Took myself to Izmir province in Turkey for some SUNshine! Breakfast was on a hillside terrace bright with flowers foraged by masses of bees from the hives just across a wooded ravine. Their lavender honey is apparently exquisite. Maybe I'll stay!
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Lovely weather in Ardnamurchan this week ... though perhaps not quite as warm as Turkey.
19c here today and queens were flying.
I found a few more apideas with laying queens as well.
Most of these queens are 4-5 weeks from emergence so jury still out on the brood status.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/w...tion/gcey94cuf
There have been more instances of balling and a higher frequency of drone layers down here in Yorkshire this year compared with the last few years (although 2012 was worse)
The weather is also terrific in Fermanagh. When I inspected my established hives last week (25th Sept), none of them had drones and none of the queens were laying. All were healthy and had large numbers of workers. Sealed brood areas had decreased markedly and there were few larvae. No doubt the queens will start laying again when worker numbers fall as autumn progresses.
This has got me thinking about varroa control. Would treatment (I did mine with Apigard a month ago) be more effective if done at times such as this (that is, after regular hive inspections indicate a best time), rather than by following the usual advice of "treat after you have taken the end of summer honey crop? I appreciate that a novice needs simple rules and that an experienced beekeeper might not be able to inspect as often as a "hobby beek", but do association members find it effective to vary varroa control timings and practice to suit the bees?
Alan
It's not about the efficacy of the treatment so much as the fact that you would have a higher general Varroa burden because of treating later, but most of all because Varroa mate in capped cells so the reduced capped cell count would have much higher Varroa levels inside and your winter bees would have spent the first part of their lives with a bunch of disease ridden blood suckers.
Efficacy , shouldn't change , may even decrease with lower temps.
I decided to make up a nuc with my new laying queen on 4th October after she had been laying for just a few days (earlier than I would usually do so) - stealing bees and capped brood from two strong colonies. Queen went in late in the day at dusk. Today there's eggs and small larvae and the queen was seen too - walking across the comb in the sunshine. I removed the nearly capped queencell. I expect they started that when queenless. I do wonder whether such a young queen has enough pheromone to be considered a 'fully working model' by her subjects.Originally Posted by Adam
And the queen with just 5 working legs is still laying well so she stays - Any bets on whether she'll be laying well in March?
I have a queen missing half of one of its front legs which has been laying well in an apidea since early June.
I just got back from a week away and found quite a few more queens laying in Apideas.
A batch which emerged on 8th September seems to have come good.
I've got 2 that emerged on the 4th October just to see if getting them mated is possible. The weather here in Anglesey is as good as possible for the next week. Is there a prize for " latest mated queen" ?
Had another queen start to lay in an Apidea. This one had no eggs on Saturday so only just started.
It emerged some time in August. May well be a drone layer.
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