What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Lance Hutchings]

Good day today
An experienced member of my association came out and inspected my two hives. 3 full supers on one virtually all capped, on a double brood box. The other two small swarms that had been merged. Both given the thumbs up and both doing well. Have added a fourth super to the good hive (more for drawing out the comb rather than getting honey), and arranged for some help when I extract in a few weeks as I have never done so before ... Was advised to re-queen the larger hive at some stage as its should we say slightly aggressive

 

[For want of a better word]

ICANHOPIT IS A FILM STAR

Oh what fun... "Three Hungry Boys" traveling the West Country looking for freebie food in a converted milk float, came to visit our Community Orchard Bees...

Oh yes.. they got to open up "drippy Veras"... Daughters of Satan hive for the first time since the enforced move ......to extract a perfect frame of honey!!!!

OH how you lot are going to have fun slagging me off when the final cut is shown on Channel 4????????????

I may have to move to the Scillies!

 

[Lance Hutchings]

ICANHOPIT IS A FILM STAR

Oh what fun... "Three Hungry Boys" traveling the West Country looking for freebie food in a converted milk float, came to visit our Community Orchard Bees...

Oh yes.. they got to open up "drippy Veras"... Daughters of Satan hive for the first time since the enforced move ......to extract a perfect frame of honey!!!!

OH how you lot are going to have fun slagging me off when the final cut is shown on Channel 4????????????

I may have to move to the Scillies!

Not heard of the Three Hungry Boys .. going to have to look them up on tinternet now !

 

[For want of a better word]

They are on Twitter
Three Hungry Boys / Channel 4

3 Marine biologists friends who graduated from the world renound University of Plymouth in 2003 !!!

 

[Lance Hutchings]

Just seen their webpage Ican
There is a small piccy of them in Beesuits carrying a nice frame of Honey

 

[Mike a]

Finally.

Just a had a swarm passed on to me to deal with this afternoon.

 

[Mike a]

Small swarm 29th July 2011.

I was called to collect a small swarm which had moved into a compost bin two days earlier. Once I'd removed the front cover I spotted the queen in the middle of the comb laying an egg, so I decided to wait until she had finished before shaking her into the nuc. I almost made the mistake of shaking the bees off the panel with the comb upside down.
Normally I don't use smoke but I had to use a fair amount to drive them out of the bin as I didn't want to move it in case the top two thirds which was full with old grass cuttings collapsed down. All in all it was a very simple to collect most of the colony by brushing them on to a frame and dumping them over the nuc, once enough of them were fanning attracting the fliers and I covered the bin entrance with the frame which stopped them from flying straight back inside the bin again.

I returned at 9pm and found they had all left the bin and were happily clustered in the nuc covering 2.5 frames, so I strapped them up and waited another 10 mins just to be sure I had them all before moving them to my apiary.

See video section (members videos) Julyswarm

 

[circe]

Put test frame in one hive, put thymol treatment on one hive, put clearer board on one hive. Bees starting to propolise quite a bit now, demeanour more protective, wasps starting to be a pest. Bramble flow almost over. Bit of a forage gap now until the ivy ......

 

[TOBY-3652]

Looked for 5 queens to mark and found 3 .looked and looked for the other 2. Eggs there but couldnt find them and one was in a nuc

 

[tonybloke]

collected a huge swarm, on a caravan park site.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Managed to move the queen out of the super she'd sneaked into a few weeks ago and put the QX back, loads of stores in the brood box and they're still drawing comb like nobody's business - hopefully now they'll shift most of the stores up to the supers - there still seems to be a good flow on here - maybe due to the fact that every garden in a three mile radius has at least one row of runner beans and they're now in full flower?

 

[user 6228]

Decided 2 super was too much . So we reduced it to 1.5 by dummy boarding the second super with 4 correx dummy boards (full thickness) which of course meant making 6 dummies out of 2mm correx.
Checked the nuc. We have a queen !! They rejected the expensive introduced queen and we found 6 queen sealed cells. Our queen suppliers reaction was "if they think they can do better you might as well leave them to sort it out "
. We did and two weeks later we have a queen. So far so good

 

[oliver90owner]

Our queen suppliers reaction was "if they think they can do better you might as well leave them to sort it out "

So 'expense' but no queen? Not good if that was the case!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Went to the association apiary this morning ended up leading one of the inspections with two complete beginners there for a taster (blind leading blind comes to mind!!) , found QC's with larvae (2011 new queen) so we decided to do a split: so another pair of beginners (who'd turned up with a nuc for 'inspection') ended up going home with it full of bees and a 2011 laying queen - lucky them.

 

[tonybloke]

had a forum member round for a cuppa ( Oh, and to collect a swarm of bees)

 

[drstitson]

Checked one of the nucs from a split made 5 weeks ago - nice big yellow queen, eggs and larvae (about day 5-6).

 

[Chris Luck]

Had a quick look at the honey situation following weeks of bad weather and temperatures too low for a sunflower flow, not good, bees have been taking stores in the supers for use. Definitely going to be a bad summer yield even if we have "normal" weather for the next few weeks.

Hey ho, such is life.

Chris

 

[tonybloke]

just back from collecting yet another swarm!

 

[TBRNoTB]

just back from collecting yet another swarm!

lucky sod! mine ended up being 'dispersed'

 

[tonybloke]

lucky sod! mine ended up being 'dispersed'

it helps being a 'swarm co-ordinator' for the Norfolk BKA !!

todays swarm is now in 'torchys' hive.