What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Mike a]

Back Story
Over the last few weeks a friend and I have been helping a new bee keeper with his Omlet hive. <dont worry I won't rant about this again> Omlet promised him a 5 frame nuc when he bought the hive but instead he was given a 3 frame nuc on national frames from EB. Despite many complaints he got no where so gave up, he followed the instructions and managed to get them through Winter successfully.

In April they swarmed twice the second swarm got away but he managed to collect first swarm and put them in the empty half of his Omlet. He decided to ask for some help so a friend of mine has been doing his best to prevent both halves from swarming again as they have produced over 50 queen cells between them. Despite their best efforts one side swarmed two weeks ago and this was put into a nuc.

Several queen cells were found and these were all removed and put into another nuc, the parent hive was left queenless on purpose and a few days later the nuc was transferred in to my Dartington long hive, by which time it was clear one had emerged and killed the other three developing queens in their cells. Hopefully she will manage to mate over the next 2 weeks.

Today
Our friend ordered two new queens which arrived last week and today we finally found the last queen in the second half of his Omlet in a boiling sea of bees covering all the 14x12 frames. I quickly caught her in a cage and have made up a langstroth nuc for her today. So currently I now have the breeder queen and two of her daughters. So its time to break out the wood working gear and get to work building two more Dartington style hives which take 20 14x12 frames each ready for next year.

They are not interested in building up excess stores and converting into honey in the supers just breed more and more brood until they reach a critical mass and throw out a massive swarm. The only way to describe the original queen is call her a breeder queen, she doesn't know when to stop as she has been laying non stop since before March 2011 filling 14x12 frames through to now. If her two daughters are even half as prolific as she is they will fun to manage.

I'm seriously considering marking and clipping them and 2012 should be very interesting if all three make it through Winter.

 

[victor meldrew]

Sat around this afternoon watching the bees working Golden rod .
Afternoon seems to be the time for it
They are still at it in numbers as I type
It has been said that Golden rod isn't much use to bees ?
There are a good few thousand bees wasting their time around here at the moment .
Maybe the perpetrator of this was observing at the wrong time of day ?

VM

 

[tonybloke]

checked my superceding colony for Nosema last night, all clear!!

 

[TOBY-3652]

Treated 4 wasp nests and got called to a large wasp nest that turned out to be a good swarm so had to chuck a floor together and 2 supers now a brood box until i get delivery from mr hivemaker

 

[craigavonb]

Watched my bees coming in covered white after working Balsam

 

[hallshoney]

found two more hives full of Qcells. this years queens the last of five all under 8 weeks old!

 

[For want of a better word]

This was fun.....

Went to do weekishly check on a WBC (because it looks pretty) up the lines 3 miles or so away that is set amongst orchard trees in a bee heaven of a garden.

The backing onto neighbor had cut and thinned the trees behind the hive.... much to the chagrin of my beeloving friends........
.....these bees from an early swarm into the hive have been little angels, calm, needing little smoke and very prolific, suddenly had become Daughters of Satan, getting grumpy whenever anyone went too near...
Particularly took a grump when the hedge thinners were shaking the fence and for some reason squirting water at the hive,,, so I am told!
I decided to move them to a new locale where they would not be a problem.
I placed the BB on a solid floor, quickly had a look through to find loads of brood, new and old, and loads of eggs, refitted QE and super. battened down the crown board and fitted a National lid ready for the move.
As I got my kit together a very distraught lady... who for all the world looked like Vera from the Giles cartoons... stormed down the lane at me shouting ...
"one of your bees has stung me on the head!!"

How do you know it was one of my bees?

Must have been... and I am most upset... saw all that smoke and thought you had set my hedge on fire, so I stuck my head through the hedge and one of your bees stung me!

Silly moo!

 

[greatbritishhoney]

Came back from a week's holiday yesterday to find that my most productive hive had swarmed. I stood there cursing for a while then turned around to find an old bait hive crammed full of bees.
If only life could always be that easy.

 

[victor meldrew]

Came back from a week's holiday yesterday to find that my most productive hive had swarmed. I stood there cursing for a while then turned around to find an old bait hive crammed full of bees.
If only life could always be that easy.

Yesterday I hastily retrieved a poly ns box from a mixed pile of brood boxes/ supers . Left it behind my front garden wall (I was going out for the day) to be picked up by a colleague in order to entice a swarm from under the bathroom floor of a house about 1/4 of a mile away !
On returning from my day out in the evening I took my dog out and as I always do, called at the apiary ( can't leave the buggers alone even after 20 odd years)
I noticed a bait hive I had set up had a clump of bees milling about a tiny gap (Hive tool damage) between A couple of the supers which I had put atop the bait hive .
Now; was it robbing ,There were combs (14x 12s) hanging in the two supers in question ?
Having the dog and no gear at hand I decided to leave it until today .
On closer inspection, I realised that it was a swarm.
I have lifted the two supers as one , took the crown board of the bait hive, removed the comb in there and transferred the combs complete with swarm into the bait hive. Although there were 10 frames of drawn comb, one frame was new ,less foundation . the swarm had already started to draw comb on this !
The bait hive was open mesh floored and hadn't been shown any interest all season!
On checking with the lady with the swarm problem, I was told that the swarm absconded Yesterday .
Coincidence? could be but I think not
I hope they stay in the open mesh floored hive, time will tell

VM

 

[oliver90owner]

The bait hive was open mesh floored and hadn't been shown any interest all season!


That may be because solid floors are generally regarded as much more preferable for a bait hive - the bees prefer a darker home, than we give them later. Probably OK if the bait hive was atop several boxes (a la Warre).

Regards, RAB

 

[drstitson]

There is some very nice data (from an american group i think) giving lowdown on various features of most successful bait hives - wood, brood box sized, solid floor, small entrance etc etc.

 

[zubzub]

Nice Tony all clear and up for a beer lol

 

[victor meldrew]

The bait hive was open mesh floored and hadn't been shown any interest all season!


That may be because solid floors are generally regarded as much more preferable for a bait hive - the bees prefer a darker home, than we give them later. Probably OK if the bait hive was atop several boxes (a la Warre).

Regards, RAB

Not really a bait hive as such !
I have been back with an insert to encourage them to stay and will feed later ,although there is a big flow on at the mo.

Rab I wish you would use the quote facility rather than retyping in bold capitals what Ops have previously written . It comes across as intimidating and gives the impression that you are talking down to people
Maybe the reason more than a few take offence !
IMHO
VM

 

[Mike a]

Not really a bait hive as such !
I have been back with an insert to encourage them to stay and will feed later ,although there is a big flow on at the mo.

Rab I wish you would use the quote facility rather than retyping in bold capitals what Ops have previously written . It comes across as intimidating and gives the impression that you are talking down to people
Maybe the reason more than a few take offence !
IMHO
VM

Lots of us do the same thing Vic, like Rab I simply bold it to show the part of the post I'm referring to, or cut and paste and bold the one sentence if its a long post or answer multiple questions. I don't think Rab or anyone else uses it to talk down to people but clarify what we are rambling on about.

 

[victor meldrew]

Comes across! Impression !
The intent isn't always clear !
I'm sure Rab can speak for himself
This rush to defend ,again points to (clique)
IMHO IMHO .

VM

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Put my head in my hands and said B***ER

Haven't been able to inspect since I did an AS then subsequently recaptured my queen who swarmed anyway - this was a fortnight ago, went up to the top of the garden today and all looked fine and dandy - original colony was a hive (Pun was intended!) of activity as was the nuc and the original hive containing the QC's looked opened the hive with my original queen she's laying a beautiful pattern BIAS over nine frames - OF THE FIRST SUPER!! obviously being thinned down for swarming she crept up past the QX to a super of nicely drawn but not filled frames SHE has obviously decided to go brood and a half! the other super was choc a bloc so she wasn't interested - I've found her in the super but didn't manage to catch her so I've moved the QX up and hopefully in the next few days i can catch her and pop her back down into the brood which now has six frames drawn but not yet filled with stores.
The two results of the split are bursting with bees but no sign of brood or the queens - They should have emerged about a week ago if the cells were ok.
Also had my first taste of my own honey from a chunk of brace comb left on a crown board which i took away MMHM
Now back to some deep thinking about what to do with my two new colonies

 

[Mike a]

Comes across! Impression !
The intent isn't always clear !
I'm sure Rab can speak for himself
This rush to defend, again points to (clique)
IMHO IMHO .

VM

Thank you very much Vic, made me smile.

 

[psafloyd]

Main colony (last year's) is going great guns. There are loads of bees and there is a flow on. Not sure what, exactly, as I have seen yellow, orange and some very orangey/reddish pollen coming in, too. Stuck another super on (I'll made by me, so the frames are about 1/8 or 1/4 inch higher than should be. But needs must when the devil drives and as away from tonight and no prospect of making another up, I have put it on. That makes six on this hive, now, and I shall extract when I am back. Hopefully all the boxes will be full. They certainly seem pretty full when I have lifted them off.

The second one is getting stronger, it would seem, with many more bees than before and just over half a super filled. They did have a very full one, but in the time of the Q coming in to lay, the foragers must have died off (and it was a AS, so many fliers left), the colony was depleted and took some time to get building again. Was concerned it might be being robbed last week, but two brief peeks have shown a healthy interest in the colony with plenty of pollen on the way in. Access only three bees wide as stillmrelatively weak and next to a monster colony, not to mention all the wasps scoping it out.

The third one (swarm of darker bees) is going well, on an unintentional brood and a half and appears to be showing ank interest in the undrawn super above it now, as there is a flow on. The smell from this one is so strong, it is quite surprising. So with any luck, the super will be full in a couple of weeks.

Some of my blackberries are still in flower here, while others have almost gone over.

 

[oliver90owner]

Thanks Mike a for explaining so succinctly.

The emboldened parts are what you may have written, so not my typing at all, just indicates copy and paste.

I use a copy and paste as a header to each section of my answer, so there may be only a few words (in context, I hope) for each part of my reply. Compartmentalises it so easily. I also leave a line space between section or part of an answer, so it is easier to find any part of the reply (not buried in a single sentence/paragraph with no punctuation at all.

I do not find it intimidating unless it were were part of the answer (akin to 'shouting' with the CAPS lock on). I particularly dislike repeated quotes of a previous post (especially with pictures included) as all that really does is add extra Giga-bytes to the server storage with seemingly little advantage, in most cases.
Within a section of my a reply, I might quote what you said earlier, and that I would put in italics.

Here is an example:

Section header (in bold): Not really a bait hive as such !

My comment (normal typeface): That is not what you said earlier. You said...

A quote from your previous post (in italics): 'I noticed a bait hive I had set up had a clump of bees milling about a tiny gap (Hive tool damage) between A couple of the supers which I had put atop the bait hive .'

I might then go on to coment (in normal type): Your first post seemed perfectly clear to me that it was, indeed, a bait hive!

The way Mike does it is not always 100% clear to me that the emboldened type was not already in the quoted post.

But I do not complain of other's methods. I am usually able to work it out easily. And I know when someone is being an Alpha Hotel.

You must get intimidated at least 7.48 times a day if you read all my posts? Your nerves must be wrecked by now.

Regards, RAB

 

[victor meldrew]

Thanks Mike a for explaining so succinctly.

The emboldened parts are what you may have written, so not my typing at all, just indicates copy and paste.

I use a copy and paste as a header to each section of my answer, so there may be only a few words (in context, I hope) for each part of my reply. Compartmentalises it so easily. I also leave a line space between section or part of an answer, so it is easier to find any part of the reply (not buried in a single sentence/paragraph with no punctuation at all.

I do not find it intimidating unless it were were part of the answer (akin to 'shouting' with the CAPS lock on). I particularly dislike repeated quotes of a previous post (especially with pictures included) as all that really does is add extra Giga-bytes to the server storage with seemingly little advantage, in most cases.
Within a section of my a reply, I might quote what you said earlier, and that I would put in italics.

Here is an example:

Section header (in bold): Not really a bait hive as such !

My comment (normal typeface): That is not what you said earlier. You said...

A quote from your previous post (in italics): 'I noticed a bait hive I had set up had a clump of bees milling about a tiny gap (Hive tool damage) between A couple of the supers which I had put atop the bait hive .'

I might then go on to coment (in normal type): Your first post seemed perfectly clear to me that it was, indeed, a bait hive!

The way Mike does it is not always 100% clear to me that the emboldened type was not already in the quoted post.

But I do not complain of other's methods. I am usually able to work it out easily. And I know when someone is being an Alpha Hotel.

You must get intimidated at least 7.48 times a day if you read all my posts? Your nerves must be wrecked by now.

Regards, RAB

Gawd!back in lecture mode
I know how to copy paste quote unquote , I know all about open mesh floors and bees preferences .

You are assuming I am intimidated , now you are having a laugh

VM