Yes, thanks Chris. My sympathies. I hope you can sort it out soon.
Kitta
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does the lemon grass attract them? I use lots of essential oils and I have often wondered if their therapeutic properties could be used when dealing with the bees for example the apiguard has lots of thymol within is composition thymol coming from thymus vulgaris. I have often used lavender oil on myself before going to the hive and I swear it calms them! have never found any research on essential oils and bees interested if any one knows of any articles
sorry I meant apistan
Sounds like Newburgh wasn't so odd after all with 50% of the UK population glued to their TVs yesterday.
Interesting that oils may calm them. My lemon grass oil is always in the pocket of my bee suit - maybe that helps. Yes, it is good at attracting the attention of bees and helps fill any bait boxes with swarms. Two drops on the top bar, renew after a month or so. I also put a spot on the nuc entrances yesterday.
Still no laying queens in any of my hives :( I'm giving the one that was a drone layer another 24 hours to be sure. Either there is a new queen or there are some laying workers, but I'm not certain which and there were only a few cells that had eggs in them. Once had an egg on the side of the cell, another few had 2-3 eggs in the cell a few more did appear to have single eggs, but I wasn't 100% sure. There shouldn't be laying workers as the colony's had donor brood added of which there is still some sealed. I'm going back tomorrow when there'll hopefully be clearer signs as to what is going on. Needless to say I couldn't find a queen, but I'm going to have another look tomorrow and decide then what I'm going to do (bin them basically if they're laying workers and move one of the swarms into its place)
Realy too windy to do anything for the past few days.I've got a colony with a single Q cell and I can't find the queen although there are eggs and young brood.A candidate for supercedure perhaps?I expect the queen decamped onto the b.box walls during examination.I've to pick up a colony from one of our members who has given up due to pressure of work.I need to have a good look at them as they have been left to their own devices for the past year.They have however come thro' the winter/spring strongly and seem to have resisted Varroa quite well-so one to watch in the next few months.I'm still without my car at the moment so am frustrated at not to be able to put my bees on the OSR for a few more days yet despite having 70 acres for my exclusive use.
Talking to an old boy today who has been baiting hives for 50 odd years. Being a peasant, he wouldn't go spending money on any *fancy*oils.:rolleyes:
His recipé:
Crush up some old black wax containing some pollen. Add a small amount of water, and boil it up for a few minutes. Leave it to cool and then filter it. Add a little honey to the blackish liquid and spray it on the inside of the hive. You can also scrape some propolis from the inside of a hive. Warm it enough to make a ball that becomes hard and brittle when it cools, and when rubbed on the inside of the bait hive is very effective for attracting bees.
Today, the maple (acer campestre) outside my bedroom window has started buzzing. And the one in the chicken yard.I've never seen the bees working them so frantically before.
the costs are not that high! honestly! Jenter or Nicot systems are about 50 pounds. 10kg powderd sugar mixed with 6kg honey for apidea feeding. Bees are free. Apideas do cost, but pay themselves of with the second queen sold. Chinease larve spoon 3 pounds. and if you want to go rolls royce an excellent egg brooder with humidity control is >200 pounds. I will raise 30 queens for my own use this summer. time
make breeder colony 30 - 40 min
(1 week later)
clear breeder of queen cells 15 min
remove young larve (20) to plastic cups for breeder 50min
(5 days later)
cage closed queen cells 15 min
7-8 days later
prepare apadieas 10 min / apidea
shake & spary bees from breeder for apidea 15min (quicker if they are in a bad mood)
add bees to apidea and insert queen max 5 min / apidea
I know this because my wife always has the watch on me and enjoys asking me when I'll be finished especially when I am doing something fiddilly with a hand full of bees!
And yes only 7 kg it was 13 the week before!
My plan this year is to produce some queens using the cupkit and mininuc method using Amm colonies that showed 95% Amm using wing morphometry. As well as producing some queens from the hybrid stocks I have by splitting and making up 5 frame nucs for some new beekeepers. Just waiting on sufficient drones to appear before starting which should be within the next few weeks.
Jim