Neils

  1. LASI Waggle Dance Workshop

    On Saturday I spent a fascinating afternoon at the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects at the University of West Sussex Just outside Brighton.

    As the traffic was a lot better than the weather I managed to get there early and had plenty of time to have a mosey around the labs and meet some of the great and the good of UK apicultural research.

    Once things kicked off, we were given a tour of the labs by Professor Ratnieks followed by a presentation giving an overview ...

    Updated 21-06-2011 at 12:58 AM by Neils

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  2. Trundling on.

    Well I might get a pot or two of honey yet.

    The Swarm is expanding nicely having generously given up two frames of brood to help the other two colonies out and is now starting to fill up a super nicely. It's now covering 6 frames of brood and drawing out the foundationless frames nicely.

    The queenright colony in the nuc seems to have given up trying to supersede her and they're now nicely covering 3 frames of brood and look to be about a few days away from starting ...
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  3. Holy <expletive!>

    It's taken me this long to get my breath back.

    My apiary buddy was away last weekend so asked me to take a look at his hives while he was off sunning himself in warmed climes. Even in the very south of Scotland here in Bristol the weather wasn't great and I might have had a few friends round for tapas and a wonderful game of football the night before. So it was a bit later than I anticipated by time I got to opening up the 8 hives that were there and figuring out how ...

    Updated 01-06-2011 at 10:51 PM by Neils

    Tags: vicious
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  4. 2 down, 5 to do

    Scraped a pass on my Module 3 exam by the skin of my teeth. Pass mark is 60% which is what I got.

    Module 1 perhaps lulled me into a false sense of security. It's a relatively straightforward paper in comparison as it deals with things you need to do more or less every day as a beekeeper. I know that it has its critics, especially around the frequently mentioned need to remember daft things like hive or frame dimensions, but I still think doing it was well worthwhile.

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  5. First sting.

    One day I'll learn. I was being silly, my friend was inspecting his, generally, dopey bees while I was digging the allotment in a vain attempt to make it look less abandoned than it did this morning. Did I put a suit on when he asked for a second opinion? No I didn't. Unsuited I put my face right next the hive to take a closer look at the frame dangled for my view; wallop, straight to the throat. I now have two adam's apples.

    One day I'll learn. *sigh*
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