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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #11907  by JoJo36
 07 Sep 2021, 04:34
Sounds like a great success:)
I've been feeding mine for the last week but thinking I may have jumped the gun as I'm leaving less space for the queens to lay and I'm thinking with the hot weather the bees may think summer back on and try to swarm??!!
Ummm...........
 #11909  by NigelP
 07 Sep 2021, 07:26
Highly unlikely to swarm at this time of the year, although bees being bees......
Supersedure is more likely in an odd hive or two.
Despite the good weather in my area no flow to speak off all supers are very light.
 #11912  by AdamD
 07 Sep 2021, 10:06
NigelP wrote:
06 Sep 2021, 17:31
Wow Adam, not even added varroa treatments yet! Hopefully by end of week.
Hives all back from the moors, still some pink left in the heather but little nectar being produced this end of the moors.

Been extracting heather honey all day ..just another dozen supers to go and that will be my last extraction of the year. Wasp zapper is working overtime. Not sure how the little buggers get into my extracting room, but they eventually drove me out. I shall let the zapper do it's magic overnight and fresh start in the morning.
No heather for me, so I can feed and treat earlier.
My bee shed did have a small gap in the window as the wood warped slighty and wasps got in. Easily fixed.
A vacuum cleaner gives a satisfying 'ping' each time a wasp goes down the hose and hits the first bend in it! You can have fun chasing wasps around with the nozzle.

I have a conical WBC roof escape above each window in my bee shed which generally works as a one-way valve for bees and wasps. Although sometimes wasps work out how to get in or there is a cluster of escaped bees around them.

This year wasp activity has been very low.
 #11915  by NigelP
 07 Sep 2021, 16:49
AdamD wrote:
07 Sep 2021, 10:06

A vacuum cleaner gives a satisfying 'ping' each time a wasp goes down the hose and hits the first bend in it! You can have fun chasing wasps around with the nozzle.


This year wasp activity has been very low.
Absolutely, they do make a satisfying ping.
But I love the loud crack as one gets zapped on my zapper and the smell of crisping wasp is something to be savoured :D
I have a bee vac which allows me to capture the bees and let them fly away afterwards, makes my conscious feel good.

Not sure if a good or bad year for wasps up here although there are a lot around but non bothering the hives.
Just finished a mega 2 day heather honey extraction, nearly 300 cut comb and about 400lbs of liquid gold stored away in buckets. Best heather yield for several years.

This was part of todays cut comb harvest.

Image
Last edited by NigelP on 07 Sep 2021, 18:47, edited 1 time in total.
 #11916  by Steve 1972
 07 Sep 2021, 17:00
Brilliant result Nigel ..and well deserved for the time and effort put into it to get the finished result..time to put your feet up now with a nice glass of something.. :D
 #11918  by JoJo36
 08 Sep 2021, 04:44
Wow!!
The honey harvest looks amazing!!!!
Everything looks so tidy and orderly!
Well done a well deserved reward for all your efforts and of course a little help from the bees:)
 #11939  by AdamD
 10 Sep 2021, 14:27
Collected a swarm yesterday. I scooped up the bees from inside a little outside cupboard and put them in the box which I placed on top. There was a small piece of comb hanging down - about 4 " deep so they had been there for a day or two as a guess. You can see bees fanning to say that the queen is in residence in the box, so I was comfortable that I had caught her. At dusk I collected them with not a bee inside the cupboard.

Image
 #11940  by JoJo36
 11 Sep 2021, 06:25
What a lovely swarm to catch and you made it sound really easy!
Thats probably one of the last ones of the year as the weather is set to get a little cooler I think?!
Really nice little bonus to have going into winter:)
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