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Had a foray into Highland Perthshire last night for a beekeepers' meeting and there was snow on the ground there too. Survival locally seems to have been reasonable so far - although they are acutely aware of course that winter is far from over.
At lunchtime today the back-from-death wee colony in the garden was out and about in the sunshine. Good to see that it is still alive. Maybe I'll get to have a better look at the apiary on Saturday as it looks like they may be flying then.
That was a cracking picture Calum.
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Finally ! Some sunshine. Good to see my girls flying instead of cuddling a bar of cadbury's fondant with central heating running full pelt. :-) Three colonies looking in good shape with pollen available when weather permits. So chuffed ! :-D
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Cold,dank misty this morning-temperature expected to rise to 11 deg later.A quick peek into the top of the hives yesterday revealed bees crammed into every space.Must give more room to prevent forced swarming plus feed to keep them building up. With a bit of luck I'll be able to take off some early splits this season.
Checked the varroa boards under the floors and found 1 mite under 1 colony after a week-all the others seem clean.I will leave full inspections until the end of the month.Still loads of pollen coming in-mostly Whins I think.Good to have such strong early colonies to take full advantage of the OSR and Sycamores.
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Today, well ok yesterday, I resisted the urge to go poking around in beehives. The weather was lovely but still a little cold for my liking.
So we went to B&Q instead, bought some wood and started making some hive stands as per the plans on dave cushman's site.
Time to get ready for this season in earnest!
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B&Q? Sounds expensive....
My tip - many large companies that import or export anything are happy for anyone to come and take away their non euro pallets- trailer loads- otherwise they have to pay to get rid of them..
Dave complains they do not provide enough ventilation (half my hives are on old closed bottoms and I hear no complaints) one or two planks can be removed to improve ventilation.
I stack 4 high to save my back.
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Got one colony on pallets at the moment, certainly doable and not noticed any problems with ventilation, I just fancied something a little nicer looking this time. 4 Hive stands for £20 of wood and a £5 of glue that'll do for plenty of other projects (like the Thornes seconds brood boxes I've got in the garage).
4 high sounds about right for pallets, mine is on two and despite being a 14x12 it's far too low to be comfortable inspecting.
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Lovely day here in the west managing 14 degrees. Went fishing with the Hubbie and spent my time trying to get pictures of the honey bees in the Gorse flower. Challenge now is to find the usb lead to upload them onto the computer.
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Fishing?! I'm starting to realise that one thing quite a few beekeepers do (after keeping chooks of course, which seems almost universal) is fishing. Some even do both.
Of course, we have vegetarians watching too, so I'll shut up now.
Lovely to see that the bees are out everywhere. Get these pictures up! Even a blog?
If anyone has any trouble putting up images (I'm aware that the site can misbehave) I can upload them to an area on the SBAi server if you like, then you can link to them from there.
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Fishing!!!!!!!! Ah, yes. 15 March was far too cold here to even think about opening the season. Warming up nicely now, though, and plenty of insect life around. Have tied some new flies ready but likely to be too busy to use them anytime soon. Maybe, just maybe, if I can take a break from painting or assembling kitchen cabinets I might be able to take a closer look at the bees tomorrow if it's really warm again.
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My main fishing companion (my son Euan) is far away at the moment in British Colombia, so my trips out may be fewer this summer. It looks like you may get your wish. Should be a reasonable day tomorrow.