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Dont think Tony need worry just yet.

Nothing like the promise of an upcoming talk to non beeks and taking part in the next round of beginner's courses to send you off into a frenzy of reading up and research and I'm rapidly becoming an expert on using Keynote.

I'm half excited about it and half dreading it to be honest. Where's the plant who's going to spring that question I don't know the answer to going to be lurking? What obvious point that I should have included ...

One of my young (ish) lads came along to the apiary this afternoon. The bees were on their best behaviour. Most were munching contentedly on their fondant - not munching exactly but busy scooping out little tunnels with their tongues. One colony had the block exposed at the side, the door end of the block where the cling film had been too short, and there were rows of bees each drilling down into the block, making a neat pattern of deep holes in the block. Presumably they are taking the fondant ...

It's that time of the year again when a beekeeper feels the urge to wax lyrical (sorry Nellie) on winter insulation.
I have been complaining elsewhere that my nucs have not been building up as quickly as I had hoped, and it occurred to me that there might be too much heat loss as they are home made Correx nucs made from recycled electoral material. Hot air escaping from politicians - a familiar problem to the electorate in N Ireland.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYhM2-mhDAo ...

So I've nearly finished fiddling with the stuff I've taken off the hives this year. The mead continues to bubble away, there remains two buckets of honey still needing putting into jars and my labels still aren't done, but I have now converted the big bucket of cappings and the odd disintegrated super frame into blocks:



Somehow it doesn't seem an awful lot of wax anymore as a lot of the weight ...

Had a quick visit to the apiary on Thursday, a bright day between the rainy ones this week. Perhaps it was the first day when the bees that returned from the heather on Sunday night could get out, and there were large clouds of bees in the air around those two hives. They seemed happy, and one colony had bees on the outside engaged in frantic grooming. I'm assuming it was grooming, as there was picking all over the body taking place, but it did seem a bit rough so maybe there was an element of ...