gavin
Administrator

Tracking Himalayan balsam

Today at my main apiary (also have one colony at home, and two in the hills) all five colonies were fairly excited and four of them were showing lots of bees with the clear white-grey stripe of Himalayan balsam. Wasps were fewer than before but still pestering some colonies. I replaced the traps again, just before heading off to see the two beekeeping displays at the Dundee Flower and Food Festival (the 'Dundee Flower Show').

Two bees on a couple of frames were dancing, telling me

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Wasps!

On Sunday I was horrified to find one colony with about 200 wasps sitting around on the outside of the hive. Wasp traps went out that night and have gathered up many of them, and at lunchtime today (2 days on) there were only about 10 there.




I had been aware that this colony was under attack for a couple of weeks but was taken aback by the scale of it at the weekend. They had been finding their way in to help

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Up at the heather: 2

Just to show what a shameless self-publicist I've become, here I am at the bees. The server this morning was (sensibly) reluctant to upload the picture for some reason.



And if the TV channel France 5 post a video of their trip to Scotland to talk bees at the weekend I'll let you know!

Up at the heather

I usually try to take the bees to a site in the Angus Glens for August and a bit of September. There is only ling heather at the site so going in July isn't worth it. The last couple of years I've struggled to have colonies in the best state, which is packed with healthy, Varroa-free bees and brood, and headed by a vigorous young queen. This year I had one colony on brood and a half with the half underneath, which hadn't filled the frames available and was headed by last year's queen. One other

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New hive design

Great to meet Neil and Marie today at the apiary. After our three hours (three hours?!) rummaging in the hives, they seemed to still like the idea of keeping bees. Marie was a natural at spotting queens, and Neil had the relevant skills required to get my new queen marking pen to work. I hadn't.

One of the duties for the afternoon posed a conundrum, and this was our solution, a completely new hive design. What were we up to? Does it make sense? Will it work?!

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