What did you do in the Apiary today?

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Quickly removed Amitraz strips from farm apiary, bees well clustered ranging from 4 to 7 seams all look ok for stores.
 
Plans for tomorrow to remove apivar and OA strips from 37 colonys.
Also weighing all colonys and topping up fondant.
On some of the colonys that where fed syrup first I've used a QX above frames then fondant parchment paper under and above the fondant and a reversible CB insulation etc.
Removed strips and fed more fondant,
Nucs to do next .
Colonys that went to the Heather are looking really strong :).
 
Great day, two calm hives and a fresh frost. Crown board off and removed API strips, no droppage visible.
Hive 1. Missing api strip can’t find it so need to revisit. 9 frames of bee’s standard brood and really heavy. For First year. Still taking down syrup and fondant

Hive 2. Dummy down both sides with 50mm celotex 6 frames of bee’s on 14x12 . For First year. Hoping I didn’t catch the queen with the celotex. still taking down syrup and now on 2 kilo of fondant.

oh the bonus NO STINGS! New bee suit !
 
First frost here Thursday night. Apivar strips removed. Empty rapid feeders removed. Crown boards removed. Fondant cosy”s fitted. With both hives now at around 20 kilos of stores my plan was to maybe add fondant in a month or 2 (fondant cosy can hold 2.5kg block of fondant) just to be on the safe side along with hefting every couple of weeks.
 
Hefted all four hives yesterday, all slightly heavier, bar one which had dropped by 0.25
 
Spent the morning cleaning queen excluders. What a thankless task! Only had 20 to do. What do folk with hundreds do? 😱
wait until the winter so the wax and propolis goes brittle, quick pass of a scraper gets most of the wax off then a bit more scraping for the frames, I then give a quick pass with my flamer (not one of these puny blowtorches), the flame is big enough to burn the wax off without heating the wires excessively (before someone whitters on about the wires distorting)
 
wait until the winter so the wax and propolis goes brittle, quick pass of a scraper gets most of the wax off then a bit more scraping for the frames, I then give a quick pass with my flamer (not one of these puny blowtorches), the flame is big enough to burn the wax off without heating the wires excessively (before someone whitters on about the wires distorting)

I'm not on your scale but I see it as one of the few tasks I can legitimately procrastinate over doing until later in the year!
 
12C today after 5C yesterday. No rain.
So fed min nucs fondant,
 
Generally we don't clean our excluders, they are left pinned to the underside of the roofs, we use mostly the white plastic Swienty version, I purchased around five hundred for pennies a few years ago.
 
Back
Top