Neils

  1. Bless

    I quote as the letter was received:

    "Martha and I were out spending her birthday money last week. We spotted the enclosed and Martha said we had to buy it and send it to Neil"

    It's a Bracelet, one with squares of words/pictures with "Save" "the" "bees" split by by squares with a flower and a picture of a bee on them.

    I'm wearing it, but I'm going to split it and put it on two of my new hives so my bees will always ...
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  2. Swarms!

    Well it's not just me then, had a call from the guy I share the allotment apiary with saying there was a swarm about 10 foot away from the apiary. Definitely not from mine and looking at them, definitely not his either. we've got a prime suspect, though there are more than few other colonies around us that we know of.

    By time I got there they were in a nuc, fanning like mad at the entrance while the last stragglers milled around. Looks like a good sized prime swarm and I dare say ...
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  3. Down to Earth with a bump.

    I think my mentee got a crash course today of a wide selection of what can go wrong in beekeeping.

    I got the first look at the colony down on the nature reserve and as soon as we opened it up I had a sinking feeling. The box was absolutely packed to the rafters with bees and, sure enough, sealed queen cells. I'd guess they must have gone almost a week ago judging by the lack of eggs and almost total lack of larvae in Brood laid across 9 14x12 frames in total. Everywhere there wasn't ...
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  4. Winter Losses

    Been doing a bit of a trawl across the UK based forums. I know there are far more detailed surveys probably in the offing but I thought it'd be interesting.

    285 Full Sized colonies counted, 38 lost (13.3%)
    23 Nucs Counted, 6 lost (26%)

    Total %: 14.2

    Done no geographic split at all, simply trawled various UK forums for posts and threads reporting winter losses and attempted to make sure that posters on various forums aren't double counted.
    ...
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  5. It's good to be back.

    After 6 months of watching the cabin fever set in across the various forums where some exploded more frequently and spectacularly than others over the winter it's great to finally get out and up to my elbows in bees again. I've missed you ladies.

    Despite the weather inevitably turning yesterday compared to all of last week, I opted to carry out a quick inspection of the two colonies on the allotment apiary. One in a 14x12 the other in a Double National.

    The plan was ...

    Updated 27-03-2011 at 12:03 PM by Neils

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    Inspections
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