What did you do in the Apiary today?

collect a swarm ... 10 colonies now.

Wicked honey, Ely. Good luck with the sales, personally I'd eat it all myself.

Just home from the apiary after removing the tab. Time to wait and see if they like this dark beauty from Ceredigion.

pargyle said:

Thanks. Yep they feel pretty secure when you handle them. I've no supers ... hive is a bit off the wall: Check it out:

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=24058

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Very chic! Will be nice to see how you get on and the bees get on with it after a season. A lot of work there and maybe some in progress ;-) well done

Tastes nice too! I licked the bench after.....

I've lost count of the number of times I've dipped a finger into a frame then tried to put it into my mouth through my veil!!

Me too. Although it usually makes a mess with me hardly tasting it!

Performed an AS on one colony, that now takes me up to 11, and I had set a limit to 5 or 6, need to really think about the situation now before it starts running away with me.

dickndoris said:

Very chic! Will be nice to see how you get on and the bees get on with it after a season. A lot of work there and maybe some in progress ;-) well done

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Yes ... it's working well so far ... thinking about what more insulation to add for winter now and how I'm going to set up my temp/humidity monitoring. Plus there's a flaw in the design ... the cross bar on the legs needs dropping about half an inch as I can't slide the bottom section with the mesh floor in it out after dropping it down ! I really SHOULD learn about tape measures !!

Mark II design is already on the doodle pad ... needs to be much less weight.

Closed one door and opened two.

A snelgrove board is suddenly all philosophical.

M

heidiherrmann said:

By the way, Mr Jenkins, what's it got to do with crop protection agents?

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Bugger all - but neither has it got anything to do with managing bees - just trying to shepherd the holier than thou condescension and the ensuing arguments away from the innocent.
I'll get back in my box now

jenkinsbrynmair said:

Bugger all - but neither has it got anything to do with managing bees - just trying to shepherd the holier than thou condescension and the ensuing arguments away from the innocent.
I'll get back in my box now

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Where would we be without the peacemakers?

Blessed art thou amongst men........yes, I know it's women but poetic licence and all that.......

Ist type Lime trees in flower now - trees sound like they are going to take of, this is when I get lot's of calls from people saying they have a swarm in their Lime tree....lot's of buzzing from thousands of foraging bees equals swarm, awww bless.

Chris

Picked up my first colony of bees last night. Transferred 7 frames into my hive from the guy I bought them from. Great to see them bringing in some nice pollen loads in between very heavy showers. Haven't put a feeder on yet and the queen isn't clipped which has me worried. Very happy.

leonotron said:

Picked up my first colony of bees last night. Transferred 7 frames into my hive from the guy I bought them from. Great to see them bringing in some nice pollen loads in between very heavy showers. Haven't put a feeder on yet and the queen isn't clipped which has me worried. Very happy.

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Don't worry, lots of people don't clip. Just make sure you keep on top of swarm inspections, and have a plan reay if you find queen cells.

.

I guess I had learned there's less chance of losing a swarm if she's clipped and I'd worry I might damage her if I tried clipping her myself as I'm new to this.

Placed our first nuc in the apiary this morning and watched the bees settling in. Very promising start, no suits needed and bees very calm. Finding this forum very informative and looking forward to seeing what happens next

Demig

Removed 2 supers of OSR honey for extraction.
Extracted one that was ready but unfortunately the other failed the shake test and will go back on the hive this afternoon!

put MAQ strips on 3 of my hives yesterday got home from work at 6pm checked on them and there are loads of dead bees on the landing boards and floor in front of the hives i made sure that there was enough ventilation they seemed to be mainly drones is this normal ;-(

Got up at 5am to transfer collected swarm from cardboard box to brood box of 2 stacked supers before it rained ! I am now out of kit!!!!!!! Hopefully a couple of the splits will have now committed to their new status, and started laying so I can move them into nucleus boxes and retrieve the full size boxes.

Made up my first apidea. They are now buzzing quietly in the garage in the dark for a few days while the queen hatches.

I was happy to see 3 virgins in boxes that have been queenless too long. I was very happy that my favourite bees (quiet on the comb, supercede - don't swarm, gentle and hard working) are on to their 4th super. That doesn't make up for the fact that some colonies have had such a slow start that they are not even on one.