Blog Comments

  1. brecks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by gavin
    Hi Brecks - quite right, having checked it isn't polyurethane after all. However the two coats I gave the recesses and the rims went on and dried down as expected. No issues with melting polystyrene and a tougher surface to scrape off propolis and wax. Gavin/ESBA Apiarist.
    Gavin,

    Thanks for your reply. Since writing my comment, I have also been told that some people use solvent based paints and varnishes on poly hives because they melt a fine layer of the poly surface thus forming a better bond than water based products.

    Brecks.
  2. gavin's Avatar
    Hi Brecks - quite right, having checked it isn't polyurethane after all. However the two coats I gave the recesses and the rims went on and dried down as expected. No issues with melting polystyrene and a tougher surface to scrape off propolis and wax. Gavin/ESBA Apiarist.
  3. brecks's Avatar
    I planned to varnish the frame rests of my poly hives following the above post and bought the same varnish pictured. When I read the contents, I found it was not a polyurethane varnish as described and of course, not clear. I 'phoned Ronseal to ask if it was suitable for expanded polystyrene and they said NO - the solvents in it would melt the polystyrene. I would be interested to know what happened to the pictured hive parts.
  4. Jon's Avatar
    Some people mark and clip every queen they come across and supersedure is one good reason why you need to be careful before taking half the wing off a virgin queen.
    I have not done any this year so will have about 30 to do in March and April.
    I suppose I could start marking and clipping the queens in my nucs as they are easy enough to find.
  5. gavin's Avatar
    At the association meeting yesterday we found that many of these stocks are too weak. A touch of deja vu is hitting me now. Last year we had too many weak splits and they didn't winter well, so the time has come for feeding to get them up to strength (should have left them where they were to save the long trip!) and combining. There is little sign that the trip to the hills is providing them with the forage that would give them that boost. The stronger colonies are gathering nectar perhaps from clover and some game cover brassicas along the road, but there was no sign of bell heather or ling nectar.

    The first queen we found was in a plunger cage and about to be interfered with, when I realised that the lack of eggs, little unsealed brood, small size of the queen and single opened queen cell was telling us something. OK, a supersedure. Let's leave her in peace.
  6. gavin's Avatar
    Too far! More than an hour and a half's drive for me to Glen Clova, but it is a popular glen for local association folk to the east of Dundee. Unlike my site in Glen Isla it has bell heather and clover upland pasture, but the heather seems to have mostly retreated up the hill in recent years (you can see the muirburn patterns on the hillside now covered in grass) so I'm not sure how good it will be. The stone wall is around an old sheep enclosure.
  7. Jon's Avatar
    The Mournes have a similar look. Lots of stone walls there as well.

    How far of a drive is that?
  8. gavin's Avatar
    Just thought that I'd add that the Swienty polys are untouched by rodents, but a couple of the Paynes nucs which were out all winter have had their entrances enlarged by sharp little teeth. I now need to think of a way of repairing and strengthening them.
  9. Calum's Avatar
    hi Jon,
    the mild winter, the warm autumn. The bees were flying well into November, and some stayed in brood right up till christmas.
    So I figure lots of varroa being produced due to the extended brood period. Lots more reinvasion through robbing and absconding bees due to the mild autumn. And the wet changeable weather we had through august when most people were trying to treat with F.A. lead to increased failed treatments. The very long season for himalayan balsam probably shortened the longevity of the winter bees too... Did you see the photo I posted of my varroa fall after my O.A. treatment? That was not isolated, I now some really experienced beekeepers that have already lost 30%.. My losses are 10% but it is early days, so hammering on wood
  10. Jon's Avatar
    Hi Calum. Why are beekeepers expecting big losses in your area?
  11. Calum's Avatar
    Good news your colonies are overwintering well. The losses here are going to be massive according to all accounts.
    Suprised you are feeding them already. Are they that low on stores?
  12. ESBA Apiarist's Avatar
    I went full of good intentions and armed with paper envelopes and pen but the cold wind and rain and the great difficulty in accessing the stuff on the floor of these polynucs made me postpone (again). The best way may be to pick a warmish day and quickly transfer all the frames (with bees) into a new clean box and then recover the corpses. One colony is in a Smith wooden box with the floor screwed on (so I'll need a screwdriver) and I forgot that I could lift the Swienty/Denrosa poly Nationals off their floor by the time I got to them. Certainly plan to though. Today I realised that our Epson SX515 Printer/Scanner/Copier does it at 2400x2400 dpi so I don't have the excuse of a flaky old HP slide scanner.
  13. Jon's Avatar
    Good to see signs of life.

    I have a magnificent 6 behind the shed at the bottom of the garden although one of them is unlikely to make it through the winter.

    You should collect a few wings from those colonies to get an idea of the extent of hybridization.
    I have done the morphometry on about 2/3 of mine.
    It can throw up surprises, ie not all the black ones are good ones.
    I requeened about 10 with Galtee origin stock last summer and I intend to use these as my drone colonies.
    I have several colonies of near 100% amm which are unrelated or not closely related to Galtee and I will do most of my grafting from these.
    Updated 02-01-2012 at 10:54 PM by Jon
  14. Jon's Avatar
    Hi Gav.
    Any beekeeping is always going to be a curate's egg - good and bad in places.
    Overall I have been happy with my lot this year.
    I reared over 100 queens, most of them for our queen rearing group, but a lot of them are producing some yellow offspring which has surprised me as I try and saturate the area with my own drones.
    I picked up a bit of useful info yesterday about a guy who has just got back into beekeeping this year and probably has quite a few colonies. I checked on google earth and he is 1.3 miles from my mating apiary at the allotment. I need to follow this up as he may have Buckfast and this would explain all the yellow banding I am getting. I brought 6 apideas with virgins to my garden in late August and of the 5 that mated, 3 produced workers with yellow bands. I have a couple of amm colonies in the garden so was quite surprised by this but the same chap is less than 2 miles away.
    At the moment the overall health of my bees seems to be good. I had very little varroa drop after apiguard treatment. I have 14 colonies, 5 nucs and 8 queens in apideas going into the winter. The apidea thing is an experiment as I want to see if I can get them as far as April which is the most crucial point for needing spare queens. 4 of the 8 are queens I would like to keep and evaluate so fingers crossed on that one.
  15. Jon's Avatar
    Everyone raves about the size of the fruit on Ben Sarek. I got 44lbs off 3 bushes I have in the garden a few years ago. I have 10 more at the allotment started from cuttings from these ones but I see signs of big bud this year so will have to grub them out.
  16. ESBA Apiarist's Avatar
    I fear for next Saturday's batch if that is the case as it is now turning wet. I wondered about grafting into individual cups and maybe storing them in a humid box while we accumulated enough (they were on the verge of drying out). Cups and cup holders might fall but my first mistake was not to attach the bar well enough to the frame! It was hanging at a funny angle today (but is no longer). Yes, we are famous for our soft fruit too. Ben Sarek is one of my pal Rex' varieties.

    Sean - your hand featured I think! I'm now off - in the rain - to block off the entrance of a colony for early morning transport.
  17. Sean's Avatar
    Great result Gavin! Look forward to seeing them develop.
  18. Jon's Avatar
    It is very hit or miss this year. The key thing is the state of the colony. If weather has been bad for days they will not start grafts even if the process is perfect.
    I set the grafting frame upside down and lean it back a little. This gives a better angle for seeing and manipulating the larvae. I hold the grafting tool in my right and and the cell cup in my left and move the grafts that way. I place each cup I have grafted on the cell bar one at a time as I have done it. Make sure to push the cream cups well onto the brown base cups and also push the insert cup well into the cream cup as these can fall off in the colony and if you don't twig you could end up with a virgin hatching from a cell which has fallen to the floor.

    But you are right, it is relatively easy in spite of the mystique attached to the process. The real trick is to get your recipient colony in the right mood to start them and the other trick is to have the right drones for mating your queens. I was talking to Mervyn this afternoon at the allotment. As he was browsing on some blackcurrants, Ben Sarek variety, he said that your place was/is something of a centre of excellence re. the blackcurrant. I thought it was mostly about spuds.
  19. gavin's Avatar
    From the eleven nucs and Apideas (one had split into two and a part had clustered outside with a virgin so was rehoused - so 11 not 10), two out of four Apideas had mated queens and two out of seven nucs had mated queens. Two of the five failed nucs had drone laying queens and three seemed queenless as of their last visit. I'll see them again this afternoon. Such failures seem commonplace this spring according to the chat at the RHS yesterday.
  20. Neils's Avatar
    Did you have to go to the local department store to be sorted out with foundation?
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