What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Chris Luck]

Quess what, it is cold windy and raining today too

Yup, and another week at least according to La Meteo, no spring honey harvest this year in this part of France, still, every cloud has 5GB free storage.

Chris

 

[victor meldrew]

4c, rain, blowing a hooligan what a change from yesterday!.
Good job I got a look through the hives yesterday . I also used my grass basher around 7:30pm and the bees were working as if it were 12 noon
VM

 

[alanf]

Yup, and another week at least according to La Meteo, no spring honey harvest this year in this part of France, still, every cloud has 5GB free storage.

Chris

Friday might see a break in the rain according to yr.no

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

Sitting staring at continuing wind and rain. Fingers crossed for an inspection window tomorrow, overdue and I'm away at the weekend

 

[johnmcc]

7° here in mid-Norfolk, and it's hissing down. No bee activity outside the hives, taking 1:1 syrup inside, and I've closed the entrances right down again. Poor old bees! And what's happening to all that OSR blossom in the lashing rain?

 

[burren]

managed to check all, had to run and dash to fit inspections in with the very changeable weather, from one extreme to another, all doing ok,BIAS, building up slowly. Planning for increases if all stays ok. supers are ready and waiting for the off! finger crossed

 

[drstitson]

Woke up unemployed for first time in almost 20 years since graduating.
Luckily have sourced another temporary (at least at first) post starting Mon (that day at a conference in Guernsey on Friday really paid for itself many times over!!!!!)

Shame i can't do anything with the bees - weather awful all the way up from surrey to lincolnshire. However despite the wind and rain the odd bee from the darker colonies are venturing back and forth.

 

[stoneleighhouse]

hi Dr S worked in Guernsey for a couple of years ...great in the summer .. miserable wet rock in the winter....everbody on Alderney's barking

 

[psafloyd]

9 degrees, 75% cloud cover and 87% humidity.
Slashing down here all day, but took a short break in the downpour yesterday evening to stick a super frame of honey on my hived nuc as they had little by way of stores on Sunday and weather got worse.
Still, they were out and busy when I got there, so the we're making the most of their sheltered spot.

 

[madasafish]

Yesterday managed to heft and feed all hives (Did not heft warre,just fed it anyway). All light.
Cut grass.. Watched bees on pear and apple blossom.

Today watched rain.. got very wet and muddy on morning run over Congleton Edge. Saw no bees, no dogs, no humans there.. all have more sense..

 

[Mike a]

Woke up unemployed for first time in almost 20 years since graduating.
Luckily have sourced another temporary (at least at first) post starting Mon (that day at a conference in Guernsey on Friday really paid for itself many times over!!!!!)

Good luck Dr.
I'm in a similar position, I walked away from the company I'd worked for 20 years to start my own company. Scary not knowing when the next job will come through or the next pay check will arrive but needs must as I've now been labelled as "disabled" a term I hate and refuse to live up to.

 

[drstitson]

NOt working on Guernsey - just caught up with a colleague from the mainland (just down road in Guidlford in fact) with a vacancy.

Update (3pm) - actually some sunshine breaking through the clouds and wind dropped somewhat. Hives all now very active.

 

[plunderer]

Had a look around the hives and cleared away some ond pallets and discovered a sml wasp nest in the ground...will deal with it tomorrow..

 

[joctcl]

5.5 Degrees and Windchill down to 3 my poor girls are surviving on fondant and apinvert, did notice through acrylic crownboard that 2 polyhives are a lot more active and not clustered v's my cedar. Checked temps for April against last year and mean is 3 degrees lower v's last year and another week of this forecast

 

[theeggman]

Bees are reading the books before me.

Yesterday we took advantage of a break in the rain to inspect and insert a std. nat brood frame into our 14x12 for drone brood removal.
What we found was that they have built drone comb from 2 frames towards the omf and are busily rearing drones. We've left it there to be sealed before removal.
How did they know that's what we wanted them to do?

 

[YorkshireBees]

Yesterday we took advantage of a break in the rain to inspect and insert a std. nat brood frame our 14x12 for drone brood removal.
What we found was that they have built drone comb from 2 frames towards the omf and are busily rearing drones. We've left it there to be sealed before removal.
How did they know that's what we wanted them to do?

It is quite common, in my experience, for bees to 'extend' the brood frames by building comb, especially drone comb onto the bottom of the frames. Not sure if it has to do with the type of floor and size of gap between the frames and hive floor.

In my case I used to worry something wasn't right when I found the bees doing this in my hives but now I am grateful if they do as it saves the worker comb and makes it easier to sacrifice the drone comb for varoa removal.

 

[Snail368]

Cold and wet here - as per forecast, around 3C all day.

Not much moving around the bee hives, but I tucked them up the other day with some syrup (all light on stores and no chance of getting much nectar at the moment).

I checked some of the local OSR around us yesterday. Although the fields are mainly yellow, there is a lot of unopened flowers, what is out around here is between 10-20% of the total flower buds, so there is hope that there will be a chance for some honey flow in a week or so, if the weather warms up enough!

 

[biggardave]

i slipped in a wee feeder full of syrup and then stood back and felt smug - it was the first thing i have done as a beekeeper. just got my girls last night, not that i've seen that much of them, the weather's as bad here as it seems to be everywhere else.

 

[REDWOOD]

Good luck in your new job hope you enjoy it
Whoops !!!!!!

 

[REDWOOD]

Woke up unemployed for first time in almost 20 years since graduating.
Luckily have sourced another temporary (at least at first) post starting Mon (that day at a conference in Guernsey on Friday really paid for itself many times over!!!!!)

Shame i can't do anything with the bees - weather awful all the way up from surrey to lincolnshire. However despite the wind and rain the odd bee from the darker colonies are venturing back and forth.

Good luck in your new job hope you enjoy it