The problem with pine shavings is the amount of tar they produce. I've found the nicest smelling one is larch but it is very resinous - hence very tarry.
The problem with pine shavings is the amount of tar they produce. I've found the nicest smelling one is larch but it is very resinous - hence very tarry.
Dundonians should be able to source jute pretty easily ... no need for eBayOriginally Posted by The Drone Ranger
Hey Jute, don't make it bad....
Ticket to Ride
Norwegian Wood
I am the walrus "experts,experts......."
The small hive beetle might have trouble finding a bit of soil to mature in that hasn't been treated for OSR flee beetle round here in the recent past
http://www.nfuonline.com/news/latest...eetle-control/
Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 29-10-2015 at 01:55 PM.
True, I burn mine out at the end of almost every full load so I've never really noticed.
Getting VERY hard to find now. Luckily a scrap dealer who gets me pallets and IBC tank was tasked with clearing out the old store of a disused jute mill, and they had loads and loads of old scrap jute there, mostly old bale wrappers for the inbound jute. He had about four tonnes of it so I bought the lot. This was more than 5 years ago, and I reckon we have at least 10 years stock left, that's with 6 to 10 smokers going in the field each day in season. Was very expensive though, cost me 36 jars of honey to the jute mill and the scrap guy took 20 quid a tonne....delivered. It was all we could accommodate.Dundonians should be able to source jute pretty easily ... no need for eBay
At the time there was probably another 10 to 20 tonnes of it lying there. I alerted a prominent bee supplies company to its presence and suggest they buy it for buttons and give out a bag of free smoker fuel with every order above a certain amount. Don't think it ever happened.
Last edited by Calluna4u; 31-10-2015 at 10:59 AM.
Garden centres are also a possible source of jute sacking - it is often wrapped round ceramic ornaments and pots. I got a large car boot full from my local dealer free.
Hardly an update. but some great videos from Wyatt Mangum (apologies if any have been previously linked):
Small hive beetle larvae
https://youtu.be/DTFZ3ZwIp5Q
Small Hive Beetles (corralled) challenging Guard Bees
https://youtu.be/iHU7OtNM-wQ
Bees feeding small hive beetles
https://youtu.be/LKih6WaYnHA
There's also a nice shb section on his website:
http://www.tbhsbywam.com/small-hive-beetles/
Which discusses a lot of stuff for a relatively short article, such as:
...a stunning version of adult small hive beetle immigration, moving the pest from a secondary invader to a primary cause of colony destruction, of at least small observation colonies (which could be roughly the size of mating nucs). In the typical scenario, a small hive beetle population builds up in the hive with hundreds of larvae as seen above in the pictures and close-up movie clip of the comb. The colony may even abscond. Here large numbers of beetles immigrated in the observation hives and forced the eviction of the bees with no or very little larval production.
Last edited by prakel; 05-11-2015 at 07:57 AM.
More SHB in Italy this Spring ... 5 adults in a sentinel nucleus. Same area in Calabria ... I think this is the earliest in the year that the beetle has been detected - most previous reports have been September onwards.
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