Lost one mini-plus a couple of weeks ago but only because it was drowned in a mini-flood. New site where the possibility of flooding hadn't occurred to us.
Lost one mini-plus a couple of weeks ago but only because it was drowned in a mini-flood. New site where the possibility of flooding hadn't occurred to us.
I think my 12 double Apideas are still alive but have not checked all of them carefully. They all had flying bees within the past fortnight.
Jon, are you running your correx nuc boxes again this winter or did you replace them all with poly?
I only have one in a correx box but it has come through the winter ok. Most of my nucs are in the Payne 6 frame boxes. I bought another 18 of those last week.
They make great mating nucs if you set them up at the start with 2 frames between a wall and an insulated dummy board. I tried this with about a dozen last summer using them like apideas removing queens as they got mated. At the end of the summer most had built up to decent strength and I left them to overwinter with the last queen to mate. Most produced two or three mated queens over the summer.
I have a couple of dozen of the correx boxes and they are great for the summer as you never run out of equipment. Also great for holding all your spare frames.
They work fine as mating nucs as well.
Checked a site today where four out of seven mini plus hives were dead outs. Varroa was the culprit as there has been a bit of a domino varroa collapse avalanche thing going on in that area, sad to see
That's four out of twenty mini pluses I've checked so far since the big wind, another three to go at another site, I hope these are alright.
I cut up a few strips of Bayvarol to treat mine in November.
They are consuming quite a bit of fondant at the moment.
Pretty sure all are still alive as I have them in the garden and can monitor them quite closely.
apidea-lids-fondant-small.jpg
Looking like another 'beyond our control' loss although not certain of what or who is responsible this time:
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note the stone which had been sat on top and also the floor, still more or less in position on it's pallet.
The queen looked pleasingly robust but most of the workers had perished (stong double box down to enough bees to cover two combs). Oddly, this is one of the colonies which survived the badger attack last summer:
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Last edited by prakel; 30-01-2015 at 07:51 PM.
That's a shocking sight, Prakel - but I'm glad the queen survived. I hope the colony recovers.
Kitta
Thank you. Still at a loss as to what happened, no sign of animal damage but seems totally pointless as an act of vandalism -surely any half decent vandal would have done for more than one?Originally Posted by Mellifera Crofter
Good activity from the Apideas this morning at about 8c.
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