1st proper season

[Troutnabout]

Hi, I have just joined the forum. This is my 1st real season keeping bees. Until now I have helped out my father and his father before him. unfortunately my dad is no longer well enough to get out of the house, so me and my son have taken over the running of the hives. We had 4 at the end of last season but 2 died early this year, the winter was too long and too cold.

Of the two survivors one is exceptionally strong. Both are set up as 1 (National) brood chamber with the 1st super opened up as a brood, so we have two hives each with 1.5 brood chambers and a super for honey each. The strong hive (No 1) swarmed on the 1st of June, a nice big swarm :)

[gavin]

Many thanks for introducing yourself - great to see you here! *Four* generations of beekeepers in one family is quite a feat!

Don't worry (too much) about all that foulbrood stuff - it is a hot topic for those of us in EC Scotland at the moment.

Gavin

[Troutnabout]

Its actually 5 generations Gavin. The lineage is:

Old Davie, Andra, Old Dave, Dave (me), Adam

[gavin]

One day I'll find a beekeeper in my ancestors. There must have been a few as many were country dwellers in the parts I now inhabit) but nobody living has been able to tell me and there wasn't a BeeBase in the 1800s and 1700s.

[Troutnabout]

here is a picture of the swarm taken by my son before we bashed a way through the nettles, brambles and thistles.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk127/oldgooner/1stSwarm.jpg

[Jimbo]

Anybody got any ideas?
Last night I got a call about a swarm. I went out and collected it. It was easy as the swarm had attached itself to a trampoline. The method used was my classic method,spray the cluster with water, swept into a cardboard box and leave until its just getting dark. When sweeping into the box I saw the marked queen (I have to admit it was one of mine)
I set up a brood box at my apairy site and dumpted them in with a few frames in the brood box.
This morning I got a call from the person who had the garden who informed me the swarm was back. So back again, sprayed the bees, swept into a nuc box. This time I could not see the queen. So back up to my site to check what was going on. There was the queen and all the bees still clustered in the box with no flying bees. I thought it may then be a cast so I checked the original box (I had chopped all the queen cells out during the week to buy me some time). There were new queen cells at all stages with one just sealed with a good amount of bees. I have heard that swarms can leave a scent and that swarms will go to the same site year after year. Is it possible this is different swarm that has picked the same site. What are the odds on that? When I get it removed I will report back if there is a queen in there

[gavin]

Those who regularly have swarms (not me ..... :p ...... ) do report single sites attracting strings of swarms. My ex-beekeeping buddy (still a buddy but no longer a beekeeper) had a fallen tree on which all the local swarms (his and those of others) settled for a while. He had more beekeepers than me in his area.

OK, I may have lost one small one this year, but the weather didn't help. Don't know where it landed.

Unfortunately this will sound so unlikely to the garden owner that they'll never believe it.

[Trog]

Ours always used to swarm to one particular bit in the surrounding blackthorn but we've cut so much of it out now, getting to them, that they have found a new site. I suspect last week's small swarm in the hawthorn was my supersedure queen getting a bit lost after mating. Theory: so much bad weather she couldn't do any orientation flights so when the rain and gales stopped she just had to go for it. Anyway, I've put some open eggs into her colony to see if they're now queenless. Meanwhile, she's filled two brood frames with eggs in her new hive which, by coincidence is right next to the old one so uniting will be easy if necessary.

Meanwhile yesterday's ginormous swarm (biggest we've ever seen here) is safely hived and doesn't appear to have come from any of our colonies :)

Another colony with just-about-to-be sealed queen cells has taken up two hours so far, yesterday and today, trying to find the queen, who's usually very easy to spot. Have bled flying bees twice and now done a split, hoping she's in the right box. Yesterday we were finally defeated by midges; it got just too painful. To give them their due, the girls have been very good-natured about the second attempt today and I'm dithering about whether to have yet another go, or risk the queen having gone in with the non-flyers. Forecast is good for tomorrow morning so I might leave it till then; eggs will be a dead giveaway as to which box she's in! They've not swarmed and wouldn't have been big enough to account for the mega-swarm yesterday.

[chris]

I have heard that swarms can leave a scent and that swarms will go to the same site year after year. Is it possible this is different swarm that has picked the same site. What are the odds on that?

This year, I carefully prepared my bait boxes, and set most of them out in places that I decided bees must love. I left four in my car port for a few days later. A swarm arrived in it. I replaced it by another box, and the next day another swarm arrived. I then brought back some bait boxes and placed them around the car . Within a few days I had another swarm, and in a box in exactly the same position as the others. I have so far taken 5 swarms in this exact place within the last 3 weeks. My other bait boxes are all empty.

[Jimbo]

After all the faffing about with swarms last night and this morning I eventually got to look at my colonies and my nucs. Three of the four nucs now have a mated queen and the queenless colony the raising the Cupkit queen cells have produced 7 cells from the original 10 larvae

631

[Jon]

I have heard that swarms can leave a scent and that swarms will go to the same site year after year. Is it possible this is different swarm

Hi Jimbo. If your marked queen is where you housed her this is another swarm. It's not that unusual. My father lets his bees swarm at will, ie, swarm control is new fangled mumbo jumbo, and about half of his (from 15 colonies ) land in the same mature Escallonia bush in the middle of his garden.

Did you jump on that trampoline and ping them up into a skep like something out of the Beano?

Onwards and upwards with the cupkit but I still say it is less of a faff to graft. Those look like good cells.

[Jon]

Its actually 5 generations Gavin. The lineage is:

Old Davie, Andra, Old Dave, Dave (me), Adam

I don't know if I can claim five but I know for sure we go back 4.
This chap is my paternal grandfather who died in 1964 and his father kept bees as well.
My father inherited his bees and equipment after he died and I got my first bees from my father so there may well be a wee bit of continuous genetics in there. (LOL I mean the bees rather than the Gettys) My father has never lost all his colonies in the 50 odd years he has kept bees. I think he was down to two or three colonies in the 1970s when acarine was a big problem.

632

[gavin]

He looks a bit more carnivorous than the current generation. Are you sure that the Getty's genetics is continuous?! Mine were fishermen (on the paternal side) for many generations and I'm keeping up the tradition with last night's catch in the oven now.

I'm hoping to graft sometime soon but haven't yet taken the plunge (trying to get back to something resembling the topic).

[Jon]

He looks a bit more carnivorous than the current generation.

Farmer and Police reserve so I doubt if he would have had much time for pinko leftie vegetarians.
I blame the Scottish genes.

When you are grafting, they key thing to remember is preparation of the colony which is going to receive the grafts. (assuming that the big issue is not your hangover leading to a shaky hand)

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,
I did think about jumping on the trampoline but there was an audience and somebody did have a camera so I did not want to apear in the local rag.
When I earn enough money to pay for my laser eye surgery and can give up full time employment I might go back to grafting until then it will have to be the Cupkit system for me

[Jon]

You hear about 20/20 vision well my eyes are 3.5 and 3.0 with an astigmatism in one of them. I find that I am so short sighted it is an advantage when grafting as long as I take my specs off and get my nose poked into the comb. I couldn't find my way home if I lost my specs.