They would probably both make it into an all time ugly footballers 11 along with Luke Chadwick and Iain Dowie. http://www.quizardry.com/index.php?site=1&id=31&lid=18 Whenever I see Rio Ferdinand I always imagine that he is the reincarnation or human embodiment of a Carp. We checked the colonies this morning and sure enough there were a couple of sealed queen cells and a couple of open ones as well. All were removed, at least I hope they were. We put on a second brood box and just lifted the 5 frames from the nuc with the queen without separating them, bees and all, into the middle of the top brood box and made up the rest with a few frames of drawn foundation. the super on it had 11 frames of capped honey so a second super was added as well. Hopefully the extra space might remove the urge to swarm. This was a good example of why clipping the queen is a clever idea as a humongous swarm would have been lost in this case. If they try and get smart and swarm again in a few days, the clipped queen will have to leg it back to the colony again. The more curious case was the other colony. There was no queen in it and no larvae, just sealed brood. There was a lot of streaking on the front of the box and also on some of the combs inside so a possible nosema candidate. There were a few anemic looking emergency queen cells so I reckon the queen must have been killed during an inspection about a fortnight ago or else succumbed to some ailment such as nosema. We put in the best queen cell from the colony which had swarmed. I have a few grafted queen cells from one of my better colonies developing at the moment so it might be an idea to use one of those.
No skin off my nose. Can't support a team with Ferdinand and Rooney in it anyway
Oh yes, sure do. There are elements of that story that bring back memories of trips to the heather that went seriously awry.
Checked earlier and they have started another 4 - so 6 cells in all. I might try a few more at the weekend but I haven't really got my drones organized yet so no point in jumping the gun too much with the grafting. It will be good to have a few cells for the queen rearing course which starts on 9th May. First lesson is all about Apidea management.
Cracking stuff. I thought that you'd been quiet lately.
Indeed, I take all those points on board, especially as a beekeeper in a city and absolutely recognise that a swarm arriving to a lot of people is not going to be welcomed. There's a group in Bristol that promote letting your bees swarm, the more swarms the healthier they are right? Funnily enough I do think that, in the context of urban beekeeping isn't a responsible attitude to take. I accept the trade off though, by not clipping the onus is firmly on me to be on top of my management (he said having lost a swarm already this year before I'd even inspected them). The allotment is close enough for me to keep on top of things and the nature reserve is less of an issue . I try to keep an open mind and if I do decide to expand further then I may well re-evaluate not clipping.
That sounds like a sure fire way to alienate the donors to the sugar mountain. You hear a similar line from a lot of the 'natural' beekeepers as well. I was spurred to clip after listening to Alan (the man with the donkey in his hive) describe that wobbly chimney stack atop a three storey house. If my bees went into someone's chimney I would find it hard to abdicate responsibility and I hate climbing ladders and have never seen the need to learn how to erect scaffolding in a competent manner.
My artificial swarms are always of the variety where the old queen goes into the new box on the old site with lots of space and no brood. That'll stop 'em. Of course you do need to be sure that you are down to one queen cell per remaining unit (and I often split the remaining unit). I'm not against clipping, just haven't seen the need as yet. Maybe one day. Of course if someone tells me not to do it in a loud voice then I'll be tempted to do it right away. Someone who used to post here but doesn't any more has been *promoting* the issuing of swarms in the vicinty of mothers, children and vacant chimneys, in the name of healthy honeybee populations and evolution of Varroa resistance. I ask you ....
Last year I didn't clip and I didn't lose any swarms. The problem is when you do the artificial swarm but the flying bees are still determined to swarm with the old queen. They make a queen cell from a two or three day old larva and swarm a couple of days after being rehoused. The people who clip such as Adam D say that they recover most of their queens from the grass. I suppose that's more likely if your colonies are in the garden and you can check every day. It shouldn't actually make a difference if you are doing careful weekly checks and it looks to me like cheap insurance. Letting your bees take up residence in a neighbour's chimney has got to be bad karma. When you read those posts on the bbka forum about people terrified of mason bees and bumble bees eating their children, you realise you could tip someone over the edge donating 20,000 honey bees as a chimney adornment. But yes, I will rot in that anthroposcophy hell with the other clippers.
I still can't bring myself to clip a queen. I'm far less squeamish about picking them up since we had a good practice on the drone layer but it just doesn't seem right to me. I just can't reconcile having the queen pay the price for my lack of ability or inattentiveness. And having picked up two swarms this week, I can live with someone else benefitting from my bees swarming. I get all the arguments for it and don't preach against it despite taking some flak online and elsewhere for my "irresponsibility". Maybe when I decide to go above 6 hives I'll change my mind. I'd rather talk to people about what a swarm is than explain why a swarm leaves and then returns to a hive as I had to a while back, maybe I just need a bit more practice around that but people where more concerned about the queen than the big cloud of bees that might have put them off weeding the allotment.
Clipped another 5. Rudolf is spinning to some celestial beat or moon cycle.
Get a cheap flight over for John McLean and he'll do the bee collection service from the chimney. Is he mad? Standing 3 stories up beside a wobbly chimney sounds dangerous to me. I believe Big Ian is polite enough when he is off camera. When I was flying home from Mexico a few years ago the entire NI political elite was on the same flight in first class returning from a trade delegation in New York. Martin McGuinness was very attentive of Ian and Eileen as they are both getting a bit doddery. I remember Ian Paisley Junior made some really crass remark to one of the cabin crew which is par for the course. I don't have a problem finding queens but I don't see the need to pick them up if you don't have to. I have had the same experience with queens flying off and returning.
Do these folk cut their own toenails? Having said that, I'm not a clipper myself (bees, my toenails are sorted). More because of a lack of queen-handling prowess, though I did do magnificently well on that front last year. However when Sean (an excellent queen-spotter) and Bill came to the apiary the Saturday before last I lunged clumsily at a queen determined to show off my finger and thumb technique for painting queens. The queen took fright and indeed flight, flying round us and back in the entrance. Left her alone after that. Ian Paisley, apparently, in real life is a really nice man though I still have trouble believing it. So my ex (and now, unfortunately, late) post-doc, a Catholic lass, told me to my incredulity. He was round campaigning I think, and thought nothing of stopping at a Catholic household for a cup of tea and a chat. More than some in the west of my country would do, sadly. Get a cheap flight over for John McLean and he'll do the bee collection service from the chimney.
As the saying seems to go, walk like a Little, quack like a Little, you must be Little! Someone should tell Graham that he's not banned from here (yet). Are both Little and Chandler speaking at the same event this weekend? I've recently emerged from the Royal Concert Hall where one of the Emerald Isle's greater sons was entertaining the green-inclined Glaswegian tonight. Not such a blatherskite but does his storytelling largely in song. That's green as in culturally rather than environmentally. Back in my day Irish folk was just a nice version of celtic folk, these days it seems to be an expression of your cultural roots from many generations back. Thought it best not to mention that the only Irish in my ancestry seems to be one g-g-grandfather who was born near Dublin thanks to his father taking the King's shilling and being posted there.
Jon comes from a long tradition of spectacular story-telling on the Emerald Isle. I admit to being a complete blatherskite but will never confess to being Julian Little, as attested in some quarters.
He has a certain way with words, doesn't he?! Jon comes from a long tradition of spectacular story-telling on the Emerald Isle. However he has competition now from the conteur of the witch of Provence. Someone needs to have a quiet word with Colette. Not only is she a bee widow with tales to tell, it sounds like she is the one with the camera in the relationship. We want to see these photos in a Colette-blog ....
Love the story Jon. It reminds me of the donkeys the shepherds used in Corsica to carry their gear up the mountains when they moved the sheep up there for the summer. Half way up, the donkey always decided if it was going to continue or go back home.
Update on this. Queen still alive in the roller as of 4/4 but not released yet.
I went to let this queen out 48 hours later but they started to ball her so she had to go back in the roller. I plugged it with fondant at one end so hopefully things will go better when the bees release her by eating away the fondant.
I had one open as well which had fondant on the top bars inside an eke. They seem to be very calm although I haven't been lifting frames out as it is too cold. I felt it was only fair to let Terry stick his head in to ascertain their true blackness. At the Galtee demonstration in September none of the demonstrators were wearing any protective gear and that involved lifting frames out as well. re. the apiary site, we have the might of the National Front, I mean the National Trust behind us. We also have another site on private property in a paddock 200 yards away. That might work well with the Apideas as it is better to have them a wee bit away from the main colonies as they can get robbed out and sometimes queens can get confused returning from mating flights if there are too many options. I am going to encourage any beginner without bees yet to get an Apidea. Thorne were charging £30 at the UBKA conference but you can get them for £18 if you shop around. The Kielers are about £11 but take more than double the amount of bees and you notice that if you have to fill dozens. All the Apidea needs is a cupful of bees and a queen cell and it provides a mini colony to observe and handle. If the queen gets lost or has a mishap there will be no shortage of queen cells to replace her. Maybe a nice cheap introduction into beekeeping and the focus is on queen rearing from the start. There is plenty of bee behaviour to be observed from an Apidea. I have seen queens leaving or returning from mating flights on several occasions and you can also check pollen colour. It also encourages a delicate touch as you can't work Apideas with big gloves and clumsy fingers. It also focuses the mind re. the level of stores and you can look at a mini brood pattern. It's a non intimidating introduction to beekeeping as you only have about 300 bees and a queen in the Apidea.
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