Last of the apideas winter 2013-2014

[Jon]

I was just looking over the thread I started last September (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?1059-Last-of-the-Apideas) where I had 15 apideas and had high hopes of overwintering a few.
The last ones succumbed in a cold spell at the end of January.:mad:
I also lost most of the nucs I was overwintering. Total disaster but I was in good company as most of the local beekeepers had very heavy losses. On an average winter I would expect to get a few apideas through to a point where I could find a use for an extra queen in the spring.

At the moment I have 10 Apideas going strong, 8 of them with 2013 grafted queens which would be worth using, and 2 with older queens which were taken from colonies which were requeened. Two of the apideas are triple units and the rest are on doubles. All have been well fed and are heavy. I looked in a couple last week and queens are still laying.

There were a few interesting suggestions in the thread from last year such as overwintering apideas or mini nucs on top of a full colony. Pete-L is the man who does this routinely I think.

Anyone else got a few queens left in mini nucs? (Those double white boxes MBC, that's cheating, too big!) If I had enough bees I would have all these queens in nucs but I didn't have enough spare bees.

[The Drone Ranger]

I have three
Well 2 in a tower of apideas each and 1 in a stack of 2 wanhotz with extra(super?) box
I would have given them away but they were so late I couldn't tell if they would lay or not

[Black Comb]

I have one on a double.
But it's got nosema!

[Pete L]

Put the last eight wooden quad mini nuc boxes on top of strong double brood colonies yesterday,they over winter really well this way, central heating from below.

Just have ten poly mini nucs to place on top of strong colonies, all of the crown boards i use are kind of multi purpose, a deep and narrow lip, a two inch entrance on the deep side, the mini nucs can be placed on these with their entrance facing this side entrance, then a layer of bubble wrap around the top and sides of the nuc, this is then surrounded by a box and filled with wood shavings, topped by an insulated roof, the colony below benefits from loads of top insulation, and the mini nuc gets central heating from below.

[Jon]

You got those pics of yours handy Pete? I remember seeing something on beekeeping forum.

[Pete L]

Hi Jon, I will find some of them later, and work out how to post them on here.

[Blackcavebees]

You got those pics of yours handy Pete? I remember seeing something on beekeeping forum.

I've a Template one in my shed (Peter's design) if you want a look at it on Monday night - hoping to come up with Billy R

[fatshark]

Wasps did for most of my mini nucs this autumn so I got the last of my queens mated in 3 (National) frame boxes. However, I have one Kieler tucked up in my greenhouse with a tube to the outside. This worked so well last year I'd intended to do 10 like this … then the wasps arrived :(

[Jon]

Great activity today with a slight rise in temperature.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haZ5NpORJHM&list=UUue8V6a4fIYZX7rf9Pn1qLw

[fatshark]

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/11/17/u5e7a7ap.jpg
Somewhere under that lot are a load of agaves, a single Kieler with an entrance tube to the outside and a temperature sensor.

Cold snap predicted this week.


--
fatshark

[The Drone Ranger]

Still got the three I had one extra hodgepodge one with a little white poly swienty nuc on top but it just croaked
Is there more than one entrance tube Fatshark ?
What does the temperature sensor control ?

[Jon]

What does the temperature sensor control ?
My guess is temperature!!

[The Drone Ranger]

Oh just a heater
I though it might open a valve to let the bees fly above 10C

[fatshark]

Temperature sensor ... not controller. It tells me what the temperature is under that lot. The greenhouse has a single 100W anti-frost heater - under the shelving everything is standing on - and I don't trust the temperature it cuts in at. The sensor is one of those radio ones from Maplin (£5 annual sale) so I can read the temperature from my kitchen while drinking beer ... if it looks too low I can nip out and wind the thermostat thingy down a bit so the heater cuts in. Usually after a couple of cold ones - evenings, not beers - it'll be set correctly to maintain it at no colder than about 1 C.

I use the same radio temperature sensor in my honey warming cabinet. It works a treat.

[Jon]

You going to make some tequila from those agaves?

[Mellifera Crofter]

Somewhere under that lot are a load of agaves ...

What are agaves, Fatshark? I Googled it and all I got were images of a plant that looks like an aloe. Is that what you have underneath all of that?
Kitta

PS: I've again made the mistake of thinking I've reached the end of a thread. If I've read ahead and seen your post, Jon, I'd have looked up, 'How do you make tequila' and found the answer. Sorry.
K

[Jon]

I used to cycle past vast plantations of Agave Azul in Oaxaca State, Mexico.
I would meet trucks filled to the brim with Agave cores. The outer leaves get discarded.
There is a rougher version of tequila you can make as well called Mescal.
I will be sticking with my tried and trusted apple wine. None of your fancy dan cactus for me.

[Adam]

On thread, I've got one mini-nuc (out of one) that's OK - it's about the size of a double apidea - 8 frames from Swi-Bine mini-nucs side-by-side in a 1" thick wooden box with insulation on top. I've also got a wooden mini-nuc with 10 140mm x 140mm frames in it; these were flying well at the weekend. I'm not too hopeful that either will get through winter but you never know.

Jon, with your video of Apideas next to each other, they are quite close, so do you have issues of bees flying into the wrong hives or have you seen bees move from a queenless one to a queenright stock?

(The reason why I ask is that I have seen bees clear off from a q- mini-nuc and stuff the one next door and very close with too many bees).

[fatshark]

Thanks to Adam for bringing this back to life … I'll promptly take it off topic again to answer the Q from Mellifera Crofter. Many of my agaves are A. montana, which are supposed to be one of the hardiest, being able to withstand snow. But the roots need to be really well drained and I daren't keep mine outside. All of mine are grown from seed. The biggest are about 2' in all directions … down to 2" high. Moving them requires thick gloves and safety specs(for the biggest, the small ones are easy!).

This isn't me standing next to one …

1905

Normal service will now be resumed. My one mini-nuc in the greenhouse appears to be in rude health, with bees flying at every opportunity. There are several strong 5 frame nucs nearby and whenever they're out and about the mini-nuc is too. It's a Kieler and with a simple sheet of plastic under the lid I can easily lift prise it open and replace the frame feeder full of fondant without bees escaping.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks Fatshark. That's certainly an alien-looking plant and nothing like the aloes I know. I searched around on the internet and saw that they come in a wonderful variety. Interesting.
Kitta

[Jon]

Jon, with your video of Apideas next to each other, they are quite close, so do you have issues of bees flying into the wrong hives or have you seen bees move from a queenless one to a queenright stock?

They are not usually so close. I move the last batch home where I can keep an eye on them. I don't really worry about drifting.

Fatshark.
I dug this one out from my photo collection.
This one is about 9000 feet above sea level on the slopes of Popocatépetl.

1906

[Jon]

Enough talk of Agaves, back to the Apideas.
I did a bit of work on mine yesterday.
I still have 10 alive but a couple are definitely too weak to overwinter so they will only last until the first cold spell if they even make it that far.
Several are packed with bees and stores so I have high hopes for these ones.
I removed the feeders, which were in the top box, from most of them and replaced them with a block of fondant inside a plastic bag, about 750g
The fondant sits on a piece of correx with a slot in it to allow bees access from below.
The problem with apidea feeders is isolation starvation.
The bees need to be right beside the fondant.

This is the hi-tec equipment for making the support for the fondant.

1923 1922 1921

Obviously, need to rip open the plastic through the slots

[Jon]

Spoke too soon.

Make that 8 alive rather than ten.
I went to add a feeder to another apidea and noticed it was far weaker than expected.
This one had an older marked queen I had removed from a colony in September during requeening.
This was the problem - supersedure gone wrong.

1920

There was no sign of a virgin queen so I shook them out in front of the weakest one and crossed my fingers.
One of the other weak ones had succumbed as well.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi jon
I have 2 only now but I see the giant magnets in post 22 could save them

[Jon]

Scientists have proven that the correx magnet is more efficient than the magic crystal in promoting bee health and wellbeing.
Got to get your feng shui right or they could grow up with the wrong sort of wings on them.

[Trog]

I can't see no magnets ... one of us should have gone to Sp*cs*avers ... ;)

Jon .. how can you be sure they were scientists? Were they wearing white coats and glasses? As we all know, only scientists in white coats are, er, scientifically proven to be scientists.

I've not tried growing feng-shui. Is it a good plant for nectar or best used young in a stir-fry?

[Jon]

white coats and glasses are good indicators of scientific rigour but the clincher is a clipboard.

[Trog]

And a reassuring male voiceover quoting statistics ...

[fatshark]

87% of statistics are made up ... it says so on my clipboard.

[Trog]

In that case, can I say that 99.9% of bees prefer lady beekeepers? I did a survey and 99.9% of the five bees I asked buzzed in a very positive manner.

[The Drone Ranger]

Mrs Drone Ranger doesn't agree with your respondents as the bees she meets like to fly into her hair and sting her
They prefer a polished landing strip like my bonce

[Jon]

Still have 8 apideas alive.
Starting to get optimistic that a few might make it.
The forecast for January is for wet and windy weather rather than cold weather which should be in their favour.

[Jon]

Been away for just over 3 weeks. Back home next Saturday.
Looks like the weather at home has been wet and windy with no really low temperatures so I have fingers crossed that a few of the stronger apideas should still be hanging in there. They wont have starved as they had plenty of stores and a lump of fondant as well. The big danger is a couple of consecutive days of sub zero temperatures.

[gavin]

The big danger is a couple of consecutive days of sub zero temperatures.

And that isn't going to happen before you're home next weekend. Glad you've survived all the partying!

[fatshark]

Disappointingly large pile of dead bees on the landing board outside one of me greenhoused Kielers. They weren't there at the weekend.
1954
Not sure what's happened here … failed absconding, workers caught out in a rain shower/cold snap? I've no idea what the weather was doing yesterday as I was in my office from dawn 'til after dark. There are still bees in the Kieler and they still have at least one feeder pretty-much full of fondant. This is a significant proportion of the Kieler contents so I'm not hopeful this one will make it through.

No apparent mass exodus of bees from the row of nucs adjacent to this entrance, so it's obviously something that's gone amiss just with this box.

[Mellifera Crofter]

It looks as though there was a stampede to get back in, and then the entrance got blocked! Can that happen?
Kitta

[Jon]

Might just be spring cleaning. Some bees are happy to leave a layer of bodies inside and some aren't.
Are there still signs of life?
I still have 5 and a couple were bringing in pollen yesterday.

[fatshark]

Well, I checked them and I'm none the wiser. The entrance wasn't blocked, but there were a lot of dead bees inside the mini-nuc. A few corpses with DWV as well. I found the queen and a pathetic amount of live - and seemingly healthy - bees, but no brood. I suspect this one is definitely not going to make it. I'll just leave them be for now … shaking them out might transfer unhealthy bees to the nearby colonies and I'm certainly not going to boost them by piratising another colony. These looked OK ten days ago and have suddenly gone downhill … with no obvious environmental cause (no sudden cold snaps etc.).

[susbees]

Two apideas into winter, two still going. Doubles with fondant in a third body, side by side with a bit of insulation all round. Quite exposed position. Up that apiary one colony looks to have gone into winter without a viable queen, rest coping. Other three apiaries hanging on in there despite altitude/rain/rain/rain/wind/more wind. One deadout of large heavy colony in January - no nosema, tiny drop from oxalic. Conclusion wasps - unbelievable really. Had been several active wasp nests in that area in the autumn but no trouble then.

[nellyp]

With it being fairly sudden Fatshark and DWV visible it may not be beyond the realms that a virus overload has taken its toll ?

[Jon]

The apidea I wrote about in this thread from November (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?1501-Dead-bees-from-apidea) is still going strong in spite of virus and a floor covered in dead bees. I tidied it up and transferred the bees to a new clean Apidea at the time as it seems that bee paralysis virus is in part transmitted by bee faeces.