Blog Comments

  1. Jon's Avatar
    I'm now certain that all the queens that were raised and have survived this year are infertile.
    Have they become drone layers or what do you mean by infertile?
    It's not really possible to rear queens with just a couple of colonies on an isolated island which has no other beekeepers because of the lack of drone producing colonies.
    If you want to get control of the timetable you have to graft larvae into a cell raising colony.

    There are many beekeepers keeping AMM or AMM type bees, especially in Scotland.
    Jimbo who posts regularly on the forum keeps AMM.

    Your problem may well be sourcing them from a varroa free area.

    I don't think bees which originate from further south are likely to survive under your extreme conditions.
    The further North and West you go in the UK, the more the conditions favour AMM.
  2. Trog's Avatar
    I'm assuming you're off North Uist. Out of interest, did the school teacher keep bees on Mull, too, before moving north and west? Maybe he was one of the founder members of the Mull association! Even in the Inner Hebrides it's easy to feel a bit isolated as a beekeeper and we do have to cope with challenges that the central belt beekeepers couldn't even imagine, but the honey, when we get it, is second to none!

    Have you heard of/joined the new Western Isles Association?
  3. Neonach's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Trog
    You must be in a very remote area to be the first selling honey in your set of islands! Price seems reasonable to me for good island honey!
    Here and Mull are both Hebridean islands by name, but very different in topography and natural environment - it is so much harsher here, and more difficult to keep honey bees. However more significant is the big difference in social history and economic development, especially from the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries - the period in which gentrified pursuits and anything higher than bare subsistence agriculture (and indeed anything novel or requiring significant investment) flourished in Mull, but were almost unheard of here. The only person I know of here who has kept bees (off and on, mostly off) over many years here - and who has and continues to encourage me - is a school teacher who came here many years ago ... from Mull. But he's never sold honey: he didn't produce more than a few super frames even in a good year, and there was no-one to buy it (not for lack of people, but lack of money and being unaccustomed to luxuries and novelties), and could never justify buying separating equipment - he and his family just used it in the comb.
  4. Jon's Avatar
    Well done. Are you the only beekeeper in the area?
    Make the most of the honey sales as it can be very hit or miss.
    This year looks like being a good one for me but the three previous years have been very poor.
  5. Trog's Avatar
    You must be in a very remote area to be the first selling honey in your set of islands! Price seems reasonable to me for good island honey!
  6. Neonach's Avatar
    I think I would trust NBU as far as confidentiality is concerned, but more of a concern would be that funding would be cut and with it the BeeBase webservice! So another requirement for such a service is that data can be downloaded (and uploaded) in a generic format (ieg CSV or OpenOffice), of a system for syncing local records (originals) with server copies. Anyway for now I'm content enough using very simple and flexible methods to keep records.
  7. Jon's Avatar
    Plenty of time yet. Don't panic until the end of September.
  8. Neils's Avatar
    I did and I had a lot of very useful feedback from the people that tried it out, none of which I've actually put into a new version yet. Problem is that it wasn't very user friendly and it asked for far too much information which far outweighed it's good a features like tracking queen lineage. With the benefit of another season behind me I might have another go at putting it together.

    There are web based inspection record services that you might want to take a look at, obvious downside is that all your hive records are sat in someone else's computer and if they go, so do your records (and the small matter of how much you trust them not to do dastardly things with the data they collect).
  9. gavin's Avatar
    You are right. I hadn't looked at that until now, but it doesn't seem like a sensible place to keep colony records. Nellie had thoughts and even a working model I think of a database for people to keep their own records. This year, with more colonies and more happening, my note-taking has been whittled down further. There is no way to invent a system to cover everyone's needs.
  10. Neonach's Avatar
    Okay okay I can hear the comments already: don't count your queens before they are mated!
  11. Jon's Avatar
    I'm wondering what else I need to do - if anything?
    If they have access to the roof of the nuc they will start making comb in there rather than using the frames as they usually start from the highest point and work down.
    If they are in the roof you would need to get them out as soon as possible.
    Tipping them in front of the nuc and walking them in would be the easiest way.
  12. gavin's Avatar
    I suspect that Neonach means that he transferred queen cells in which case it isn't grafting in the usual sense? And the cells would hatch in less than 9 days if sealed at the time.

    You are much better in your artificial swarms to leave only one queen cell. If you wish some insurance, also leave one in a nuc box with a few frames of bees - you can re-unite later keeping the best queen. Probably a wise move in your environment as here in the warmer sheltered bee-dense mainland queen mating has been terrible this year.
    Updated 07-08-2011 at 10:03 PM by Neonach