Recent content by BeeKeyPlayer

I got a call some weeks back asking if I could deal with a swarm in the caller's garden. It transpired that it was from their own hive, but they didn't know what to do about it. Having clarified that they were not in the local BKA, I said that if I collected a swarm, I would expect to take the...

It has rained relentlessly here today. The forecast promised a partly sunny afternoon but it couldn't have been more wrong. So I took a parasol which looked waterproof with me and did essential checks on about 20 hives. The bees were mostly not happy but, unlike me, were able to stay dry. I'm...

Quite a number of frames yesterday had a scattering of purple pollen. Really deep purple, more so than shows in the photo. It's not a colour I've seen in pollen charts or in Margaret Adams book but I found an article claiming that it comes from Phacelia. Thoughts / comments?

I love being in this apiary in the early evening so I thought I'd share a photo with y'all. Trouble is that I then forgot to take home the mini nucs that I'd just stocked with bees and a queen cell. They're sitting there, right in the middle of the picture.

Made surfaces on top of my back fence for mini-mating nucs (Apideas). Glad to say it was all outdoors in the sunshine, and not in the garage. Getting the boards at B&Q yesterday was a delight. The chap at the cutting booth (always very helpful, even when he has to say no) collected an 8x4...

If the queen is becoming a drone layer (running out of sperm), the eggs are indistinguishable from worker eggs. Later, the larvae are bigger and the cells are extended (as in your earlier photos), but the adult drones are smaller - or so I've found.

Planning and measuring for larger surfaces for my Apideas. I don't want them in my apiaries - too many other bees who will probably get nosey. Last year they were on pairs of decking boards making a platform on top of my garden fence, bordering a commercial orchard. This year I'm going to make...

I'm not in love with any particular method of queen cell raising - yet. Last week I started one that worked well for me last year for several cycles - a queenless nuc which is continually restocked with open brood. Today I used a Cloake board (queenless for a day, then queenright). That also...

Grafting today was easy-peasy - after an absolutely miserable experience last week when the technique seemed to have deserted me forever. In the end I got there and 6/10 were accepted. Today, before leaving the house, I tested and discarded some of the tools, and took time to get the feeling of...

Discovered that a quarantined collected swarm had absconded - into the neighbouring nuc with another, much smaller, swarm. How convenient!

This is essential advice.

No need to go to the optician for this. Buy a range of cheap reading glasses (they are available in 1.0-3.5 dioptres). Sometimes they only cost a pound or two.

Some things are amazingly cheap. Another for beekeepers is the STC-1000 temperature controller.

Found it. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247323 This study in 2021 includes 18 videos showing a range of bee behaviours. 'After oviposition (S1 Video), the egg remains motionless until the larvae hatch. As workers successively move as deeply as possible into...

From a couple of days ago: Lots of yellow rattle in the 'orchard' apiaries, and beans flowering at the nature reserve. That was unexpected because the plants are much smaller this year.