Jon

checking for wind damage

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Jon
, 27-11-2011 at 05:19 PM (2831 Views)
We had gale force winds last night so I had to check the colonies for damage today.

I was out for a couple of hours - an 11 mile round trip on the bike taking in the association apiary on the NT site, the donkey apiary nearby and my allotment which is 5 miles further on via the Lagan towpath.
No lids off was the good news. I only have one nuc at the association apiary and it seems to be doing well. I hefted it and it was fairly heavy.

There were very few bees flying today at it was only about 7c.
I checked stores in a few colonies at my allotment and although stores were good, the clusters seemed to be a bit small which is worrying. One colony was only occupying 3 seams which does not bode well as clusters will only be getting smaller over the next 3 months. The other couple I looked at were about 5-6 seams of bees which is more respectable. I don't have a varroa problem as I treated from mid August with Apiguard. When I find dwindling like this I always suspect nosema. I have feed a lot of syrup laced with thymol this year and that is supposed to help combat nosema. There was a piece of research published by a Turkish researcher which suggested that thymol was even more effective than fumidil in combating nosemas but the effect was most noticeable after the second winter of treatment. I have a few more colonies than I need myself but I am hoping to overwinter a few extra ones to make drone producing colonies for the association apiary next year. The small colony was slow to take down syrup which is also a sign of a possible nosema infection.

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Comments

  1. gavin's Avatar
    Happy to do a Nosema check for you if you wish to send some bodies. I don't need any of the wings if that helps.
  2. Jon's Avatar
    I might take you up on that as the wingless torsos usually go into the bin. I have a lab close by which does nosema testing but they take ages to get results back or just forget about it. I left a sample in for pesticide testing this time last year and I gave up on them after making enquiries re. the results every couple of months. Could have been Bayer black ops. of course. It is common knowledge that every lab technician is on the payroll of the Great Satan. Did you ever do morphometry on your own stock? We should be swapping wings for torsos.
  3. chris's Avatar
    Funny that, I'd been wondering about those results. Actually (on a hot tip from Bored er beeman) I'd come to the conclusion that you were the Bayer mole.
  4. Jon's Avatar
    Well my mother call me Jonathan but Billybonkers clearly knows better, so I had better start answering to Julian and speaking with a more plummy accent.
  5. Jon's Avatar
    Checked my colonies at the allotment yesterday after the midweek storms and all seem to be ok.
    The weakest one is still alive which is a good sign.