What did you do in the Apiary today?

[B+.]

A Week WTF,
I order every two weeks from Norway average delivery 2-3 ( working ) days like clock work. Ok its not normal mail but courier but only pay 11 euros per consignment and a lot heavier than bees

The travel documents said surface mail so they were probably stuck in a lorry on the French side of the tunnel.
The poor things looked as though they were on their last legs. They seemed to perk up when their cages were sitting on the top bars of the nucs though.
It takes 4 days when I get consignments of bees from Germany and its further than The Netherlands.

 

[nantmoel]

The travel documents said surface mail so they were probably stuck in a lorry on the French side of the tunnel.
The poor things looked as though they were on their last legs. They seemed to perk up when their cages were sitting on the top bars of the nucs though.
It takes 4 days when I get consignments of bees from Germany and its further than The Netherlands.

I had queens from Cyprus sent on a Monday and they arrived on the Wednesday, delivered by Parcel Force this side.

 

[Erichalfbee]

That was rather naughty...Millet.
Mind you...we only have your word for it...Ericalfbee!

No....I never lie
It surprised me, I was convinced I would be suffering today.
I did take Apis Mel immediately afterwards. Maybe I'm just getting immune...who knows?

Well, Stan and I are just back from putting one mean Q- colony (Virgin obviously never made it back from mating) packed with pollen on top of another equally mean Q+ colony.
The Q+ colony on the bottom had chewed UP through the newspaper. Never had that happen....had to quickly add more on top, so they've got heaven knows how many layers!
That's the two splits back together again.
One really mean hive now. I'll let them settle a while then unite that lot to a nice hive.

 

[B+.]

I had queens from Cyprus sent on a Monday and they arrived on the Wednesday, delivered by Parcel Force this side.

I don't know what happened. Track and trace said they left the Netherlands at 23:23 on Tuesday 19th but they weren't registered as arriving in the UK until 07:48 on Monday 25th. They were delivered at 10:09 this morning.
Is this what we can expect from Brexit?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I don't know what happened. Track and trace said they left the Netherlands at 23:23 on Tuesday 19th but they weren't registered as arriving in the UK until 07:48 on Monday 25th. They were delivered at 10:09 this morning.
Is this what we can expect from Brexit?

That and industrial action at the ports last week

 

[Tremyfro]

No....I never lie
It surprised me, I was convinced I would be suffering today.
I did take Apis Mel immediately afterwards. Maybe I'm just getting immune...who knows?

Well, Stan and I are just back from putting one mean Q- colony (Virgin obviously never made it back from mating) packed with pollen on top of another equally mean Q+ colony.
The Q+ colony on the bottom had chewed UP through the newspaper. Never had that happen....had to quickly add more on top, so they've got heaven knows how many layers!
That's the two splits back together again.
One really mean hive now. I'll let them settle a while then unite that lot to a nice hive.

Oh Brave work! I hope you made sure your suit was zipped up well. I always put some bodge tape across the top of the zip. I have two nucs...both lovely bees but we haven't seen queens yet nor eggs in either of them. So some decisions will have to be made at the next inspection.

 

[Goran]

82 remaining qcells.. More than I need.. The one good thing about lack of time is.. what I would do with queens I could produce.. phew..

 

[Obee1]

In the process of moving my large colony off the patio table and getting them onto the brick plinth behind a tree. Tricky manouvre. Needed something to stand them on that wasn't too much lower than the table so used my 14 x 12 Queen castle. Whole thing looks very precarious but was too heavy for me really. Couldn't face rebuilding so will move it the next stage on weekend with help from OH.

 

[chrisb]

The travel documents said surface mail so they were probably stuck in a lorry on the French side of the tunnel.
The poor things looked as though they were on their last legs. They seemed to perk up when their cages were sitting on the top bars of the nucs though.
It takes 4 days when I get consignments of bees from Germany and its further than The Netherlands.

I rely do hope they make it through, please keep us up to date with how they get on

 

[Obee1]

Just drove 7 miles to my out apiary - to discover I forgot the smoker. Drove back to get it. Started again. My one buckfast queen out of three just bought still not laying. No sign of any queen and I had made them hopelessly q- prior to introducing the mated queen. Now 28 days since I put her in there. They were very arsey. I have a newly mated queen I made from my fave Bucky so did a newspaper join of the two colonies. Put queen on top of queenless. Checked queen not left on OMF. After I finished there were bees returning from foraging on the abandoned OMF so I took pity and shook em into their colony on new stand. Then noticed the queen under the OMF! Good job I looked! Marked her blue/green combo and popped her into top box of the join.

Almost a disaster!

 

[B+.]

drove 7 miles to my out apiary - to discover I forgot the smoker. Drove back to get it.

I own one but rarely even take it with me. A complete waste of money

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

82 remaining qcells.. More than I need.. The one good thing about lack of time is.. what I would do with queens I could produce.. phew..

Nice acceptance rate. What do you graft with? And onto raw royal jelly, dilute royal jelly or...?

 

[Robbo8916]

I own one but rarely even take it with me. A complete waste of money

I find smoking mine tends to rile them up quite a bit. Even just a light puff. So I light it but it is often just puffing away in the corner. I only use it to get the girls back down while I quickly whip the hive back together. I don't even take it near the nuc they are such lovely quiet bees (most of the time).

Although I did wonder if it would have helped on Friday when they were in a really bad mood. But hey ho, they made their point and so I put them back together and spent two days being practically unable to walk.

Anyway, had a wander down to the apiary today, bees still going like the clappers on the clover, balsam and willowherb by all accounts. Still some quite dark yellow pollen coming in which I can only assume is (yuk) Ragwort.

Been chatting to the wildlife trust about the plans for the solar farm and maybe placing some hives on their other reserves (fenced in of course). This is all reliant on me actually managing to help my bees survive the winter. Keeping an eye on the nuc, will move them into the 6 frame box next week but if the balsam etc keeps flowing like it is at the moment they may even have to go into a full sized hive before the winter.

Still wondering how I managed to get such an eventful first year lol

 

[Tremyfro]

Obee1.... I could begin to hate you.....the height of that hive and you are complaining..I say you only have yourself to blame! Your bees enjoy the easy life...nectar and pollen everywhere.....
However...never one to complain....I think my bees are getting on the bus to Cardiff today...they are very busy! Still only a few white backs seen so must be the blackberries, fireweed and definitely ragwort...deep yellow pollen.
Inspection this afternoon cheered me up immensely. The two nucs I was concerned about both have laying queens...large patches of brood. One queen is enormous...the biggest I have seen so far. A lovely golden and russet abdomen. The other nuc has the black queen in it...much smaller and difficult to spot...ha ha but I marked them both white...so no hiding now...little Black Queen from across the Bristol Channel who escaped from the Greatgreengreasyriverarea...to infiltrate my carniolans.
I decided to remove the supers from two of my beehaus...I have put them in the second half of the long hive continuous with the brood area...after the honey stores. In the third long hive I added further large frames for stores and left the supers on. It will speed up inspection considerably since we will no longer have to move the super first...and the QE is out as it is no longer needed. I like this idea...it will be interesting to see how they organise it.

 

[Tom Jay]

Discovered I needed to do AS immediately. At least three sealed QCs in a teeming colony in deep National with two supers. I had risked leaving it longer than nine days as the Lady has already swarmed this year. She's my really late emergency queen mated end August last year. Her original colony is teeming, now with her daugher laying well and two heavy supers, her second colony on deep brood frames is eight frames of brood and tons of store and also two heavy supers, and I've just put her in another National brood box - Standard, that's all I had, and not a full complement of frames as I only had seven spare - with her own supers above, and a new super on the deep box which is jammed teeming with house bees and all that brood to emerge. How much laying is that!

PS I have only ever done AS by lifting a frame of brood - or even two - with no QCs into the new box with the queen. As these were deep frames and I have no spare, I caught the queen in my clip and transferred her into the standard box that way. I hope she'll be OK with no brood at all for now. Her flying bees were of course pouring in in squadrons as soon as I had the empty box in its place.

 

[Briarfield]

Ouch.

I got four bees in my veil...not just bees but four from the "Hive from Hell"

My fault, didn't do the zip up properly.....Unfortunately I didn't get any of them before they got me. The worst one is on the nose!!!

You have my sympathy. I have the colony (the danger of doing public service and swarm collecting?) from HELL and four or five found a hole in my veil.

 

[Glenviewbee]

Closed down all the entrances as there is definitely more wasp activity around the hives. All the colonies are pretty strong, but they do seem to be getting a bit arsey and defensive which you would expect at this time.

 

[Goran]

Nice acceptance rate. What do you graft with? And onto raw royal jelly, dilute royal jelly or...?

I work with jenter kit and always have high number of layed eggs and following that afterwards when place cells with larvae on bars ( which contain also "colostrum"/ 1st transparent royal jelly they taste), they are in high rate grown ( I think I placed 95 or 96 cells and 82 remain ( one also I damaged when they built comb on qcell..).
Today I distributed first " batch", tomorrow 2nd. I hope I'll manage to finish it..

Forgot.. I feed with honey until they cap qcells..

 

[B+.]

I rely do hope they make it through, please keep us up to date with how they get on

What a difference 24 hours can make!
I really didn't think they would make it yesterday, but, this evening they were looking very chipper when I checked their cages. The bees had clearly accepted them and were feeding them through the bars. They are clipped II queens but I put a queen excluder under the brood box as a precaution until she starts laying
Incidentally, I plan to II two daughters of 6-1-1037-2015 with drone semen from the same queen (18-26-7268-2013) as these queens were inseminated from tomorrow (I planned to do it yesterday but things have been a bit hectic recently).

 

[Erichalfbee]