Jon

Curate's egg

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15c today so I checked the 10 I have at my allotment.

The good news is that all the queens are there but the bad news is colony strength.
I have about 6 colonies on around 3 frames with a bit of sealed brood and another 4 which might be better off in apideas.

Other than that I have a couple of tiddlers in the garden and a few at the association apiary which are not too strong either.

I had an e-mail earlier this evening from someone in my BKA who has lost all her bees and she had about 8 colonies last summer.
I know quite a few people in a similar situation who have lost everything.
When the stats are collated I suspect NI is going have the heaviest losses this year.
I can't see any queen rearing starting until June at the earliest.

Normally I have a couple of very strong colonies which I can take brood from to strengthen the weak ones but this year they are all weak.

Bit of a bummer but at least I have bees to work with unlike a lot of others locally.
The summer queen rearing programme is going to be important as a lot of people will not have access to working with bees otherwise.

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  1. gavin's Avatar
    I wonder if it was the trip to the heather (the plant, not .... ) that boosted the strength of mine? But then again, the association bees didn't get much benefit from going to their more easterly glen. Queen raising at our association apiary will not be ideal given the strength of the colonies there.

    Murray is saying that once again those in poly have survived a lot better than those in wood. And that those on OSR have turned out better than those which were on fruit instead. Neonics or no neonics. (No neonics on the fruit).
  2. Jon's Avatar
    We have just had a perfect storm of negative factors for overwintering and none of it has anything to do with pesticides.
    Solid rain since June
    very cool autumn which probably reduced the efficiency of Apiguard, ie more varroa and virus than normal.
    No ivy pollen this year.
    very late start up this spring especially the weather in March.
    A lot more colonies would have made it if the weather had been with us from late February.