todays news

[gavin]

Another carrier bag of sugar bought ....

You need some of those frugal Celtic queens Jon is raising by the barrow-load.

[Jon]

None mated yet Gav!
I put a kilo of fondant on a few last week but I extracted about 10 supers at the start of June.
Always risky to extract early but if the weather is bad through July there will be no honey crop this year.

[Neils]

You need some of those frugal Celtic queens Jon is raising by the barrow-load.

Doubt it would make much difference, the only hive that came out of winter at full strength has more than enough food. The artificial swarms have been on syrup for two weeks. The swarm will probably last another week before it needs feeding because I took a frame of stores out of it to make up the Nuc when the weather was nice. The hive I'm going to feed tomorrow was an over wintered Nuc that almost starved in April and had just expanded up enough to warrant a super so it's now a busy hive that has little in the way of stores.

I don't think I've done anything wrong and nor have the bees for that matter. We get two days of dry followed by 5-6 days of constant rain so I'm not surprised that I'm having to feed the poor buggers.

[HJBee]

Good luck for the weekend with this
1096

[Bridget]

Despite a dire forecast we had a great day. Out side all day with the grandsons ( best place for them) building bonfires, cycling, barbecue and 5 year old spent 2 hours "butt naked", his words, crawling up and down the burn. No time to worry about bees. Who says we don't have nice weather.

[voytech104]

Haha. What did I do in the Apiary today?
Went in my jeans with trendy hole on my leg, without smoke.
Last Sunday I gave them frame of eggs to see if they will start QC (queen was not laying for 3 weeks an. i thought there is no queen there.)
They sealed brood etc. no new fresh eggs so there is queen not mated yet though.
Problem is that I annoyed them so much that I have had them all over me... After 4 stings in my legs and one in stomach I started walking away. Killed probably 20 and been stung 4 more times... Felt them crawling up my trousers, under my veil, under my tshirt... Nightmare come true ;) after 5 minutes i needed to come back to close the hive... They were really p.$$ed... Stung me again, i managed to close them and go to my car to kill all the remaining...
After another 5 minutes I found myself with 12 stings in total, swollen on my legs, heavy rash on arms, huge swollen belly... Quickly while I could I rushed to nearby hospital..
And I did make it - just to say to all beginners to suit up and never go to your bees in patchy trousers without smoke ;)


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[Jon]

LOL
You sure the problem was the trousers? Could have been sub lethal effects of neonicotinoids making you disorientated or stupefying you in some way!
Did you drive past any fields of oil seed rape on the way to the apiary or glance at something predominantly yellow like the sun or a banana?
The smaller the dose, the greater the effect apparently. Quixotic stuff.
You are lucky to be alive. Did you get any photos?

[voytech104]

Plenty of photos. Most obscene though so cannot be posted here ;)
A&E was buzzing when I came over. They had adrenaline handy in case my throat closed (not needed thankfully).
I must say after being stung the worst thing was that i kept thinking "i need to go back and close them up - it will rain soon"...
Also - all bees at my parents are quite calm - i helped them with inspection without gloves and it was fine. I would not go near mine without it... That just shows you how important breeding new queens from properly selected line is...


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[GRIZZLY]

What's the moral of this story ?.

[Jon]

Don't be a slave to fashion!

[Trog]

Two queens nicely mated here and one at the assoc apiary. Always nice when things go smoothly!

[Jon]

Hi Trog. After a 3 week wait I now have about a dozen laying. I think most of them flew and mated on Tuesday or Wednesday last week.
Too early to tell if they are well mated or not.

[Adam]

I've got a fair few queens laying now after a 3 day period of reasonable weather a week ago. It's all a month or more later than last year. There is one spot from where queens consistently fail to mate or disappear without mating. :( Same thing happened last year so that place will have no more mini-nucs from now on. The spot faces NW and gets plenty of late afternoon sun.

[Jon]

I have 8 laying in apideas in my front garden which are set out under a couple of fruit trees.
Be interesting to see what drones those ones have encountered. I have a couple of colonies in the back garden so they may well have produced a lot of them. The association apiary is just over a mile away and I have a few colonies there as well.
Seems to be a good enough spot for queens to fly and mate.
Adam, I suspect you are right that there are good spots and bad spots for apideas. Maybe into ley line territory here.

[Neils]

So I'm sat in the BRI having just taken a bunch of steroids and antihistamines to try and stop the reaction I'm having to a sting.

Ho hum. Time to start thinking seriously about how I manage this and keep bees.

[Trog]

Maybe we should have a sting thread - seems like more of us are reacting to stings when we didn't before. Might be useful to share information. Oh, and sympathetic thoughts in your direction, Nellie!

[Rosie]

Presumably BRI is Bristol Royal Infirmary. Sorry to hear this Nellie and hope you can find some way round the problem.

Rosie

[chris]

Really sorry to hear that Nellie.You need to take a bit of time, step back and look coldly at things. After my bad attack last year, it took me a long time to go back to the bees, and my enthusiasm is still not what it was.But I've been very careful, and haven't been stung since.Funny, I was kept in the unit under observation, and around 7 in the evening I was told I could leave in a couple of hours. I phoned my wife to tell (nicely ask) her to pick me up around ten. I forgot that the French work a 24hr. clock.So at 11 I'm sitting on a park bench with no phone, no money, no bank card, and she's fast asleep and going to pick me up at 10 the next morning............but I was still alive.

[Neils]

Well they sent me home with a course of antihistamines and some pretty vague advice. All things considered it was a fairly mild reaction, but I felt it was better to be safe. I'm more annoyed that I'm going to lose a swarm tomorrow.

"wear thicker gloves" was pretty much the limit of their advice.

[Jimbo]

For the first time in years I got 2 stings today on my face. I am still trying to work it out how the bees got inside my suit. Lucky for me I have been taking an antihistimine tablet daily for the last month as I have discovered I have mild hayfever. One sting was on the top lip and for a few hours it looked as though I had a trout pout. This would not bother me usually but I have an important meeting at work tomorrow and did not want to turn up looking like the elephant man. The worst bit was I had to go back into the hive again to find the queen as there were queens cells present and I had to deal with it.

[Mellifera Crofter]

For the first time in years I got 2 stings today on my face. I am still trying to work it out how the bees got inside my suit. ...

The zip where the two ends meet? On my BJ Sheriff the two ends meet without a gap, but on my MB jacket they overlap and I have to stuff that tiny open area with a piece of sponge - or else ...

[GRIZZLY]

I used to regularly get bees in my veil-didn't get stung tho'.I tried in vain to find the hole and then finaly found a 1/4 inch dia hole where the gauze was stiched into the cloth part of the hat.I did a field repair by rolling up a small piece of the hessian smoker fuel from my tool box and plugged the hole.NO MORE wandering bees inside the veil.Did a permanent repair when I got home by glueing a small patch over the hole.I think the veil got a slight snag from a Hawthorn bush when retrieving a swarm one time.

[GRIZZLY]

Quick check thro' the bees today,No stores in the supers-they've taken what was in there due to the bad weather of the past week or so.will have to think of feeding to maintain the colonies if the weather doesn't get any better.I recon we'll be lucky to get a surplus this season.There's lots of clover about but they can't get at it and anyway it wont secrete nectar if the temperature doesn't climb a bit.

[Bridget]

Temps high (relatively) this evening - muggy, some rain earlier and 15 degrees at 9.30 pm and a few bees still flying. So what temp do you think clover will secrete nectar?

[GRIZZLY]

With clover it's a combination of temperature and humidity.I've had bees in the past stuck in the middle of a clover field and not got a drop in the supers because despite the high temperature the humidity was low so no secretion from the nectaries.

[Bridget]

According to my weather app humidity today is between 75 and 85%. I can smell the clover in the field and have seen a few bees on it though one of the bushes by the house is really buzzing. Weather good here for the next two days and then I go on holiday for 12 days. Booked before I realised that beekeepers shouldn't go on holiday in July! Any thing I should be doing before I go?

[Neils]

See if you can arrange for a friend to give your hives a once over while you're away if you think they might yet be thinking about swarming and clip your queens! :D

Edit: actually, with the weather as it is right now, that they have enough food to last them while you're away is probably worth checking too!

[Bridget]

See if you can arrange for a friend to give your hives a once over while you're away if you think they might yet be thinking about swarming and clip your queens! :D

Edit: actually, with the weather as it is right now, that they have enough food to last them while you're away is probably worth checking too!

Just checked them and the super is pretty much full of uncapped honey. The frames were pretty empty last week so they have refilled them. They will therefore be fine for stores I think. I have given the new hive some more syrup. As for your other suggestions clipping bee wings is way above my pay grade and we have no bee mates so it will be fingers crossed. As the two hives are the result of a Demaree I'm hoping their ideas of swarming have passed. And then it's fingers crossed. 😔

[The Drone Ranger]

For the first time in years I got 2 stings today on my face. I am still trying to work it out how the bees got inside my suit. Lucky for me I have been taking an antihistimine tablet daily for the last month as I have discovered I have mild hayfever. One sting was on the top lip and for a few hours it looked as though I had a trout pout. This would not bother me usually but I have an important meeting at work tomorrow and did not want to turn up looking like the elephant man. The worst bit was I had to go back into the hive again to find the queen as there were queens cells present and I had to deal with it.

Good for the arthritis though, so you should be able to tap dance into the meeting distracting their attention :)

[GRIZZLY]

Had a strange "pseudo" swarm yesterday.Bees came pouring from the entrances of three separate hives,formed a dense cloud which went roaring around overhead then subsided and all went back into their respective hives where they continued with their usual foraging flights.Two of these hives had swarmed earlier.Queen mating attempt perhaps? Any ideas?.

[GRIZZLY]

Found a "balled" queen this morning outside a hive.I recon this was what all the excitement was about yesterday.I guess one of the virgin queens decided on a mating flight and got mixed up in the confusion and missed its hive of origine,got muggud by strange bees and killed.So could have a queenless colony somewhere.As usual the weather has turned too wet for a safe examination,so will have to postpone it for a while.

[Trog]

Picked up a big swarm on the edge of the apiary this afternoon. Shouldn't be one of ours as we checked them all a couple of days ago. Still, we got it, and that's what matters!

[Neils]

Dodged the rain to sort out a hive full of queen cells that I couldn't deal with after last weeks shenanigans and found a little swarm living in our kit stack that we rehoused into a Nuc. Made up 3 apideas from the queen cells, figure any hive that's still good natured open in the rain is worth taking queens from.

[Trog]

Kit stacks (the rougher the better) seem to win over carefully-placed bait hives; we had the same and picked up a pure AMM swarm that has been parent to many a nuc over the last few years since it arrived!

How are your stings, Nellie?

[Neils]

Sun is out, swarm central round here at the moment. Been to two swarms already today.

No new stings as yet so no idea how I'm doing on that front. Not been in the horrible hive.

[Jon]

Leaving shortly and will be away almost 3 weeks.
Swarm talk makes me nervous although my queens are clipped so if they hold off from starting cells for at least a week I should be ok.
I have only had one start to make swarm preparations so far this year.
Have to hope they are not all waiting until July.

[Trog]

Our local AMMs seem to favour July, Jon ;)

[Neils]

We had a bee "bimble" today. 5-6 apiaries out of the 138 ticked off the list. In theory there weren't inspections going on. In practice, in addition to the swarms, other shenanigans ensued. I'm not sure if it's considered wise for the guy who may or may not be allerigic to bee to be putting his hands into beehives without gloves, but sometimes you just can't help yourself.

We had the new beekeeper trying to hive their bees with a duff hive that didnt fit together and the inevitable queen cell in the Nuc, inspected on Friday and given a clean bill of health by an ex bee inspector. The two minute move the hive that turned into a twenty minute manipulation and the restocking of my apideas with queen cells and much elderflower champagne consumed.

I enjoy these, swarms aside I'm not a great fan of opening up hives during them but it's always interesting to see what other people are doing with their bees. I also got a chance to get more acquainted with one of our new members, an apiarculturist by trade from Iraq.

[Calum]

Spammers have invaded the blog section.
But their remedies are herbal - so they are ok, ie not working for Monsanto (I'm assuming herbal organic).

[Jon]

Our local AMMs seem to favour July, Jon ;)

Not what I want to hear!!

[gavin]

Spammers have invaded the blog section.
But their remedies are herbal - so they are ok, ie not working for Monsanto (I'm assuming herbal organic).

Thanks for reporting them Calum. I've been off on foreign travels with very limited access to the internet and (hadn't realised this) my little helpers didn't have the necessary permissions to deal with them in the Blog section. I've had a good rummage in the workings under the bonnet and worked out how to remedy that, so we should now have more hands available to remove these pests more quickly.

[Neils]

I did as much limitation as I could at the time. I didn't really want to broadcast that I couldn't do anything in the blog section :)

[gavin]

Your powers, young man, are now near-infinite!

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/spell%20cast01.jpg

[Calum]

okkkkk, that picture along with the drunken childrens party clown will haunt my nightmares...

[Neils]

well look at that. Advacadavra! and the spam entry was gone. It works!

[gavin]

Excellent.

In this case the nasty person used this Arizona IP address to register

64.120.45.126

General IP Information
IP: 64.120.45.126
Decimal: 1081617790
Hostname: 64.120.45.126.ubiquityservers.com
ISP: Nobis Technology Group, LLC
Organization: Nobis Technology Group, LLC
Services: None detected
Type: Corporate
Assignment: Static IP
Blacklist:
Geolocation Information
Country: United States us flag
State/Region: Arizona
City: Phoenix
Latitude: 33.6748
Longitude: -111.9519
Area Code: 480
Postal Code: 85054

but this was showing while he was online, an address in California.

50.117.73.190

General IP Information
IP: 50.117.73.190
Decimal: 846547390
Hostname: 50.117.73.190
ISP: EGIHosting
Organization: Merc Netlist
Services: None detected
Type: Corporate
Assignment: Static IP
Blacklist:
Geolocation Information
Country: United States us flag
State/Region: California
City: San Jose
Latitude: 37.3338
Longitude: -121.8915
Area Code: 408
Postal Code: 95113

Should we now hunt him/her down and set the authorities on them? I'd vote for the second one being his 'home' IP address although it does say that it is corporate. His SBAi account, and the permission to get on here for these IP addresses are history.

Hackers and spammers *can* be really stupid. There was one guy who brought down the forum. Combining clues from his IP address and his email address, I knew his name, exactly where he lived, which school he went to (yup, just a schoolkid), what his brother, sister and mother were called, even saw some of them on his open Facebook page. However he was contrite, so I left him in peace.

[chris]

If the beekeeper adds a super, the bees go up to the top of the super and build downwards.

post #454

:o:o

Ahem. Just back from an inspection. On a 10 frame brood box I had added a 9 frame super last week. The super frames were all new, and had just a thin line of wax under their top bar. The bees had just built up from the tops of the broodbox frames, in between the super frames. Their construction had reached about a third of the way up before being attached to the super frames in a way only to be understood by a good grasp of bee logic.

Conclusion: bees do what they want.

[gavin]

Could this differ according to season? In spring they are in expansive mood and will happily bridge across large gaps supplied by the beekeeper, 'knowing' that they should have the resources to fill that gap with winter stores. In late summer here they turn to infilling around and immediately above the shrinking brood nest in preparation for winter. Often much of our heather honey crop ends up there.

I have a double brood box colony with two intervening supers, in a Demaree arrangement for queen cell raising. It has been left alone for about a month and now has the top brood box mostly filled with honey and the supers below it with empty drawn comb. A month from now it would be putting honey in the bottom brood box and maybe the first super above it.

[HJBee]

Just on the way back to Glasgow from Ayrshire & a CABA day out to Auchincruive. Great day with quite a few Associations represented. Didn't know there was male & female OSR, which we were shown on a field where it had been planted in alternate rows for seed production.1117

[Neils]

Still no new stings to report.

Both splits that I made are now superseding which given the weather is no great suprise, that they got mated queens at all is a big surprise in many respects. Horrible hive has calmed down a bit, I'm wondering whether clearing all the overgrowth from the hive entrance has had anything to do with them being far less inclined to go at whoever opens them up. They're still far from nice bees to go into but they don't worry me quite as much as they did.

[EmsE]

Hi Emse.
I have about half on solid floors and half on open mesh floors and I am damned if I can notice much difference. If anything the ones on the solid floors build up a wee bit faster in spring. You get better ventilation with the OMF but better heat retention with the solid floor so a case of swings and roundabouts. Mine were all flying well this weekend. Stacks of pollen coming in.

Hi Jon,

What puts me off the solid floors is the amount of soggy debris on the floorboards in the spring and the fact that the floorboards themselves are waterlogged. I did make sure that the hives with solid floors were tilted forwards slightly to allow any build up of water to run out. This can't be healthy for the bees and felt that the OMF's, which the bees were able to keep clean themselves were better.

I have to say that the varroa floors I use ( the budget ones from thornes) I wasn't keen on either. I'm sure one of the reasons for my zero varroa count is probably due to the varroa being blown away once they drop, which really makes any attempt at monitoring quite pointless. What I do want to try is adapting the solid floor to an open mesh with the adapter you can get in thornes (I will try and make one rather than buy one though). This would allow the small debris to fall away from the bees, improve the ventilation, but not be quite as breezy as the OMF's I currently have.

[Jon]

Hi Emse
I bought a sheet of 8 foot by 4 foot mesh of the correct gauge for about 15 quid.
This is enough to make 10 floors with more stuff left over for nuc floors.
It is easy enough to cut with an angle grinder.

I screw together 4 pieces of scrap timber to make an 18 1/8 base and then tack on the mesh.
You can make a bee space frame above the floor with correx or wooden battens.
I dont have a decent picture but you can see one in use here.

1118

That's me with the monkey hat on.

I agree that counting mites on the floor is very inaccurate. I rarely bother.
I have never had a major varroa problem but I am very careful about treating at the right time and I do a winter treatment of Oxalic acid as well.

[Bridget]

Disaster. Back from hols and the strong hive looking pretty quiet. Pissing with rain so no inspection till today. Started off with the small hive, result of a Demaree in early June. Jumping with bees, full of honey, in the brood box, and not a single egg, larvae and a minute area of sealed brood . did the virgin queen not make it back from the mating flight or is she about to start laying? It's a bit tight but maybe as there are worker bees polishing cells.
Hive major - obviously swarmed. About 75% less bees, no eggs, no larvae etc etc and bursting with honey in brood box and quite a bit in the super.
So advised to look for a queen cell and transfer to hive minor in case the virgin didn't make it back. Found about 10 empty queen cells in hive major .....obviously not doing our job properly but it has been wet and the last inspection when I saw eggs was June 18th. God, the Maths involved with bee keeping, if only I'd known.
So ........ Do I wait and see if the 10 Queens have fought a battle in hive major and one starts laying -and when will I know.
Do I wait and see if the virgin queen starts laying late in hive minor.
Do I find another queen or two from somewhere before it all becomes too late, and when is too late?

There is a bit of capped honey in the super of the major hive - should I grab it now. It may be the only taste of honey I have from these bees.
I feel I chose a difficult 12 months to start beekeeping. The second year starts on the 25 July

[Jon]

On the dates you give you likely have a virgin queen in each hive.
I always tell our lot who expect to see a laying queen about 10 days after a swarm that the absolute earliest you will see eggs is about 18 days after the prime swarm and it could well be over 40 days.
If you want to check for sure get a frame of eggs or small larvae and put it in.
If queen cells are started your hive is queenless.
Your bigger hive last checked 18 June has likely thrown about 4 casts by now.
If there are no sealed queen cells left in it, it should not throw any more casts.

PS. You did pick a difficult year to start. the weather has been strange, winter too mild and spring and summer too wet.
there will be a lot of drone laying queens next spring.

[HJBee]

Today - I am now a bone fide Bee Keeper! Nucleus collected (thanks to our Association Secretary), taken to site, fed & left for a tantalising 10 day wait till I can open her up & have a gander! Picture is a bit naff as it was dark by the time we were done but for prosperity...http://img.tapatalk.com/5ad24ed5-cd59-8c08.jpg

[Jon]

There could be anything in there - frogs, mice, a string quartet, or a bargain bag of Imidacloprid.
10 days is a long time to wait to see if you have been sold a pup!
The evil association secretary could be at the other side of the world in 24 hours let alone 10 days.

But yes, it is good to leave alone if you have been assured it is queenright and has stores aplenty.

[HJBee]

Has sealed brood, eggs and a stunner of a new queen apparently (seen today in good nick). I'll just have to wait & be patient to see!

[EmsE]

?..... I'll just have to wait & be patient to see!

Now thats the hard part ;)

[Jon]

I am doing cold turkey at the moment. 11 days away from my bees and 8 more to go.
Either they are all missing me terribly or else they are racking up rows of queen cells with queens due to emerge in a week.

[chris]

Actually, yesterday. The swarm settled in a nuc in exactly the same position as for last year.






It's ok Jon, they don't buzz with a Belfast accent.

[chris]

I closed up the hive last night, and first thing this morning took it up to my apiary. When I got back, there were loads of bees around the same place. I added 2 nucs and we'll see which, if any, they choose.
Going back out to see if they've woken up Zen (the cat) again.

[Jon]

It's ok Jon, they don't buzz with a Belfast accent.

For all you know Chris, I sound like Prince Charlie

[gavin]

Unless Skype has slipped in some accent modification software, I can vouch for the fact that he has a Belfast accent!

[Jon]

I must be delusional then. I always reckoned I could pass myself off as a Minor royal.
Better book the elocution classes if one is to come across as a man of education and Greek DNA.

[lindsay s]

Hi HJBee
Good luck with your new colony of bees. Now that your hive’s in place I would seriously think about raising it at least 12-18 inches off the ground. It will keep the hive clear of the weeds and the damp ground. The higher up the hive the easier it is to work out off and it will save you getting a bad back! A hive stand could be as simple as a few concrete blocks or something more elaborate it’s up to you. Also if you are using an open mesh floor you might need to consider having something solid underneath it to cut down on draughts, a concrete slab would do.
I’m assuming the brood box is not yet full of frames and if that’s the case you can add a frame of foundation to the outside of the brood nest and keep feeding. Once the foundation has been drawn out you can add another one and so on. Your new queen should lay well into the Autumn and hopefully you should have a strong colony going into Winter.
P.S. Sorry if I'm repeating what your mentors have already told you.

[HJBee]

Thanks Lindsay. I have updated a picture from tonight that is better to the post. (promise I didn't peek 😇).

It had a wooden decking flag under need the floor (open mesh). I understand what your saying about the height & weeds etc, but I have worked on a few hives with stands at Auchencruive in their education Apairy & I didn't take to them. Still may consider a couple of breeze blocks.

I have a full brood box using some dummy boards with a few frames of foundation in the inner core, with a couple sat on the outside of the dummy boards ready to swap over if the others get built out.

[Bridget]

On the dates you give you likely have a virgin queen in each hive.
I always tell our lot who expect to see a laying queen about 10 days after a swarm that the absolute earliest you will see eggs is about 18 days after the prime swarm and it could well be over 40 days.
If you want to check for sure get a frame of eggs or small larvae and put it in.
If queen cells are started your hive is queenless.
Your bigger hive last checked 18 June has likely thrown about 4 casts by now.
If there are no sealed queen cells left in it, it should not throw any more casts.

Thanks Jon, i'm now going to wait and see if queens appear. I hope you are not missing your bees too much.
I took a frame of honey off today so now I have my first jar. 1153
So proud! Funny, all the talk of bees on this forum but no one much mentions the honey.

One thing I forgot to mention was that the varroa board was covered in dead and dying bees yesterday. I cleared them off, but the same today. They are not starving as the hive is full of stores. I can't see any signs of disease in the hive but it looks too many to be part of the normal dieting off process. Here is a couple of photos, firstly showing the bees on the board and then a group of bees - some already dead and others dying or grouped around a dying bee. Any ideas anyone?
1167
1169

[HJBee]

Could it just be they have been working hard the past few days and worked themselves to death? Has the weather improved around you this week and they've increased activity?

Nice jar of honey (don't tell anyone but I'm not that keen on the stuff!!)

[Bridget]

Hi HJBee
Lousy weather on Tuesday but better yesterday and today. This hive is chocca with stores but depleted in numbers as it swarmed while I was away last week. Now waiting to see if we have a queen but no eggs or grubs at all.

[Jon]

Bees go under the varroa floor and are too dim to know they are outside the hive as they can communicate with the rest of the bees through the mesh. They get chilled and die overnight.

[Bridget]

Bees go under the varroa floor and are too dim to know they are outside the hive as they can communicate with the rest of the bees through the mesh. They get chilled and die overnight.

Ok sounds reasonable but how do I stop them doing this. Its only started recently. Do you think there is a hole in the varroa floor. I'm loathe to dismantle the hive seeing its a bit iffy at present and I'm waiting to see if there is a queen in there and if she will start laying. Unfortunately I don't have any frames of brood to put in there as a test, as you suggested earlier.

[chris]

My varroa floors have a tray that slides in and out, and can also be slid in upside down to give a little more ventilation. If your tray cannot be put up against the mesh,then perhaps you can fit some sort of lightweight board underneath with gaffer tape or whatever, so that the bees cannot access the metal mesh.

[Bridget]

I think bees are trying to access the hive via the varroa tray at the back. I didn't realise the tray could go two ways. I'll check that but I'm also thinking of tacking something along the back, small bit of plastic sheet perhaps. See if that helps it.

[Jon]

A bit of gaffer tape to block off gaps should fix the problem.

[Bridget]

A bit of gaffer tape to block off gaps should fix the problem.

One of the problems was that the grass had grown up so much under the hive that bees were landing in it and the climbing up to the tray from below. So grass cut, rear blocked up and I'll check again tomorrow. Grass in the field is now higher than the hives anyway.

[Mellifera Crofter]

... and the climbing up to the tray from below.

Why don't you remove the tray, Bridget? You only need it to monitor varroa every now and again.
Kitta

[Bridget]

Well Kitta the tray has always been there since the start to I sort of thought it was what to do. I will check tomorrow and if there are new bees on the tray I will remove it. So should the tray just be there to monitor when treating for varroa? I thought that perhaps it gave some protection from the damp and cold in winter but it hadn't occurred to me to remove in summer.

[Jon]

I keep mine out. I think most people do. They are not really necessary in winter either.

[chris]

I started changing all my solid wooden floors for *varroa* floors about 4 years ago. I think the varroa floor was a cheaper alternative to the Happykeeper floor which has tubes under the frames and gaps elsewhere. My reason for installing them had nothing to do with varroa, but was to try to diminish chalkbrood that was developing in too many colonies and weakening them.The idea that was doing the rounds at the time was that the mesh floor kept the hive nice and dry in winter and so the bees stayed healthier. The mantra was "cold doesn't kill bees but dampness does".
Basically, the argument goes: insulate above the crown board, and leave the tray of the OMF out all through the winter( the only time to put in the tray is when there is a varroa count in progress). The cold air enters the hive, passes through the cluster, warms up, and rises to hit the insulated crown board. As this air is warm, but the crown board is not cold, there is no condensation. the warm,moist air *mushrooms*, spreading along the crown board until it comes into contact with the cold,uninsulated sides of the hive. Here, the water vapour condenses and runs down the sides of the hive, and passes out through the OMF.The cold air descends along the sides and is replaced by air entering and rising up through the cluster.So the cluster stays dry.
The downside is that to heat up all this constant circulation of cold air, the bees consume more stores.
Some people, like Nellie and Jon now claim that varroa counting is not necessarily an accurate indication of infestation levels, and so it would follow that there is no reason to put the tray in at all.
My chalkbrood problem has cleared up, and since I changed my queens has not come back. Last winter I reverted to solid wooden floors on a couple of hives and noticed that the spring build up was more rapid for their colonies.What I shall do for this winter is revert to solid wooden floors on all my hives, but with a 2 inch hole drilled in each of the back corners and covered with some mesh.

All that to say, if you want to count varroa, then put the tray in whilst you do.Otherwise, leave it out in all seasons except winter, and in winter it's pretty much up to your weather conditions and bee type.

[prakel]

I've considered making up some floors consisting of a heavy duty framework with terram tightly stretched across it (I've no real interest in counting mites on any kind of a regular basis). My thinking being that the terram might improve hive ventilation while blocking out a lot of light and foiling any breeze from below -for anyone who's interested, my hives are stood on two rails which are themselves resting between pillars of 2x 4" concrete block layed flat, so somewhere in the region of 10" above ground level.

Still no more than a thought at the present time. Of course I wouldn't be able to run the gas torch over them but I'm sure that I could come up with some way of sterilizing....

[Neils]

.
Some people, like Nellie and Jon now claim that varroa counting is not necessarily an accurate indication of infestation levels, and so it would follow that there is no reason to put the tray in at all.


For clarification, I think that natural mite drop is unreliable in isolation. If that is all you're doing to monitor varroa levels during the active season, as I found again this year, it can give very misleading results one way or the other.

My most recent example was hiving a swarm. I'd run out of OA which I generally dose any incoming swarm with. Over the next few weeks the colony was dropping 30+ mites a week but I had no drone brood and there was evidence of DWV. On the basis of the mite drop I treated with apiguard for two weeks. Mites dropped over that two week period? 5.

They were in a brood cycle by that point, they just weren't established enough to have drones. What we think was possibly happening having asked around a bit was that the colony was raising the temperature to draw wax and in a poly hive might have raised the temperature enough to kill the varroa that was phoretic hence I was seeing a consistent large mite drop. By time I decided to add apiguard there was a combination effect that they were no longer drawing wax and more of the varroa was now in the brood hence the apiguard produced little in the way of mites dropping. A few weeks on the mite drop from this colony is now along the lines of the rest with 1-2 mites dropping a week.

Equally Ive had colonies dropping bugger all during the season that when treated with apiguard at the end of the season drop hundreds of mites weekly over the course of the treatment.

So my feeling is not that monitoring the mite drop is worthless, it's that in isolation it is not a reason to not hoik out some drone brood now and again nor to get in a panic that a colony is on the verge of collapse. You very much need to take into consideration other factors. I currently have floors on 75% of my hives and check them weekly despite feeling still that is a very unreliable method to determine current varroa levels.

[fatshark]

Some good news this afternoon ... yesterday I dropped a mini-nuc frame in long grass and lost the queen. I searched in vain for 20 minutes, gave up, and then stomped back and forwards over the area as I completed inspections of other hives. I was sure she was a goner. Today, I checked the mini-nuc to see if they'd started drawing out some QC's and there she was ... on the first frame I looked at :o

She definitely wasn't in the box when I closed it up yesterday.

That, and the Wiggins/Cavendish Tour de Force, have made it a great day :o

[Neils]

What about Froome! :)

In more good news, that hive I wrote off a couple of months ago? news of it's demise appears very much premature.

When I last looked at it in April there were a handful of bees, no dead bees in the hive but very much not what I'd consider a viable colony, I left them the thymolated syrup I'd bought down to make sure they didn't starve assuming they were still fine and pretty much left them to it.

This afternoon I went down to tidy up, pick up the hive and bring it back to recover some wax, clean it up and get it ready for next season.

Much to my surprise there is very much a viable colony in there. With the same queen.Until I found her I was assuming that a new swarm must have moved in, but no, she's still there, 4 frames of brood on the go in revolting black combs that I was originally going to replace in the spring.

I'm very pleasantly surprised, they were horrible bees temperament wise but I didn't want to see them dead.

Is thymol the miracle cure for everything or did I just mess up my original assessment that they had Nosema and weren't going to last much longer? They came out of winter Ok, but just rapidly dwindled in spring to the point in April that I just left them to it while I figured out how to get another colony there before I had to tell the owners that the bees had had it.

[EmsE]

Bad news for me :(

A queen I thought had mated successfully this year is now just producing drone brood in the worker cells. I've united it with my other drone laying queen so that the bees will get rid of one of them and I only need to find the remaining one. I'll then unite it with the swarm we got on Thursday At the other site -one from my own bees, the queen was clipped and the swarm was on the ground about half a mile from the hive- she did well:o I'll remember to take a bit more off her wing next time I see her.

[Jon]

Equally Ive had colonies dropping bugger all during the season that when treated with apiguard at the end of the season drop hundreds of mites weekly over the course of the treatment.

That is my experience too. Sometimes I don't see a mite for a couple of months and then 24 hours after the apiguard goes in you have over 100 on the tray. I still remember the guy in my bka who argued with me one September that he had no varroa and would not be wasting money on treatment.
And by Christmas he has lost 27/28 and on close inspection of a sample they were heaving with mites.

[Neils]

Treating for varroa is relatively straightforward; assume the worst. That's where mite drops alone are really dangerous, you see nothing so think that everything is hunky dory.

In the conversations I had over that swarm I asked whether I overreacted given that thymol could have put the queen off lay. Other than suggesting that I could/should have uncapped worker brood, the conservative assessment was that treating was the right thing to do. It would be nice to assume that it was wax building or hygienic behaviour that was dropping the mites, but in isolation all the signs were of a colony at risk of collapse from varroa. In hindsight I'm happy to believe that the wax building killed a lot of mites...

But I monitor, monitor, monitor, I follow a robustly implemented IPM scheme and anticipate or react as best as I can.

[janesik]

In the gentle Ayrshire rain came across strange bee behaviour. A closed white plastic tub of growmore (sorry organic gardeners!) was been thoroughly investigated by 4 or 5 bees who appeared to be trying to get into it - they were busy at it for at least 10 minutes - I then was wet enough to give up watching and go inside. Any suggestions?

[gavin]

They heard of the nutrient deficiencies on Orkney and were intending to carry some all the way there for them? (I'm joking!)

They may be seeking salts. It has been said that is one reason why they like the effluent from dung heaps (close your eyes, food hygiene people).

G.

[GRIZZLY]

Had an ass'n "summer" meeting at home apiary on Sunday.The weather was dry but very windy with a significant wind chill factor.However I decided to have a quick look at my row of hived swarms.They were all short of food despite having been given at least three rapid feeders of syrup each.The wet,windy and cold weather has precluded further colony examinations so I,ve decided to feed all of the colonies at once.I suspect that even if the weather improves enough to allow the bees to forage,they will only bring in sufficient stores to achieve a minimum survival level.I'm resigned to no honey this year and am going to do everything to get them all thro' the coming winter.The forcast is for the wet overcast weather to continue with a succession of cold wet fronts marching across S.W.Scotland.The only significant flow this year was from the early Sycamore and that was cut off by the advent of the wet weather which has continued with few break since.The pattern has been forage one day then rained off for up to a week when stores were consumed.Brood rearing seemed to continue apace so colonies have been and are still strong.Swarming has continued this year but on a very reduced level compared to last year.An expensive beekeeping year!.

[gavin]

Do you not get a heather harvest Grizzly? Might be worth trying this year if your colonies are strong but hungry (as several of mine are). At the least it sets them up well for the winter.

[chris]

Grizzly, let's do a deal, rain against heat and sun? For me, one thing about this forum is that it's a constant reminder of how important weather conditions are in beekeeping. You're complaining that the harvest will be non existant because of rain and cold. Over here, we've had practically no rain for about 6 weeks. Loads of flowers, but not yielding. I too think I'll have no honey. Though I'm not having to feed as they seem to have slowed down activity and so are consuming their reserves less quickly.
What a bee inspector told me about bees doing badly nowadays mainly because of climate change is brought home.

[GRIZZLY]

Do you not get a heather harvest Grizzly? Might be worth trying this year if your colonies are strong but hungry (as several of mine are). At the least it sets them up well for the winter.

Might perhaps give it a go.Still need the weather tho' and that seems set in for a long spell at the moment.Virtually no mites this year.I'm now in my third year of treating with APIVAR and it seems to have got on top of the little beasts.

[GRIZZLY]

Chris if you're fed up with the sun I could suggest doing a swap for a while - I could do with some sun .

[chris]

I was thinking of the bees rather than us;)
I think I can just about put up with this climate. I moan that it's too hot, but the first day of rain, i'll be moaning that it's too wet.:confused:

[GRIZZLY]

I was thinking of the bees rather than us;)
I think I can just about put up with this climate. I moan that it's too hot, but the first day of rain, i'll be moaning that it's too wet.:confused:

I'd love to be able to moan that its too hot and dry - everything here is just dripping at the moment.

[fatshark]

Hot here in the Midlands, with a good flow on ... so, grafting this morning.

[gavin]

Good flow on here too and it looks mostly lime. The local lime trees were buzzing with honeybees. Just back from meeting Kelly and Mike who are surveying and taking samples for the bee health surveillance in Scotland this year. Onj - that floor insert will be looked at for several pathogens by the lab when they are ready and I wouldn't expect to hear anything from them for months. The most useful part of today was getting the brood in all the main hives inspected by trained experts, and no suspicious signs were noted. I've had both AFB and EFB nearby in previous seasons so I'm always half-expecting to see some.

If this hazy-sunny weather continues they may be able to fill a few supers after all.

[Adam]

27 degrees today. My extracting room is 35 so the honey is coming out very easily.
Had the day off today - went to check on some mini-nucs. One nice one has absconded. :( It's a home made odd wooden contraption with 6 swi-bine frames plus the space for a feeder at the back. 3 frames of open and sealed brood, 2 frames of stores, a frame of partially drawn comb and plenty of space under the frames. Queen been laying for a couple of weeks. Why do they do that? That's my second one that's gone this year.

[Jon]

I lost a couple to absconding at the start of July.
I cut up a sheet of plastic queen excluder into strips and I pin these to the front of my apideas to keep the queens in once I see eggs.
I don't like the little red excluders as the bees only have 3 slots they can enter by.
I pin the strips to the front of the apidea and they have about 20 slots they can use.

One like this, but pinned to the front of the apidea

1190

Another view of an excluder strip here with one I overwintered.
You can't really trust bees in apideas nor to make a dash for it.
I had some on overwinter as makeshift mouse guards.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ5eqZ0FE_Y

[kevboab]

I had exact same thing today with a 5 frame nuc. Absconded leaving two frames open/sealed brood. Thankfully found them on a fencepost nearby. Boxed back up into national brood. Whats the reasoning for this behaviour Jon as its left me head scratching.

[Jimbo]

Kevboab, How were your stores? I have heard you can get a thing called starvation swarming where the bees will abscond as they have no food. Given the wet weather we had they would be bringing nothing in

[kevboab]

Pollen n stores on both outers of brood with access to fondant above. The only other thing I can think of is nucs were cooking in the sun but i may be clutching at straws. Maybe they were as shocked at the sun as I was today. Lol. They are now in a national brood with syrup above to try n keep them where they are.

[GRIZZLY]

Suns out today (more rain promised for tomorrow).Sat watching bees in an opium poppy,strange behaviour-they were taking the stamens in their mandiblis and were "chewing" along the lengths of the stamens from end to end.They repeated this several times along each stamen.I'm not sure what they were gathering by this behaviour unles they were causing sap to exude.Other bees were behaving normally collecting pollen and nectar.Anyone else seen them behaving like this ?.

[Jimbo]

Opium poppy you say? Obviously after a fix from the sap. Are they nice quite bees, non running on the frame and in a trance like state?

[Calum]

Sat watching bees in an opium poppy,strange behaviour-they were taking the stamens in their mandiblis and were "chewing" along the lengths of the stamens from end to end.They repeated this several times along each stamen.I'm not sure what they were gathering by this behaviour unles they were causing sap to exude.Other bees were behaving normally collecting pollen and nectar.Anyone else seen them behaving like this ?.

Collecting sap for propolis? I always take a chew of propolis when I start working the hives to cloak my breath (works a treat), I'd like to try your propolis though! Sounds dreamy.

[GRIZZLY]

Looked at them again this morning-it looks as tho'they're trying to dislodge the pollen grains before collecting it.The poppies in question are oriental opium poppies-purely decorative I might add,which have either large pink or medium red flowers.Each flower attracts as many as 8 bees which clamber around inside and over each other. Jimbo my bees are a dream to handle anyway- very good tempered and quiet on the frames - inclined to swarm however.

[GRIZZLY]

Weather relented at last and I managed a complete inspection yesterday.Very pleasing to discover that all 16 colonies are Queen right and all the new virgins have managed to mate successfully.If the weather continues to improve we might manage to get a small crop of honey before the heather blooms.Lots of H.B.locally and the brambles are going mad.Bees were working in the early morning rain this morning-stopped now with a promise of more rain to come.What a season.!!.

[GRIZZLY]

Bees realy started to throw out the drones today.Still coming in with white pollen - not from H.B as they don't have the tell tale streak of pollen up their backs -it seems to be worked by bumbles at the moment.Haven't seen any wasps yet.

[HJBee]

Gently persuaded by Phil McAnespie to join a Beekeeping Demo with Ayr Beekeepers today. They are great at promoting Beekeeping and it was them at the same event last hear that gave me the final push - doing it was the least I could do! 1193

[Neils]

Can I be the first the make the obligatory joke about a cage being the best place for them :D

[Trog]

Another lovely sunny day here on Mull. Had 3 nice days in a row which is good news for the queens waiting to mate. Surprising that we have no guests at our B & B just now. Either they're all watching the Olympics or they think all of Britain is flooded! Dolphins in Tobermory Bay this afternoon, Minkies and basking sharks just outside the Bay in the last couple of days. Another lovely day forecast for tomorrow so that will be a bee day!

[fatshark]

Filthy day here until late afternoon. Between thunderstorms managed to move mini-nucs to mating apiary. Spent some of the afternoon butchering two Paynes nucs as suggested by Adam via Gavin in the "Poly hive musings (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?1008-Poly-hive-musings.&p=12869&viewfull=1#post12869)" thread to create two 8 frame poly nucs ... and a very large pile of polystyrene dust and shavings :)

[Neils]

Trog, maybe you need uncle Paul to march up and down the beach?

Pouring with rain here after we went to watch team gb in the footie; in a day when everyone else won gold trust me to pick the football where we didn't even raise a whimper...


In bee news however I have a few hives with supers on, in previous years I'd be taking them off to extract, this year I'm wondering if I should leave them a couple of weeks instead.

[prakel]

was a great weather day here until evening -as Ben Ainsley would confirm!

[GRIZZLY]

In bee news however I have a few hives with supers on, in previous years I'd be taking them off to extract, this year I'm wondering if I should leave them a couple of weeks instead.[/QUOTE]

My bees are foraging well on the odd sunny day.There won't be any honey unless I leave them in the hope that we might get a few good days worth of foraging and enough warm days to encourage the bees to ripen something for me to extract.

[Neils]

Was also thinking that I might leave them on another week or two. Didn't manage to get a look this weekend but will try and get up tomorrow and see how they're getting on, there was a nice flow on over the past couple of weeks until it started raining again.

[Hoomin_erra]

I might actually get a super from my largest hive. 6 wired and 5 unwired. MMMMMMMMMMM!! Next week is supposed to be nice. Well it is up here in the NE of the country. And if September is nice like last year, maybe a super of Heather. We always live in hope.

[Bridget]

Hip hip- after weeks of waiting I have at last found larvae and a little sealed brood in the Demaree. The first since I did the Demaree on the 4th June. I had nearly given up.
Also found larvae in the other hive, the one that swarmed while we were on holiday in early July. So relief all round.

[Jon]

I found eggs in a colony today as well, one which swarmed with a clipped queen when I was away in July.

[gavin]

Me too! Eggs in a tiny Apidea that I thought was a lost cause. And a pleasing array of 3-4 frame nucs all doing well at the association apiary with only one drone layer. I'm thinking of leaving all 9 of them as they are and taking them to our heather site for the visit there a week on Saturday when we can clip, mark and deal with the drone layer.

[GRIZZLY]

Checked the bees yesterday.No honey in any of them,some unsealed and unripened nectar.They are living hand-to-mouth this year.As soon as nectar is brought in its consumed.I'm thinking of putting some serious feed on to prevent starvation.I heard on "Farming today" on thursday a B.B.K.A. spokesman talking about a hopeless year and cases of starving bees down south .

[Neils]

I might get 3 supers of honey. There's plenty in flower at the moment but the flow looks to be over at the moment.

I've got two hives where the queens are happily wandering around but there is no brood whatsoever in one and only drone comb laid up in the other, if she's gone drone laying I'd expect her to be laying as normal so I'm at a bit of a loss to explain those two right now.

Also finally been stung again and I appear not to be dead which I'll take to be a good sign.

[Jon]

Two colonies with clipped queens which swarmed when I was away in July now have laying queens again.

[kevboab]

Thats the drone layers sorted along with a couple of other small colonies and the autumn uniting is completed. Have been completely ruthless this year and taking no chances whatsoever going into winter with small colonies. Finally seeing some honey in the supers but not sure if its gonna be worthwhile harvesting any. Feel the bees need it a damn site more than me at moment.

[Feckless Drone]

Spent yesterday morning helping a more senior keeper, to clear out a storeroom of old equipment. This belonged to a long time keeper, no longer with us, and I've inherited his site. The equipment was mostly made by him and there were lots of ideas and tricks for feeding, keeping comb straight, modifications to Wormit style hives etc. This keeper was very thoughtful about his craft. It was sad clearing out the room but it needed to be done - we found a bucket of honey, about 3-4 L worth, that is at least 6 years old. It looked like a mixture of molasses and crude oil and (ignoring years of H&S training) tasted absolutely brilliant. It had not crystallised and might be honeydew. I did suggest that we bottle it and enter it in the Dundee flower show but was told best not in case it came first. Its going to be burnt along with the other stuff which is also a bit sad.

[HJBee]

Bees foraging well on the Rosebay Willowherb today.1207

[Jon]

I took this one of one of my bees on the willowherb a few years ago. I wanted to use it for my honey label but Thorne rejected it as it implies that the honey in the jar is monofloral apparently.

1208

I love to see the blue pollen coming in.

[HJBee]

Fabulous picture Jon!

[fatshark]

Checked grafts from Sunday ... only 10% take :( I thought I was taking a risk as the flow was lessening. I'll have to reassemble the Ben Harden setup on a hive without supers and feed lots of syrup. I want some late-mated queens to overwinter in a rather more organised way than I did last year.

[Jon]

I have had little or no success with queenright queenrearing this past fortnight but I got 70 cells started easy enough in queenless colonies.
We are getting them into apideas this week.

[Trog]

With pressure falling like a stone, a 'brisk' SE wind, and very hot, it was hardly the ideal day for checking bees. However, since we've not been able to get at them since the end of last month, there were some colonies that just had to be checked for either stores (nucs) or mated queens or both. We left all the big colonies alone as they would probably have hammered us. They can wait for a better day as it's getting late for swarming (though we did once lose a swarm in September!) The swarm that we guessed was superseding (so left qc untouched) has done so and the new queen's laying really well. The overwintered nuc that had built up to epic proportions and swarmed (and we caught it) also now has a good mated queen, as has the nuc we made up with a spare qc. 100% mating success this year and - nicest of all - the colonies that swarmed and the early swarms themselves have all produced a surplus of honey. As for the colony that went down to nuc size with an acarine problem, the eucalyptus oil feeds seem to have done the trick. They're doing fine and just about to supersede their elderly-ish queen. I wanted to give them a chance as they seemed so keen to survive; probably too soft for my own good!

[Jon]

It's great when you have a day like that and everything has worked out.
I have also found that queens mated well this year which has been a surprise given the weather.
Our queen rearing group has about 80 cells going into apideas this week so these ones should fly and mate towards the end of August.
I have had queens mate right at the end of September.

[Trog]

Well, it's native-type, locally-bred bees, isn't it, Jon? Little opportunists who fly in most weathers, know how to party on sunny days and don't mope when it's raining (just build queen cells so they can swarm on the next sunny day!!). Queens who stop laying when the forage is poor and bump up production when it's good. Oodles of bright yellow pollen going in today, along with a bit of willowherb. Almost certainly a fair bit of heather, too, judging by the aroma!

[Jon]

I have seen a lot of blue willowherb pollen this past day or two and also a very yellow pollen which could be privet which is still in flower here.
My bees are not too swarmy touch wood. I only had 4 colonies make queen cells this year out of about 16 at full strength.
3 of them waited until I was away in July so I lost the clipped queens.
Somehow they hacked the Iberia website and checked my itinerary.

[lindsay s]

Today on the BBC. Nice frames of honey and I wish mine were the same.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19347275

[Jon]

Nicely capped.
I have about 15-20 supers to take off in the next few days but a lot of it is only partially capped.
Glad to get anything this year the weather we have had.

[Jon]

Got the Apiguard on to 5 more colonies today after removing supers.
The nucs have nearly finished their treatment which started about the beginning of August.
There are a dozen colonies at the association apiary which need varroa treatment so might make a start on them tomorrow.

[gavin]

This morning the colonies which missed the trip to the hills due to insufficient strength were busy bringing in something. I'm guessing willowherb as the nectar is pale and the bees clean. One or two may be worth shifting to Himalayan balsam to catch the tail end of the season. There were peacock and painted lady butterflies around (real peacocks too).

We had torrential downpours and flooding after lunch, so I decided to do some more beekeeping, as you do. I went up to the hills to see the bees on the heather in the late afternoon. 11C on the car gauge as the rain cleared away and I approached, hardly good bee flying weather and I was expecting them all to be at home. The hives were busier than I've seen since the odd day when the OSR was out. Oh yes! One with nearly a full super, another half-way there. There is hope yet for a honey harvest. The one filling a super got another added, just in case the flow continues.

[Trog]

Just been over to the apiary to check roofs, etc. It's blowing a gale, rain blattering the windows ... and the bees are out and about! Still plenty of forage and the heather's only just getting going.

[Adam]

Today
No wind :)
23 degrees:)
No forage :(

[Calum]

website connects would-bee keepers with landowners (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/28/hive-talking-website-honeybee-campaign)

[Calum]

Today on the BBC. Nice frames of honey and I wish mine were the same.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19347275

easy enough on those half frames. Those would be half langstroths I think.
& Bumble bees are better pollinators for pear apple trees in a cold spring - although they don't really have the numbers to do a job anything like a strong carnica colony can...

[GRIZZLY]

easy enough on those half frames. Those would be half langstroths I think.
& Bumble bees are better pollinators for pear apple trees in a cold spring - although they don't really have the numbers to do a job anything like a strong carnica colony can...

They're national shallow frames.The beekeeper is Ian Craig.

[Calum]

yup, shallow frames get filled much quicker so tend to look more regular..
Pain in the bum having essentially two different frame sizes. I prefer being able to interchange the frames between brood box and 'super' as the need arises.

[GRIZZLY]

Colonies still large and looking good despite lack of income from forageing. Queens are all mated properly and producing good brood patterns. Varroa numbers quite low this year and no sign of DWV or crawling bees. I had expected the possibility of some of the virgin queens not mating properly and becoming drone layers,but my fears are unfounded. I'm looking forward to a better year to come. I noted the "beeb" reporting very low sunlight hours and exceptionally high rainfall for this year- over 100years was mentioned since things were so bad. Butterflies seem to be making a comeback here with a sprinkling of all the usual species.Wasps still absent -havent seen one near my apiary yet.

[Jon]

The wasps are out in force now. Funny how they can become a problem almost overnight. I put out a trap and got about 1000 in it in 48 hours.
The weaker apideas are being picked off.

[GRIZZLY]

The wasps are out in force now. Funny how they can become a problem almost overnight. I put out a trap and got about 1000 in it in 48 hours.
The weaker apideas are being picked off.

Just keep them your side of the channel Jon.

[nemphlar]

They just showed up here apparently from nowhere, but suddenly there were hoards of them and very aggressive with more than a few dead bees around, taped the entrances an cut only a small slot. Think they were attracted when I scooped some dead bees from feeder and carelessly threw them onto the grass, sugar coated bees hey couldn't resist

[GRIZZLY]

They just showed up here apparently from nowhere, but suddenly there were hoards of them and very aggressive with more than a few dead bees around, taped the entrances an cut only a small slot. Think they were attracted when I scooped some dead bees from feeder and carelessly threw them onto the grass, sugar coated bees hey couldn't resist

Just shows the importance of keeping an immaculately clean apiary with no opportunities for robbing or spreading disease.Take all your rubbish home and incinerate it - including dead bees from feeders.

[Jon]

Got my supers home today. 15 altogether and some only part filled but I would hope to get 250+ lbs out of that.
Same as last year, the best colony was the one in the garden. I got about 30 lbs off it in June and another 3 supers today. This was a different colony from the one I had in the garden last year which gave me 100lbs and was split into 4 decent nucs.
I could probably have got a bit more honey but the weather was so bad I decided to make up nucs this summer and have about 20 of which 15 are strong.
The weaker ones might need combining before the end of September.
Can't grumble at all given the weather.

[fatshark]

Started to prepare for the winter. I extracted last weekend and the wet supers have been back on the hives all week. Today I added the clearer boards again and tomorrow I'll remove the supers and replace them with a single block of fondant sliced in half, face down on the QE. I'll add an open tray of Apiguard in the corner.

Last inspection at one apiary showed that all was OK. The hives, although low on stores, were strong enough and the mini-nucs were looking just fine. The latter will be moved to the back garden once the weather gets colder. Tomorrow the clearer boards get moved to the second apiary for a repeat of the entire process there.

[Neils]

While having breakfast this morning we watched a bee totally ignore a dish of honey and go for some candied peel, in presumably honey instead. I did double check and it was definitely a honey bee, I even set my watch as I figured we had maybe 30 minutes before more turned up. I kept waiting for it to go for the pot of honey next to the peel but it never did. The honey itself was pretty unremarkable it has to be said and I didn't try the peel as I figured we were on borrowed time but I've never seen a bee ignore honey like that. The two dishes were right next to each other and it definitely checked them all out. Better honey in the peel maybe?

There also wasn't the cloud of bees I was expecting, having retreated to watch proceedings. I thought they'd ignore everything else in preference to finding free honey.

[HJBee]

Kinda bee related - no they were not honey flavoured1237

[gavin]

Far too good-looking to eat, HJ.

Today I recovered two supers of thin unwired, each about 3/4 full, from my usual heather site. The heather was badly frosted about 10 days ago and they seem to have done nothing since then. They came from two colonies and two others have nothing. That will be my entire harvest this year (other than nucs) unless the other one in the hills (in Glen Clova) does anything. One of the worst seasons in the E of Scotland, one of a run of poor summers. Those who make their main income from bees are having a hard time, and once again the shelves at the flower show last week were sparse.

Tonight I've been making up boxes so that I can feed the colonies still at the home apiary. All my spare boxes are housing frames of foundation and comb, prepared in a spate of optimism earlier in the summer.

[Jon]

I spent most of the day extracting the supers I took off last weekend - about 250lbs I reckon. If I sell some of that I can claw back a bit of the money I spent earlier in the year on this strange yet addictive hobby.
I checked apideas yesterday as well and a lot of the last batch of queens have started laying in the past few days. We have just had a week of near perfect weather.

[gavin]

Driving back from Glen Isla I spotted a group of blokes in shorts lugging trolleys with metal stick things poking out and sporting rather naff brightly coloured garb. Golfers. What a strange hobby! I thought to myself. Upon a little further musing it did occur to me that I was driving back from the hills having worked all summer with stinging insects in boxes just to recover a paltry amount of sweet stuff in little wax cells.

[Jimbo]

It has been a poor year and hard going. Up until a few weeks ago I thought I would not have any honey but in the last few weeks the colonies have produced about 3 supers of mixed blossom and I think I should have about 2 supers of Ling heather from a colony I have up the hill. The worse thing for me was the loss of so many nuc colonies. 8 turned out to be drone layers. I picked up a swarm this summer that also turned out to be a drone layer. I had to feed like mad this summer just to keep what colonies I did have alive. I have ended up with the same number of colonies I started the spring with but at least they all have a good young queen. The other strange thing is we monitor the amount of rain that falls and it is not that much different from some other years. June is the only month that was higher but it is still about average for the year. I would say it must be all that pesticides we have that are stopping our queens mating but we don't have OSR. It would interesting to see how many colonies were lost this summer in the wetter West than the drier East

[Jon]

Queens seem to have mated well enough here in Balmy Belfast, although results have been mixed as others in the queen rearing group had more failures. If truth be told this is more likely down to poor management of apideas rather than the weather.
I got about 50 queens out of 32 apideas.
None have turned drone layer but a couple have stopped laying completely.
I introduced one to a nuc at the start of August and had to remove it and requeen again last week as it went 5 weeks without squeezing out an egg.
It was laying worker brood in its apidea and I expect failures to start to lay drone rather than stop laying altogether.
I have another like this in an apidea which was laying normal worker brood and has not laid now for about 6 weeks. I have even introduced brood from queenright apideas to keep it going but she seems to have permanently stopped laying.
There has been no attempt to supersede either of these queens even though there have been introduced larvae available.
I thought the first batch of queens which mated in June might fail as it seemed to rain every day but the nucs I made up at the start of July are ok so far. Poorly mated queens usually fail quite quickly. I have high hopes for the current batch as the weather was great and there are no exotic drones about in September. Some of my colonies still have hundreds of drones although I noticed a few have started to tip out their drones in the past week.

[gavin]

I wonder if those non-laying queens are just a random subset of the poorly or non-mated drone layers? Or maybe they are laying a few eggs, it is just that the workers are on to them and gobble up the unfertilised ones almost as soon as they are laid. It was this kind of situation that I thought might explain Ruary's mate's shenanigans.

Nearly had another flight of fancy on wet wests and pesticides, but this isn't the forum area for that.

[Jon]

It's only 2 queens out of about 50 - but failures don't usually stop laying altogether.
The usual routine I see with a poorly mated queen is initial brood with too much drone brood in it then all drone brood after a few weeks.
I have looked carefully for eggs in these two cases.
Sometimes when you put in a frame of larvae it can get them going but these ones have ignored it.
As they say, bees don't read the books, ride unicycles etc.

[Jon]

I checked a few nucs at the association apiary today.
They were piling in the pollen from the balsam and the ivy (at last) and I noticed quite a few eggs on the combs.
Maybe things are going to pick up a bit after a very wet and cool September.

[GRIZZLY]

Went to a local farm yestrday to retrieve a couple of hives.To my amazement they both had a full super of sealed honey.I certainly didn't expect that as my honey yield has been very low this season and the farm in question is very open with no obvious nectar sources except clover which I didn't see in flower.The rest seem busy with Balsom which is prolific this year.

[Don Ember]

Still waiting patiently for the ivy here. Not flowering yet for my bees!

[Hoomin_erra]

Question. i have an "almost" full super, and loads of honey in the brood. If i break the capped honey in the brood (making sure it's not brood) will the bees take it up to the super? I can then take off a full super, and then feed them for winter

[Jon]

At this time of year they are more likely to move honey from the super down to the brood box.
I would extract the super and start feeding. If your extractor takes deep frames you could extract a couple and feed extra but I would be inclined to leave stores in the brood box where they are at this time of year.

[Rosie]

I'm with Jon except that I would extractthe ripe stuff from the super, remembering that it can be ripe and still be uncapped, and then put the unripe combs back on the hive in a super above the crown board. Hopefully they will then take it down to add to what's already in the brood box. I would only give them sugar if you judge them to be still light on winter stores in the brood box.

I would have thought that it would be too late to feed syrup now but mine are still happy to take it down but I am sure they will refuse it soon.

[chris]

I'm not sure if I'm reading you right, but are you suggesting that you take more than the surplus honey, and then feed the bees syrup to replace it? If so, then in your position,IMO, I'd leave all the brood box honey for the bees and take just the frames already in the super for myself. Unless you can, in your area, count on more forage coming in.

[Jon]

Hi Chris. I would not extract deep frames from the brood box at this time of year myself but I guess you could do if you wanted to.
I am more interested in bee breeding than harvesting honey.
I think Finman who posts on BKF does this, extracts everything, and then feeds gallons of syrup over a couple of weeks. Each to their own I guess.
The ivy is only starting here so there will be forage but the amount collected as always will depend upon the weather.
The balsam is still in full flower as well.

Steve, I probably feed more syrup than you, and I often have to remove 3 or 4 capped frames in the Spring. I do it as insurance and it gets fed back in the June gap or for making up nucs.

[chris]

I think Finman who posts on BKF does this, extracts everything, and then feeds gallons of syrup over a couple of weeks. Each to their own I guess.


Ah! Bubo. The first time I ever posted on the old BBKA forum I had him posting in red. For me, bees wintering on their own honey is one of the pillars of healthy colonies.I never feed unless absolutely necessary, and even then I hesitate, thinking that maybe a colony that goes into winter without enough stores is a sign of something to investigate (yeah, my bad beekeeping).I seem to remember Willie Robson in a tv documentary saying that his father used winter for weeding out the unsuitable colonies.Or something like that.

[Jon]

I believe Brother Adam used to make up hundreds of nucs which he left to fend for themselves over the winter as only the hardy ones survived.

[Adam]

I would be reluctant to remove honey at this time of year unless a colony had no room. If they don't need it, it will still be there in the Spring.

I have a couple of colonies that need more stores, otherwise feeding is complete.

[GRIZZLY]

I extracted the two supers I took of on Monday. Then immediately fed both colonies. I certainly won't take any honey from brood boxes unless I'm splitting colonies in the spring/summer.The yield of honey this year has been realy low due to the cold,wet and windy summer.The bees have been bordering on starvation all summer - eating nectar as soon as it gets into the hive. The colonies have been large however so have needed supplimentary feed all season.

[fatshark]

Wonderful autumn day here with unbroken sunshine and temperatures in the mid teens. Bees still busy on the ivy. Lots of pollen being brought in. Spent the morning foraging ... we've had the chippies in at work and they left lots of ply offcuts most of which are safely tucked away in my garage :o Also found the motherlode of old rotten wood from an recently felled tree. Enough for the next couple of years fuelling the smoker and now drying in my greenhouse :o

Spent the afternoon at the apiaries, removing old Apiguard trays, adding another half block of fondant where necessary (most hives have consumed 12.5kg in the last 4 weeks) and checking things were ready for the winter. Only thing left to do is collect the mini-nucs from an out apiary and tuck them somewhere sheltered for the next 5 months.

Time for a beer!

[GRIZZLY]

Off to get some cedar to store to allow complete drying. I intend to make some varroa floors that give a bigger mesh area than those supplied by M.B. The bees are all flying well and are still taking down feed. They've each taken down two 12 1/2 litre cans of Ambrosia so should'nt starve this winter. Pollen is still being brought in to all colonies. Keeping fingers crossed for a better 2013. Off to Weybridge for the National Honey Show where I hope to meet old friends. I hope to come back with a copy of a new book - written by my old pal JOHN HOME about his exploits in Africa setting up beekeeping for the africans as a source of income for those that have nothing.

[gavin]

Enjoy the honey show. Mine (and the association's) are also mostly still taking down feed though a couple haven't touched theirs this last week. At 8C yesterday afternoon there were quite a few flights coming back laden with pollen from the ivy.

[emcampbell]

Popped along to the aberdeen associations honey show on saturday. Good to put some names to faces and see that not everyone failed to get a crop this year ! Congratulations to the winners and cheers to the ladies at the cake stall. My wee boy got stuck into the scones (and chocolate cake!). I might have some of my own honey to enter next year with any luck.

[GRIZZLY]

Local honey shows are a good test for the purity of your honey. Our association is inviting our membership to bring a sample jar along to our next meeting, which is our AGM, for a " taste in". Be nice to taste the different sorts and perhaps guess their origin. I'm stepping down as Chairman this year so new blood will be running the show.

[Hoomin_erra]

Snowed this morning.

[prakel]

seems rather quiet in these parts but I'm pleased to see that someone remembered to leave the light on.....

[gavin]

We're all feeling depressed at the report of snow to the north ..... and the frost on the ground in the mornings ..... and tonight I even saw a gritter lorry out and about.

[prakel]

I knew I lived in the South for a reason.

[gavin]

Well, we'll just have to console ourselves with our quieter traffic, scenic views, general quality of life .... and a national football team that quickly exits international competitions and leaves us with plenty of free time for things like beekeeping.

[prakel]

quieter traffic, scenic views and general quality of life, sounds like motorway free Dorset and the Jurassic coast to me.

Edit: as for football, coming from a Union stronghold I never really bothered even trying to get my head around the game.

[Jon]

.. and a national football team that quickly exits international competitions and leaves us with plenty of free time for things like beekeeping.

And where did the manager come from???

[Bridget]

Love the frost and snow. No comparison between Scotland and Dorset. Every time I go to the Bridport /jurrasic area I'm horrified at the amount of cars and (old) people. I would never go back

[prakel]

I know, all those people who forgot that it's bad to get old.... terrible.

[GRIZZLY]

Just got back from the Jurassic coast - plenty of old fossils about. Good to get back up here tho' - just couldn't stand the sudden heat and sunlight.

[gavin]

Last time I was near Chesil beach it was a drizzly damp dark day, as dark as any here. The slugs had been out in force and were chomping through the early spider orchids. I took a decapitated one home and it set seed on my windowsill. But that was another era.

Yes, the Scotland manager would have been better staying where he was and I would have welcomed that at the time.

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

[prakel]

Just got back from the Jurassic coast

should have pm'd me!

[Jon]

Beautiful day so checked a load of colonies and rearranged some stores. More info in the blog (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/entry.php?573-Final-bee-binge-of-the-season).

[fatshark]

Lots of bees collecting pollen from the ivy during the warmest part of the day ... queues forming to get in and out of the mini-nucs. I checked hives at one apiary and wrapped them in DPM to keep the woodpeckers away. I'll do the rest next w/e. I also moved the last of the poly nucs into the back garden where things are a little more sheltered (and they can avoid the attention of the damned woodpecker!).

That's pretty much it for the season though there is a large pile of flat-packed cedar boxes bought at the Thornes sale last w/e ... something to build over the winter.

[Jon]

I checked 10 apideas I have at home and all are still queenright. Most of them had brood present.
I have 13 apideas still occupied and I think all have queens.
Also called over to the association apiary and topped up feeders and added more fondant to a few colonies.
They were all piling in the ivy pollen.
Took 3 more samples for morphometry as well.

[emcampbell]

Lots of pollen coming in over the weekend. Good to see them so busy !

Would anyone hazard a guess at the pollen species - dark yellow colour ? The ivy near us is not quite in flower yet, still a week or so away.

[Jon]

Got to be ivy.
They have probably found some high up and south facing which has flowered a bit earlier.
Mine are bringing it in in huge quantities as well. Great to watch.

[Mellifera Crofter]

We went to Crathes Castle yesterday and saw lots of bees active on the last of the red hot pokers. Do they have yellow pollen, and do you have any red hot pokers near you, Ewan?

[emcampbell]

I think there are some red hot pokers not too far away actually and they would have a similar yellow colour to what I saw. Jon you are probably correct as well that there is ivy in flower somewhere nearby. In hindsight I think there is a big south facing stand round the back of a large property near us but I can't check due to large guard dogs :)

Nice to see them out and about......the bees that is not the dogs.

[GRIZZLY]

Just got back from the National Honey Show in Weybridge. Came across the SBA President -Phill McAnespie and his wife having a wander round the exhibits and the trade stands and met up with a few old beekeeping aquaintances from my previous life " down south". Some lovely honey and wax exhibits on show but I wonder how much of it was from this years harvest. Certainly the drawn comb wasn't - judgeing by the seeping cappings.

[GRIZZLY]

Bees still flying bringing in pollen .Had a visitor this morning - a red squirrel that made itself at home on our bird feeders.Spent the morning collecting loose peanuts and burying them in the lawn.I'm very pleased , they seem to have spread quite widely around here.

[Bridget]

No chance of flying bees here. Some sun but +1 till about elevenses time and then it staggered up to +4 with a very chilly wind.


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[GRIZZLY]

Had a quick dash into the garden this morning.We had a terrific gust that removed the roofs off two hives, depositing the roof and brick weights into the middle of my lawn.Fortunately it wasn't raining so the bees were all right. The roofs are the shallow plastic type so the wind can get undrneath and flip them off the hive - weights and all. I think I'll replace them all with wooden national roofs plus foam slabs which will avoid the problem of adverse weather. Just use the flat roofs during the better weather next year. I'll strap the roofs down after the O.A. treatment.

[Bridget]

Well that sent me rushing out to check my hives! All ok here but my grandsons trampoline blown away in Edinburgh so perhaps the winds have yet to reach us in the north.


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[Trog]

Just been round my lot, too. All still intact. Had to let 'sooty' the sparrow out of the woodburner again. Keeps falling down the flue when the fire's not lit!

[Bridget]

Our wood burner has hardly been out in the last month. However we had to rescue another Sooty during the summer. Had no idea what sort of bird it was and had quite a laugh when this black duck flew off.


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[Bridget]

Sun out periodically, temp +10 and the lovely ladies are taking the opportunity to get out and about.


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[EmsE]

I'm going to be going along to the apiary this evening to check all hives are standing up right (all hives have a ratchet strap on them but no bricks) and to see if the field is at risk of flooding. That could be fun in this weather in the dark.

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[Jon]

Yesterday it was 4c in the afternoon and all was quiet but today it hit 14c and they are bringing in stacks of ivy pollen.

[HJBee]

Beekeeping in the dark, wind & rain! Fields adjacent to the Apiary site were flooded, but luckily ours was a bit mushy. Didn't stop me falling on my face, much to my own and Emse's amusement - but at least the ground was soft! All hives were raised as a just in case and at 11degrees a few of the wee bandits came out to check out what we were up to.

[EmsE]

Relieved to say that the bee hives weren't sitting in a flooded field. The fields across from them have partially flooded, so just in case the water begins to get closer, we've sat them on some extra bricks to raise them just that bit more as the ground was waterlogged and I could feel myself sinking a bit when carrying the bricks.

Aided by the car headlights and HJBees head torch all went well. it was good to see just how sheltered from the wind the hives are, and of course any excuse to visit the apiary.....in the pitch black:rolleyes: all went well, quite entertaining and good to see one of my colonies was as enthusiastic as ever. As we were tilting the hive to put the extra bricks under, they began bubbling out..... Do bees sleep or are mine insomniacs? Will the colony always have guard bees that are awake & on duty (if that's it, then that colony has a lot of guard bees) :p

[EmsE]

"Hey there Mr Blue, we're so pleased to be with you, look around see what you do......"


We had sunshine today;) pity I was at work though but at least the bees will have been able to enjoy it a bit. I'm just hoping its enough for the flood waters to subside a bit ready for the forecasted rain tomorrow to be accommodated before it reaches the apiary field.

[gavin]

Hey you with the pretty face,
Welcome to the human race
A celebration Mr. Blue Sky's
Up there waitin' and today
Is the day we've waited for

For anyone not on Ems' wavelength tonight, I bring you the clickable version ...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98P-gu_vMRc

What a jolly ditty. The hairstyles are the kind of thing Jon would have had when he actually did have hair. Must have taken hours to fluff them up like that.

The sky and the view from the allotments up high on Dundee Law was indeed lovely today. There were two bumble bee queens flying too (just to get back more or less on topic).

Hope that you're all prepared for the two-brick gale coming your way.

[Jon]

I never grew an Afro.
ELO are a Beatles tribute band in all but name. same as Oasis.

[EmsE]

Jon, Their music and style is their own imo. (Much prefer their style to the beetles) Mind you, one got away with releasing 'the yellow submarine' and the other with 'Horace Wimp'.:confused:

Gavin, do you mean to say i'm on a different wavelength to others? :p I think you've posted the only video where Geoff isn't wearing his sunglasses! And his hair makes mine look tame.

So long as the wind isn't going to change direction my hives should be ok. Ratchet straps on all of them this year after last years gales so if they do go over, it'll be in one piece.

[Jon]

Horace Wimp uses the chord sequence from Dear Prudence off the White Album.

[gavin]

Nothing could make your hair look tame!

You were clearly thinking on a higher plane. I was just helping the slow ones to keep up :p

Wish I'd invested in a couple of ratchet straps to complete the set. I have a couple unprotected, and have memories of just a little later than this last year when two were upside down and in pieces when I visited after a gale.

[Jon]

I taped a few correx lids on to my correx nucs today with gaffer tape.
I don't need to open them for a month when they will get the Oxalic acid trickle.
Some of them are light but they have stores which will last a month and I can sort that out later.
You are getting really bad weather in Scotland. Mine have been foraging 3 days in a row now.

[EmsE]

Nothing could make your hair look tame! .

Lol, and this weather won't help either.

[Bumble]

You are getting really bad weather in Scotland.

It hasn't been very nice here in the wet and windy south.

One of ours hives, complete with a couple of bricks, got blown off its stand by one of those 'freak' gusts of wind that can lift more than a person can manage. Fortunately the strap held it together and, hopefully, the hoffman frames will have stayed put inside.

It wasn't much fun trying to get it upright again. It took two of us, and we ended up looking like a couple of mudlarks.

[Jon]

Still a few brave souls collecting pollen today in bright sunshine and it is only 6c-7c.
Looks like we are set for a spell of cold and dry weather.

[GRIZZLY]

I was going to OA them today but they were all flying so I didn't disturb them.Its to get colder into the weekend so will perform the deed then.

[EmsE]

Well, the first lot of snow is falling just now & settling nicely. With rain forecast during the night, it's going to wash it all away before the morning. At least it's going to be warmer tomorrow.

[Poly Hive]

The problem with ratchet straps is they rely on the pin, the "axle" of the unit to take the strain. One moments contemplation of that load bearing part is disconcerting.

Spansets have no such issue. I would put my faith in one of them far far far more than that tiny pin in the ratchet and as I spent a great part of my life judging the ability of items to with stand stress and loads.... I do not own a ratchet, but I do own numerous Spansets.

PH

[greengumbo]

Four inches of snow on the ground over the weekend. More this week.

-5'C last night at 7pm.

Not seen the bees for an age.

[Mellifera Crofter]

... Spansets have no such issue. I would put my faith in one of them ...

PH

I looked at Google images of spansets, PH, and can't quite see how you use them. Some look like huge elastic bands and others are ropes with a loop on each end.

I've just spilled wax all over the kitchen floor. I used a Ragus candy container in which to pour the molten wax and it worked fine the first time round, but when I reused it, the container split with wax everywhere. "Lessons must be learned." (Excuse the cliché.)

Kitta

[Black Comb]

This explains how to use the spansets

http://www.thorne.co.uk/image/data/Documents/Standard%20Hive%20Strap.pdf

[prakel]

While I don't have PHs experience of checking straps for strength etc I've got to agree that they're by far the better option. No moving parts is always a bonus -and once you've sussed out how to do them up (nice link Black Comb) you never forget.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks Black Comb - I do have spansets! I just didn't know that's what they were called. They don't look like the ones illustrated on Google.
Kitta

[Poly Hive]

Technically they are called "Hive Straps", Spanset as a company sell all sorts of rigging kit, slings up to 1000T SWL I believe and everything in between. The hive strap has a working load of 0.15 tonnes and the strap it's self new is .3. So 150kgs, working strain for normal usage.

The Safe working load or SWL is always considerably higher than the load involved in case of shock load. A lift of one tonne has usually an excess of 100% to allow for the load getting snagged and suddenly coming free, the shock, in the shock loading.

Anyway Hive straps are easy to use and long lived. My old mentor has ones in use which are over 30 years old now.

A short video explains... http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CcCbQ7W7foA#!

PH

[gavin]

The Spansets I have rusted rather quickly (that black paint peeled off) whereas only the cheaper ratchet straps did so. Ratchet straps are the gold standard for me (especially brass ones!), giving a very secure, tight grip whereas getting that tight grip is harder with Spansets. With Spansets as you flip the bracket over you momentarily tighten even more than when it is at rest, which means on softer materials (polyhives spring to mind) more damage is done.

And with ratchet straps on wooden hives with metal-topped roofs you can tighten until pinging the webbing is satifyingly musical.

Tried using spring clips (each box has its own position, hard to find the right box when your numbers grow a little), lock-slides (ditto), and, in the early days, ropes (oh! the fun of the move to the heather!).

[prakel]

Off topic a bit...

I've still got a carrier bag full of the copper staples which we used to use when we had more hives -very hard on the woodwork but cheap at the time. They've now found a new unexpected use as frame spacers in mating nucs -but I doubt that I'll ever have enough frames to even scratch the surface of that carrier bag.

[Poly Hive]

Proper spansets Gavin are blue painted with orange straps as in the video.

Yes there is a touch of crushing on the roofs of the poly but as it is (if done right) in the middle then once done it is always the same place and makes no odds. I would take a pic of a roof for you but my camera is sold and in the post this day. My new one is my Crimbo pressie.

Your properly tensioned spanset will twang like a violin.

You can keep your ratchets, all depends on that pin sirs... verrra weak. As for hammered in lock slides... *shudders* Staples... double shudders

PH

[prakel]

Staples... double shudders PH

Doesn't even come close...!!

[GRIZZLY]

I use the spanset hive straps and mark the strap with a waterproof pen so I know where to pull the strap thro' for the right tension. Different colour further up the strap if I'm using it to move hive plus super. Just takes a bit of experimenting to get it right.

[Adam]

I find that the webbing hive straps fail rather than any mechanism that's used with them.

[Poly Hive]

Which ones have you had fail Adam? Never heard of that before.

PH

[GRIZZLY]

Bad stiching perhaps on cheap imitations Adam ?. The Spanset strap webbing has a huge breakng strength = certainly enough to crush hives if not tensioned correctly , either poly or wood.

[Black Comb]

Uv has degraded some of mine but none have yet failed.

[Poly Hive]

300kgs should be more than enough for most hives unless made of reinforced concrete. And yes there was a concrete hive once upon a time. ;) I have a slide of it somewhere.

PH

[Calum]

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32667/title/Pixel-Perfect/
The Secret Lives of Honeybees
wow!

[Bridget]

+6 and dry and still this afternoon so decided to give them their Christmas fondant early. I say fondant but its home made and a solid block so if they don't like I can buy the proper stuff later. I gave it a bit of a scratch so they could get started on it. Interesting that the polyhive with the Perspex board I could see bees crawling all over the board. Hard to see but no discernible area of where the cluster was. The other two hives with solid CB I opened up both porter bee things and could see bees moving on one side so plonked the fondant over them. With my ear to the varroa board ( I keep them in in winter as its so cold and snowy here) I could hear the level of buzzing rising as they found their treat. So with all three hives buzzing in my ears I took my wet knees home as the snow started to fall again.


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[Jimbo]

How ironic. Started to find a few bees crawling about the inside of the house over the last few days. SWMBO is not amused At first checked the bee samples in the freezer, just in case.
I don't keep hives at home and I know everybody who has hives in the near area so I think I have a feral colony inside a wall.
Going to be interesting in spring when they get active as it is impossible to get to them as the walls are at least four feet thick.

[gavin]

Do they look like good Rosneath natives?

And why now - have you recently turned the central heating on? Seems odd that they choose December to go walkabout.

(was about to say that something must be disorientating them, but no, let's not go there .... )

[Jon]

Checked mine at the allotment today and a mouse or possibly a rat had been into a weak nuc and chewed up a couple of combs near the entrance - or maybe I should not rule out neonicotinoids producing a sub lethal chewed up comb effect. (Has anyone tested for this - maybe we need a ban under the precautionary principle until about 10 years of data is available.)
This one is so weak I could probably squeeze them into a 5 frame apidea. It still has a queen.
I have 3 or 4 nucs I am not really expecting to come through the winter
I need to move some of these correx nucs to the garden as the allotment is heaving with mice. The pickings are rich and there are sheds full of seeds dotted all over the place.
The other curious detail is that three 1 gallon plastic ketchup bottles full of syrup which were sitting at the apiary had been punctured at the shoulder with what looked like a bite mark. I wonder was this the work of a rat or could a fox or a badger have had a nibble. It was a very clean puncture just about big enough to let in a wasp.
Several of the colonies were active at 8c and an apidea was bringing in a bit of pollen.

[fatshark]

Cool here and predicted to get much colder. Mini-nucs getting TLC but they're still out and about when the temp reaches about 8 degrees. About a third of my nucs and mini-nucs are lighter than i would like, but all are still active and taking fondant.

Spent the day assembling flat-pack brood boxes from the Thornes sale and building framed QE's and new crown boards with both Perspex and built in insulation.

This cold snap should be just about the right time for the hives to be broodless for OA treatment in about a fortnight or so.

[gavin]

The other curious detail is ......

Do Ulster wasps have very sharp teeth?

The bigger mystery seems to be who in the association buys their ketchup by the gallon, and why?!

[Jon]

Do Ulster wasps have very sharp teeth?

The bigger mystery seems to be who in the association buys their ketchup by the gallon, and why?!

Me! I like ketchup on my potatoes.

I reckon about half a pint of syrup ran out of each container as the puncture hole is near the top.
It looks like far to clean a hole to be a rat or a mouse and there is no sign of scraping or gnawing.
the plastic is pretty tough, it definitely was not a wasp although there are still a few about.

I'll take a picture. I didn't have the camera with me today.

[fatshark]

.22 ?

[gavin]

.22 ?

Is that the temperature down your way? Tayside is balmy by comparison. ;)

I suspect that an allotment is not the place for such tools. By the sounds of it there would be plenty of replacement rodents around.

[Jon]

.22 ?

It's about that size but it's not a clean entry hole.

There were 3 punctured and they were sitting apart but near a hive in each case and there was nowhere a sniper could have got a clean shot!
Not that we run around with guns in Ireland or anything like that. Scurrilous rumour.

It looks more like a puncture made by a canine tooth.

It's stuff I intended to feed but the weather turned too cold to feed syrup and they have been sitting at the apiary for 6 weeks.

[gavin]

Doh! Misunderstood that one. Of course, there would be an entry and an exit hole in that case (or a pellet inside). Shushh ... United are on the telly .....

[gavin]

Prompted by tales of guys with many more colonies than me heading for the low-lying spots to rescue hives, I had a peek at mine today. Standing water, but mine are mostly on stands and are lifted well clear. Another deluge is forecast for tomorrow .....

http://www.sbai.org.uk/images/on_the_rails.jpg

There were a few bees out from the hives that had fondant a couple of days ago even though it was only 4C. One flying, 2-3 walking.