Confessions Thread

[EK.Bee]

As a bad beekeeper in the past week I have:

Forgotten to take smoker to the apiary & thought I might get away without it because the sun was shining :D,
T'was OK till got to the bottom box where the foragers were concentrated. This reminded me of the benefits of smoke
for once stung on both knees that pheremone enticement make others join the party. No quick smokey puff
available Ended up doing a sort of strange shaking the bees from the knees jig & then trying to rub crushed plant juice on
the kill zone to deprive them of a becon for further assault :rolleyes: Deep joy !

I finally admitted defeat & went back for the smoker & put neoprene pads over my throbing kness to ward off further attention
I did not note that this altered the length of my trouser bottoms ever so slightly (this was to have further consequence)

l have a "playful hive" which in the previous week managed to crawl into my hood through through velcro flap & in general
leave me looking like a porcupine ( I'm sure they bit their way through solid velcro such is their
determination). They also like to cling to my veil in such quantities as to blot out the sun & air condition my face. Their speciality
is the mass pounce,cling & sting (I requeened these hellions this week with a nuc & newspaper after finally conceeding they were making life
too difficult). Last week two squirrels were also civilian casualties in the melee ,it's not been good, honestly

Anyway on removal of a QX which I'd used over the newspaper my left ankle wellie filled with inquisitive bees hell bent on the destruction of said ankle :D

Short wellies banned for this hive for several weeks to come!

Directly due to abandonment after the man & squirrels vs bees massed braw l also managed to lose a swarm onto a sapling
I found this to my surprise at around 9pm ish (when I'd gone to fix a bait box to a post)

Although I didn't have gloves I still had my beesuit on. In the naive belief that swarms are largely docile, decided to shake them into a
handy Nuc Box there & then, cue multiple stings on the hand holding the nuc box (lesson learned :))

On Friday through clumsiness I lost two virgin queens to the stratosphere whilst trying to entice them into plastic Q cages :o

Lost my car keys in the woods returning from the apiary after a dusktime nuc feed (maybe the squirrels in a revenge pickpocket incident I'm not sure?)

I feel others out there might benefit from sharing their mishaps?

[prakel]

I feel others out there might benefit from sharing their mishaps?

I have two doubts:

1. I doubt that I'd benefit from sharing, but even if you could convince me to the contrary
2. I doubt that Gavin has enough server space.....

[mbc]

"playful hive", lol

[gavin]

LOL to the whole lot, literally, on my way back from a trip out to see Murray's queen rearing operation with the Glasgow Beekeepers yesterday. Hope I was supposed to find it so funny. Glad I was parked in a lay-by at the time.

Hope the squirrels were greys? You might get a grant from SNH.

My own incidents are numerous. Starsky and Hutch-style diving out of the car, me and my mentor mate, when the rope used to tie boxes together coming back from the heather showed its weaknesses on a country road bend. Not quite coming back but more nipping down the hill to head for a well-earned pint in the Glen Isla Hotel. The dropping-the-trousers incident in the orchard (to get a bee out). I'd forgottten that the site was overlooked (and often watched) from the comfort of the country pile where the owner lives.

Plenty of server space left :).

[gavin]

Two suggestions in case you've missed them, EKBee.

- I pile the boxes to the side (preferably with some sort of cover on) and go through the bottom box as quickly as I can, before bees move from the upper boxes to join the fray, and before the returning foragers bolster the attack force.

- particularly playful hives can be shifted sideways by a good few feet (take an unsuspecting friend to help carry it, or even disassemble and reassemble the stack) and a floor, box and roof left in place to give the more active bees somewhere to gather out of harm's way for an hour or so.

[Calum]

Playful hive, brilliant!

Beekeeping in the nip again (or nearly)
Was at the bees in surf shorts over the weekend when the a summer storm passed by... I was using a water spray bottle instead of smoke... was uncomfortable till the weather passed - bees burrowing like bunnie around my shorts...
lesson learnt - be aware of the weather.

oh and never use non hofmann frames (frame slid out of the plastic lug i was holding and fell on the floor - horrible mess - not one agitated bee strangely)
EK.Bee sounds like a wetsuit or dry suit would be a good idea for going to you bees... Or a diving bell?

[Emma]

There's something strangely cute about the way they burrow, so, so passionately, through clothing towards skin... Sometimes, when my bees condescend to notice me and become "playful", I regret sealing up the ends of my trousers with thick, furry leg warmers above my bare feet.
"Playful"... that one really does deserve to enter the language :)
My confessions so far this week?
Opening up a hive and discovering a sealed queen cell. (_But_ _I'd_ _Checked_!!!) Then doing a belated A.S. on that colony, towards the end of the day. They responded the next morning by swarming the queen back to her old brood nest, on its new site.
Oops! Fascinating. Second time I've seen that: I'm still trying to understand what prompts it.
I was lucky: I found a chance to retrieve both mistakes. The ones who took flight are now drawing new comb enthusiastically in their new box, having got the urge to convert to liquid & gaseous form out of their systems (I hope!).
Off out to the apiary again now - a chance to completely mess up with two more colonies :)

[Neils]

I definitely didn't inspect some particularly vile hives of mine this week with my veil not fully zipped up. And I absolutely didn't do it on two separate occasions. so in addition to being stung more in the past week than in the last 6 months combined I also took a few to my chin and neck.

Now if I can just get a couple of queens sorted out pronto...

[The Drone Ranger]

Making up mini nucs today had them all lined up, put virgin in first one but then got a text message and before I realised what I had done I put another virgin in the same nuc Grrrrr...

[Jon]

Someone will aways phone at the worst possible time. Clipping a queen or when you have supers and frames strewn around you.
Best switched off of left where you can't hear it.

[fatshark]

Confession time … checked through half a dozen nucs arranged in as a 'circle split' … QC's went in sufficiently long time ago that they should be out and mated by now. The first one was desperately short of bees and clearly being robbed out. I gave the box a cursory look over, convinced myself it was being robbed out, so moved it aside and shook all the bees out. Returned to the stand to recover the roof which I'd laid aside …

… there on the hive stand was a Q, just about to take off. Which she did. A couple of ineffective swipes later and I decided some quiet swearing was probably necessary.

What d'you bet she returns finally to the nuc on other side of the hive stand and slaughters the laying Q … ?

[The Drone Ranger]

Put this Apidea away in a cardboard box with a bunch of Keilers
On the floor of my bee shed so maybe not too smart of me

2307

2308

2309

And all because the lady mouse loves Apidea


Yes that pile of gravel inside is the front of the feeder compartment munched up

[busybeephilip]

Ouch !!

Thats what has happened to a batch of my apideas when I got a bad mouse /rat infestation in my old falling apart bee shed.It prompted me to abandon apideas and go for the wooden single frame type with glass sides. The logic being that mousey wont find it so easy to destroy them. I'm slowly building up the numbers and so far they seem to work ok using a 4 pint feeder cup full to fill them.

Jon has seen one of my earlier efforts but then he's a dedicated apidea man, very similar to this https://youtu.be/6oKQNnB-JlU but I use a side feeder and removable top bar with frame attached

There are advantages and disadvantages, they are for primarily for mating queens not to be maintained as a small colony for a long time like an apidea, you can take mated queens out and replace with a cell or virgin while allowing some brood rearing to take place provided there is enough bees remaining to ensure survival, the feeder can be replaced. A small disc entrance with exclude option can be used after queen mated to avoid any absconding

[prakel]

I'd love to hear more about the single frame boxes in use Phillip if you can fit it in somewhere.

There are of course wooden (http://www.honingraat.eu/en/198-breeding-nuc)apidea type boxes offered by a few companies -but I expect they'd cause discontent in the extreme-insulator camp where they keep bees with maths instead of common sense.

[The Drone Ranger]

HI Phillip
That one in the pics had a wooden float as you can see and the feeder had been used with syrup so it must have been impregnated with sweetness
You can see how the little bandit made the entrance bigger to get in

When I tried overwintering double apideas it was a hard Winter and they didn't make it Trouble was like you the rats found them and absolutely demolished them to get the comb
That was an expensive lesson
Keilers are a bit bigger and I brought a couple through on double boxes on a high shelf this Winter

I'm like Prakel and really interested in your mating nucs
The video is good unfortunately I would need some German lessons to get the most from it
On first reading I thought 4 pints blimey thats a lot of bees
Then I twigged you said just the cup from a 4 pint feeder lol!
I just cut a 1 pint plastic milk carton in half at an angle and mark 150ml
That gives you a thin walled flexible scoop with a little handle :)

[busybeephilip]

I'd love to hear more about the single frame boxes in use Phillip if you can fit it in somewhere.

There are of course wooden (http://www.honingraat.eu/en/198-breeding-nuc)apidea type boxes offered by a few companies -but I expect they'd cause discontent in the extreme-insulator camp where they keep bees with maths instead of common sense.

I'll try an take some pictures this evening when I'm home. i've seen the wooden apideas and if you buy a load from that site it works out much the same as poly apideas as the postage does not increase till you get into larger numbers of boxes. I'd thought of making some but they are even more fiddley that what I'm using at present and I value my fingers when it comes to playing with table saws

[busybeephilip]

here is some pics23102311231223132314

hope this works ok cos i had to reduce them from 2MB each

The frame holder consists of a box with 3 upright sides and a floor piece which I cut out in bulk, I use a jig to align them and screw the plexiglass sides on. The lid is attached to the frame so the lid and frame can be extracted/withdrawn as one piece with bees and inserted into a new box containing candy if needed. Each house hold 2 nucs. In this example a marked V queen was introduced after wetting through the top plug hole 12 hours ago (this morning at 7am now 9-20 pm). In this case you can see the queen lying dead in the bottom of the box. If this was an apidea you would have no idea if the queen had been accepted or not, and you might be waiting a week before realizing the queen was dead. Usually there is some badgering of the queen but they then leave her alone after a few minutes,

[busybeephilip]

cant post image of ho2315use for some reason?

got it now

The other thing i forgot to mention, the feeder chamber is the same dimension as a ribena juice packet, to if you want to feed syrup this option is available making sure you provide a float in the syrup

[The Drone Ranger]

Thanks Phillip
I can spend the Winter months trying to make some :)

[HJBee]

Thought this was apt for confessions thread, since we all commit this inferred sin
http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/07/02/8a5ce37f3a98f5872bce450dacdfcacc.jpg

[The Drone Ranger]

Because there is some chat about poly hives I have to confess my poly hive blunder.
First due to incompetence I had to get a swarm from near the top of a conifer using a ladder,a box,and a lot of butt clenching circus style balancing stunts.
They went into a closed up poly nuc till the next day.
I put some syrup in the slot when I moved the entrance disk to open and left them for a couple of days.
I had passed them a couple of times and thought "not many bees flying"
When I finally checked the entrance hole had a skin of polystyrene from poor moulding.
Stuck hive tool in bees came out phew sorted!
Few days later went to give them a top up found hundreds of bees in the food slot still gnawing away making their own entrance/exit. Up at the top outer edge where the plastic cover board sits.
They were half way though
Once I showed them back into the hive proper they stopped work on the new entrance luckily

[The Drone Ranger]

I should have confessed the disappearing cupkit frame /saga
I actually bought another one when I gave up looking
I took it out of a hive where I had been using it
Bees were too interested in it so I decided to put it somewhere safe
Then forgot where that safe place was
I searched all the possibles in the bee shed
I went through the hive it had been in twice, convinced I had missed it
I searched round all the other hives. Had I started back with it and put it next one of them?
Finally after ordering a new one (and a backup in case I lost that as well) I went back to the original hive
Sitting in the long grass close by was an old plywood nuc (handy to plonk spare frames in)
Sure enough the blasted cupkit cassette and frame had been put in there for "safekeeping"
Never let your right hand know what the left is doing apparently

[The Drone Ranger]

Well it helps to confess I'm told :)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fi2byjXUPQ&feature=youtu.be

[gwizzie]

Well it helps to confess I'm told :)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fi2byjXUPQ&feature=youtu.be

YEpeeee a film marker in the making :p

David Attenborough eat your heart out :D

keep up the great work DR ;)

[fatshark]

Interest in my trousers has dropped off ... classic ;)

[The Drone Ranger]

Sad but true :)

Those waterproof trousers are from Aldi
They were really cheap completely bee proof and lightweight
When they come in again it's worth getting a pair

Also I think its Sunday they are doing reading glasses with led's built in
Might be useful for grafting (haven't seen them so can't be sure)

[Greengage]

When I got my first Nuc, the man said just open the entrance they will be grand, had large group standing around, let them out it was a stampede to see who got out the gate first, numerous stings plenty of swear words, blaming me thought you said they were quiet bees.
Know a woman who got one into her bra that was fun but not for her. In the first month had two swarms, killed on queen and lost another, think we have come to an understanding at last, ill feed you when food is scarce and administer health care, i wont burn you with smoke and you dont sting me Agreed.

[The Drone Ranger]

Ha ha its sometimes comical the things that go wrong 🐝
I gave a nuc to a beekeeping friend who lost her bees
I said just put them where the hive will be going open them and push off
She opened the nuc and no bees came out
After a while she got worried and had a look in the entrance
A bee flew out like a rocket and stung her in the eyelid
She went to her kids concert that night looking like Quasimodo's mother

Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

[prakel]

Ha ha its sometimes comical the things that go wrong ��

A good time to recommend May Abbott's book 'Me and the Bee'. It's out of print and is often quite expensive when it does appear on the second hand market. But it's well worth grabbing if a copy ever comes into reach. Brilliant book.