BBKA Forum

NigelP wrote: ↑

03 Sep 2020, 19:22

Cutting the lawn today was attacked ferociously by a lone bee and I was no where near my hives. Bugger stung me... Yet when I mowed right next to hives nothing was interested in me. Where did she come from and why attack me?...weird.

Bitter Ex ....... In bee form


We all have them

I vaped the four hived nucs two days ago all had very low mite drop.. varroa is still present though so all four got two strips of Apitraz each..i also fed them all 2;1 thymol syrup as all of them had very little stores..these bees are darlings compared to a F2 colony i have in Alnwick..

prepping a presentation on the benefits of nucs in the apiary.

Good couple of hours bee keeping. Been checking on two new Apiaries that ive opened up this last 4weeks. Expected to go and start feeding but both sites have colonies that have filled double broods and are extremely heavy. The colonies got supers and queen excluders added. They might even produce an excess this next few weeks. It's certainly bolds well for next year. Having had a wander round , could see comfrey and wild borage flowering not to far away.

I was planning on an inspection today, on just one of my hives, but it’s been pouring all day! - at the last inspection I had moved the super under the brood box after doing a bit of uncapping/scoring of the few capped frames.
I had also, briefly, been feeding it bit of fondant leftover and a pollen patty on top of the frames during the last week of August.

Despite the rain I decided I needed to switch to a heavy syrup feed ( is 2:1 the term? ..think so..) - the fondant and patty had gone completely so I just smoked the bees a little, removed the remnants of the plastic fondant packaging & placed my rapid feeder.

As always at this time of year, I continued to contemplate my many mistakes this year, the main one being the irregularIty of my inspections! - the little bit of honey from spring has been welcome, but the summer ‘crop’ was dismal and has been left for the bees to take over the next few months..

gdsbees wrote: ↑

06 Sep 2020, 17:07

As always at this time of year, I continued to contemplate my many mistakes this year, the main one being the irregularIty of my inspections! - the little bit of honey from spring has been welcome, but the summer ‘crop’ was dismal and has been left for the bees to take over the next few months..

The longer I keep bees, the more I think irregular bee inspections aren't necessarily a bad thing. Especially outside of swarm season.

Tend to agree Chris...If everything is okay...I won't be inspecting some of mine until next year. Probably find an odd supersedure queen appearing from nowhere next spring. But I will be i inspecting hives where I want to know whats going on....some recently introduced queens, a late mating, possible drone layer to throw out.....obviously only when the weather is good..
Hardest bit for me now is getting bees back from the heather moors, then start varroa treatments and make sure they have enough stores to get through winter. Got strange looks at B&M with 100 bags of sugar in trolley.....

I went to the Alnwick apiary today with all intentions to remove the last uncapped supers from last week and nadire any that where left uncapped..
Shocked is a understatement..
I went through two colonies and stopped there..the seven supers on two big colonies where almost empty..dry frames in just about all of the supers..also the brood boxes had very little stores...
Luckily i had 5L of 1:1 sugar syrup in the bee shed from early spring which was halved between the two hives..
I will be back there tomorrow with the 45L of 2:1 i mixed last week to top them and anymore up..and then dash to farm foods to buy more.. ...i have never had to feed this early before but then again the weather has been weird this season..

I put out a small amount of light syrup in two rapid feeders without the lid on and with plenty of large stones so they have somewhere to stand.

Placed about 15m from the hives the bees quickly find it and so do the wasps.

Cleaned out very quickly but the best part is the wasps are still enthralled after the bees are gone and are still present. That's the time to spray them with Raid 'fly wasp killer' or similar.

If you try this make sure to wash everything before repeating about every third day, and keep an eye out for robbing.

Not yet ready for winter feed here.

The Drama Eh..