some extended version of these philosophic qoutes adapted for beeks

 

[Finman]

.
When first year beekeeper comes and tells that he is going to modernisize beekeeping, I say : Heh heh heh.
I have met those more than old farts.

Real beekeeper knows everything, is he old or young. He must be stubborn enough to start beekeeping.




.

 

[Thymallus]

Well if it's humerous stories....
A tourist wandering on an island inhabited by cannibals comes upon a butcher shop. This shop specialized in human brains sorted out according to source. The sign in the shop read:

Artists' Brains £9/lb
Philosophers' Brains £12/lb
Scientists' Brains £15/lb
Beekeepers' Brains £100/lb

"My, those beekeepers' brains are expensive - they must be pretty powerful!"
The butcher replied, "Do you know how many beekeepers it takes to get one pound of brains!!"

 

[Finman]

.
One explanation is that good, little used brains. I do not remember whose was that.
.

 

[gregior]

degrees here ... !* !!! 18 Degrees... 10th November..

This is [very] bad news for the bees IMO.I'm really struggling to keep varroa at manageable levels this autumn and this incredibly mild weather is not helping one bit.


I think winter losses this year (for me at least) could be very high.

 

[Hivemaker.]

This is very bad news for the bees IMO.

The longer it lasts the better i like it for the bees.

 

[Thymallus]

I'm really struggling to keep varroa at manageable levels this autumn and this incredibly mild weather is not helping one bit.

What treatments are using in late summer /early autumn?
A suggestion would be to change them if they are not working.

 

[gregior]

What treatments are using in late summer /early autumn?
A suggestion would be to change them if they are not working.

I treated with MAQS in early Sept which gave a good drop but i suspect it might be a weaker formula than previously as it didn't seen to upset the bees as much as usual.
I still had quite high varroa levels in mid Oct so treated again with Apiguard which seemed to do not much at all.
Feel i will need to do an oxalic dribble over winter just to keep things under control,I've not been into the hives for a while but suspect the Q's are laying hard going by the very mild weather and the amount of ivy pollen going in.

Going to try drone culling and other non chemical treatments next year as this is getting ridic!

 

[pargyle]

[*]]

Going to try drone culling and other non chemical treatments next year as this is getting ridic!

I'm already there and have been since I started but ... if you have a really significant mite load at present .... rather than going down the OA Trickling at Xmas route I'd seriously consider buying, begging, borrowing or making (not that difficult) an OA Vapouriser and give them a couple of doses of OA Sublimated .. one as soon as you can get organised and one five days later. You will find that the drop from this treatment is very impressive and it does not seem to affect the bees at all ... No harm doing it now as there will be less brood in the hives and you will knock down about 90+% of the mites that are there. Plenty of threads on here about sublimation ...

As for next year .. well .. that's a choice you have to make .. but it is possible to be treatment free and still have healthy bees.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I'm already there and have been since I started

How much drone culling do you do, pargyle?

 

[Thymallus]

.
I still had quite high varroa levels in mid Oct so treated again with Apiguard which seemed to do not much at all.

It was possibly a little too cold in Oct for thymol based treatments to work effectively..
If you are worried at the moment then waiting for a few months before having a dribble might not be the best solution. There is OA vaporization if you feel happy blasting clouds of the stuff around. Or Bavarol or Apistan strips will work, stick 'em in and forget about them for 6 weeks. They work extremely well, as long as not used every single year which will encourage resistance.

 

[beeno]

I treated with MAQS in early Sept which gave a good drop but i suspect it might be a weaker formula than previously as it didn't seen to upset the bees as much as usual.
I still had quite high varroa levels in mid Oct so treated again with Apiguard which seemed to do not much at all.
Feel i will need to do an oxalic dribble over winter just to keep things under control,I've not been into the hives for a while but suspect the Q's are laying hard going by the very mild weather and the amount of ivy pollen going in.

Going to try drone culling and other non chemical treatments next year as this is getting ridic!

Hi gregior,
I am further south than you, but I have had HM thymol on for three weeks on one colony. Dropped 20/day prior to treatment and 620 week one and 230 week two despite Maqs early September. This one is brooding like mad and all colonies bringing in white pollen (holly) and Ivy plus some orange stuff. Good conditions for brooding and perfect conditions for varroa to multiply with warm nights and days.

 

[oliver90owner]

Gregior,

Forget the carp about warm days and nights. That has little to do with varroa multiplying. The simple fact is that varroa multiply within capped brood cells. Those cells are very much isolated from warm days and nights. If anything, the brood cycle may be reduced by just a few hours and result in fewer varroa nymphs being mature enough to survive, by the time of emergence.

If, by now, there are varroa in the thousand region, there was either a large influx from a locally failed colony (or two), or the varroa load after MAQs was around the 250 mark after the previous treatment. No other sensible reason.

 

[pargyle]

How much drone culling do you do, pargyle?

Very little this season ... I forked out about 100 drone cells in two hives early in the season to see what the mite levels were like in the cells and found only a couple of mites in there so I didn't think it was necessary.

I had to clean off some comb off the bottom of the frames when I took my long hive out of service in the summer and there was a few drone cells in that but I couldn't leave the comb on the bottom of the frames. Again, there were very few varroa in there.

Last year I had a National frame that I kept in the Long hive amongst the 14 x 12's and I used to regularly cut the drone comb off ... but, again, there were rarely any significant levels of mites in there.

I'm more of the opinion, these days, that the benefits of allowing the bees to raise drones (if that's what they want to do) outweigh the small effect that killing a large percentage of the drone larvae to rid the colony of a handful of varroa presents.

But ... as I've often said ... being treatment free is not let alone beekeeping .. if the colony appears to be affected then something has to be done - I'm not going down the selective breeding path .. merely allowing my bees to do what they see fit. (Although I won't tolerate highly aggressive colonies !). There's a limit to what I would let them do ...

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

In the end I blame global warming - and the onset of the new ice age

In fact I hear that in some parts of la la land holly is in flower whilst around here the berries have just reached full ripeness

 

[Erichalfbee]

Very little this season ...............................

I'm more of the opinion, these days, that the benefits of allowing the bees to raise drones (if that's what they want to do) outweigh the small effect that killing a large percentage of the drone larvae to rid the colony of a handful of varroa presents.

But ... as I've often said ... being treatment free is not let alone beekeeping .. if the colony appears to be affected then something has to be done - I'm not going down the selective breeding path .. merely allowing my bees to do what they see fit. (Although I won't tolerate highly aggressive colonies !). There's a limit to what I would let them do ...

Thanks for that.
I'm interested in being treatment-free like you.
I can monitor my few hives on a daily basis, easily.
I started a half hearted attempt at letting the bees build their own comb in one swarm I hived by giving them some empty frames re-inforced with fishing line.
they have had fewer varroa but I put that down to them being a smaller colony.
Apart from that I have had thousands drop after oxalic in the other boxes.
I might revisit the notion next year but feel somewhat disheartened this.