What did you do in the Apiary today?

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You have to put a disc of hard material, smaller than the stethoscope end, between it and the hive. It will transmit the sound to the diaphram.
No. You should all be using the bell rather than diaphragm anyway. When I was in med school we were taught to examine chests thoroughly to make diagnosis. These days it's just send them for a scan.
 
No. You should all be using the bell rather than diaphragm anyway. When I was in med school we were taught to examine chests thoroughly to make diagnosis. These days it's just send them for a scan.
Certainly the bell is better on horses. All I get from the diaphragm side is scratching and rustling from the coat hair. I've never tried with other animals but I'd expect the same effect.
Rectal thermometer anyone? 😀
 
SteveG informed me that one of my hives in an out-apiary we share was hefting light so I took some fondant from my shed.
A half-slab of Fondabee was reasonably soft and sticky whereas my recent purchase, and so far unused, of Apikand (Lyson: fondant with thymol, see link below) was as hard as rock. Temp 7C.
I put a slice of each on the top bars. Will be interesting to which they consume first.
https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/threa...currently-reduced-in-price.49153/#post-736652
 
All hell about to break loose....
14 + tons of chocolate, flour, yeast, sugar and any/all other waste used in the sweets making industry just delivered for destruction in Biogas plant....
Bees already starting to arrive already, less than 2km away from Black Bee apiary... aaay yay yaaay !!!
Going home early today....choc pile.jpg
 
All hell about to break loose....
14 + tons of chocolate, flour, yeast, sugar and any/all other waste used in the sweets making industry just delivered for destruction in Biogas plant....
Bees already starting to arrive already, less than 2km away from Black Bee apiary... aaay yay yaaay !!!
Going home early today....View attachment 24074
So much for bio security 😡
 
All hell about to break loose....
14 + tons of chocolate, flour, yeast, sugar and any/all other waste used in the sweets making industry just delivered for destruction in Biogas plant....
Bees already starting to arrive already, less than 2km away from Black Bee apiary... aaay yay yaaay !!!
Going home early today....View attachment 24074
Where's paulgeoffrey? He had a crop of honey made unsaleable through a skip of mint creams being left accessible to foraging bees. If he reads this he can fill in the details.🐝
 
Did lots of cutting back overgrown stuff around the apiary, buddleas, box hedging and cornus. Some bees flying and only one investigated me as it returned to the hive. It seems my work passed the quality control test. No sting.
 
This surprised me yesterday....the colour
 

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Reading about all your cleansing flights and early pollen; nothing much going to happen in my apiary today. Snowing again. Look out for the beautiful hare jumping over the stream in the garden. We have a quite a few hares up here, near the moors, lovely to see
View attachment 2021-01-23 09.46.17.mov
 
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Reading about all your cleansing flights and early pollen; nothing much going to happen in my apiary today. Snowing again. Look out for the beautiful hare jumping over the stream in the garden. We have a quite a few hares up here, near the moors, lovely to see
Really frosty here today with possible snow later. I envy you the hares😀
(Couldn’t open the attached file, unfortunately)
 
Reading about all your cleansing flights and early pollen; nothing much going to happen in my apiary today. Snowing again. Look out for the beautiful hare jumping over the stream in the garden. We have a quite a few hares up here, near the moors, lovely to see
Wow, that's beautiful.
 
Exposing tons of waste sweet possibly contaminated food to honey bees and other pollinators .
I hear you, in a perfect world, this would not happen,,,, But we are far from perfect.

But their is always more to the story that just Bees and other pollinators.
Firstly, this is in a farming district with fairly large properties. Being agricultural and worked lands we have/had very few wild bee colonies due to limited suitable structures.... The farm in question has 4 wild colonies that I know of. (The rest are removed from structures if causing safety concerns with staff or interfering with farming activities... )
The 12 colonies within flying distance on this farm have been saved and given more suitable accommodations in a more suitable area.
(For both safety for themselves from predators, thief's / honey robbers as well as foraging)
No other bee keepers anywhere near this property, so "product contamination" is of no concern. (Only 2 x bee keepers in the district)
Waste if of food grade and clean of any/all contaminants.
Waste is fed in as fast as possible to an AD plant suppling us with not only a reliable power source but sustainable and green energy.
Water exiting the digester is free of any pathogens and converted in available nutrients, this is pumped directly onto pastures preventing and ground or river water contamination.
Even though efforts are made to process this waste as fast as possible, truth be told,,,, the bees are just waiting for it... as soon as bags are opened- they're on it.
This cannot be done during the night time, it must happen during the day...

Lastly, honey harvested is mostly given back to relocated colonies. (Removed from walls or structures where we cannot remove there own comb.
The rest is given to staff, family, friends and/or used by my own houshold... We have never sold honey nor have I used it as any form of payment so a slightly tainted honey has never resulted in complaints... Actually, some of the best tasting honey I have ever had came from a colony very close to this plant...

We are very proud of all our efforts here......
Bees are important, especially to us farmers who rely on them, not for making honey but to do as nature intended, to pollinate plants...
Thats why We take special care of them,,, even though this feeding process may be slightly flawed and we are responsible for several bee deaths...
The bigger picture shows we are responsible for hundreds of thousands of busy bees on our farms....
If the Nature gods ever had a judgement day, I will be standing proud and be assured that we will be in credit...

Excuse the long winded reply.... We all love bees, but the coin always has two sides... that needs to be taken into consideration....
 

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