What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Paulypaul]

Here in the Pennines, 20 miles north of Manchester, we had a generally bright warm and sunny day, my girls took full advantage. One colony bringing in lots of pollen and the rest a combination but all flying. Even though they have stores I am feeding 1-1 but at moderate levels. I make regular visits to keep an eye on their health. This has after all been a very strange year.

The few bees I've seen flying were also bringing in pollen.
I left 20kg in all my Colonies after honey harvesting, most of that is already gone. A couple of very light hives had to have big slabs of fondant put on them. Will check how much they've taken down, on Sunday.

 

[rolande]

So rewind to 2021 season, from 22 nucs 4 were selected out of 22 that through out the season showed low mite counts and really good hygienic behaviour.
Since then I’ve split the four colony’s using them to donate brood frames to make nucs headed by new season queens from either one of the four 2021 colony’s

I'd suggest that the splitting will have helped control mite levels, maybe making nucs from your other colonies and introducing your chosen queens to them would be a better all round measure.

I'm surprised that all four lines have remained good but it is still early days.

 

[Wilfredbuck]

I did an inspection today and all seems to be in order although I think they are light on stores (maybe down to robbing) - I will continue to feed them syrup at the moment. Saw the Queen and they were all quite chilled

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Up to the castle - repairs needed to the gate to the apiary - gatepost at the latch end totally rotted out at the base, and the only thing holding it together was the fact it was secured to the gate!! Bernard (the owner) had done a quick replacement as I have been without wheels for a few days but hadn't hung around too long to fully secure the rails etc, all done now, bees given another feed and a sniff of oxalic. On the way over, a large (6" diameter) rotten branch off an oak tree had snapped off in the last wind and landed across the narrow lane by me that I use as a shortcut to get to the mountain road, so on the way back it was chucked in the back of the truck and is now in the greenhouse drying out, that's next season's smoker fuel almost sorted!

 

[Chris Hancock]

I did an inspection today and all seems to be in order although I think they are light on stores (maybe down to robbing) - I will continue to feed them syrup at the moment. Saw the Queen and they were all quite chilled

The radar is showing a violent storm coming this way for Monday and Tuesday, and it's already very windy here. It may move North, but today, I took queen excluders off (though one queen seems to move from the BBB to the top, through the excluder!), put outer insulation round and then, when I saw the forecast, strapped the hives well. You might want to take that precaution, if the storm is as strong as the red colours show, which is just like those round America.....

 

[ericbeaumont]

coming this way

Would you add a location to your ID, Chris? Without it we have no idea which way is 'this'.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

nothing even slightly dramatic I can see on the forecast anyway

 

[Vanterrier]

...

 

[JamezF]

nothing even slightly dramatic I can see on the forecast anyway

Here in West Somerset we had yellow wind and yellow rain warnings for today. It has been fairly windy though the rain hasn't been that bad. Mostly it has just been very dark because of the amount of cloud. I was relieved that I managed to finish a (probable) final mow of the grass this year yesterday whilst it was still dry though.

More rain forecast for tomorrow too.

James

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

all sort of handwringing here today as well but it was nothing out of the norm, in fact it was almost pleasant at times this morning, got a little more breezy later - and it rained, nothing spectacular. I see NRW sent out flood warnings for our local rivers which is laughable really as the rain van't really be described as persistent let alone torrential, maybe someone should tell them that rivers do fill up a bit when it rains.

 

[Erichalfbee]

It's been pretty windy here. The house is being pelted with Beech nuts

 

[Chris Hancock]

Would you add a location to your ID, Chris? Without it we have no idea which way is 'this'.

Gloucestershire. Rather windy, anyway!

 

[Paulypaul]

Today, as a result of that post, I put an extra click on the wrarchet straps.

 

[Murox]

We've been relatively lucky, little to no appreciable rain, plenty of wind of course and cold but with sunshine.
Gutted to find one hive at the farm had been robbed out. A few weeks ago it was requeend and had good stores, stripped bear now and a lot of dead bees, no wasps

 

[Penninetrader]

We've been relatively lucky, little to no appreciable rain, plenty of wind of course and cold but with sunshine.
Gutted to find one hive at the farm had been robbed out. A few weeks ago it was requeend and had good stores, stripped bear now and a lot of dead bees, no wasps

As some are saying, fondant feeds but more protective against robbers, to help others could you describe hive strengh and setup in regards entrance size etc.

 

[Chris Hancock]

So far, a few branches down, but have yet to check the other trees here. I'm not sure if that was the storm on the radar shown to me, or if that has been pushed back by those winds from the NE. I will ask what the programme was that I was shown.

 

[Chris Hancock]

As some are saying, fondant feeds but more protective against robbers, to help others could you describe hive strengh and setup in regards entrance size etc.

With regard to robbers- I have had hives destroyed by wasps in previous years, but only the smaller colonies. On those, I now have an entrance block with two small holes each big enough for a drone to get through, and the weak colonies have not had wasps inside. On the other hand, the feeder with syrup attracted the wasps and they have actually chewed a small hole around the joint! They are immediately attracted by syrup, but even in nucs, they don't seem to find fondant as easily. It's getting cold for syrup, now, so the feeders will be off and fondant on top.

 

[Chris Hancock]

Thar radar I was shown was Windy.com , today it shows the worst of the storm went south into the channel. There's another in the Atlantic but the winds look as if that will be blown south. Hopefully, we will have a bit of calm for a while!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

noticed that one of the patio chairs outside the cottage next door had fallen over

 

[Murox]

As some are saying, fondant feeds but more protective against robbers, to help others could you describe hive strengh and setup in regards entrance size etc.

Certainly. wooden 14x12 sitting on a partially meshed under-floor entrance, about 15cm of access. Prior to requeening the hive was rammed full of stores, mainly fondant as it was used to create nucs earlier in the season. Numbers were probably on the low side and in retrospect I should have A) put them in a nuc but I had none. and B) made the switch earlier as where I am the weather turns on a sixpence. There was no syrup on the hive, just a small block of fondant, I had removed some frames of stores , provided a couple of drawn empties and dummied it down to 8 frames.
There are four other hives and a nuc dotted around all of which had heavy syrup on at he time.
At first I thought they had gone off with the new queen, but the messed up stripped out comb, quantity of corpses and the cleaned out plastic from the fondant made me think otherwise. **** happens, I just didn't expect it to happen to me.