Happy New Year 2017 - plans for the season ?

[greengumbo]

Happy new year to all you fine beekeepers !

Hope 2017 is full of honey and sunshine for you.

What are your plans ?

I'm expanding hive numbers again and hopefully going to get better at timing flows and adding supers

[Feckless Drone]

What are your plans ?

And best wishes also to everyone out there.

Plans: Spend more time with bees, get less stings, spend less money, sell more honey.
Could do with finding another out apiary. But the big ambition has to be get some bell heather honey.

[GRIZZLY]

Happy honey laden 2017.
Plan . To keep my bees in double neucs this year . Volume about the ideal a/c Tom Seeley , and a lot less weight to lug around,

[Neils]

Hives checked today, all 3 seem ok. First sting of 2017 to boot.

Plan this year. get them into spring as they are now and hopefully expand from the one colony that I think is worth raising queens from. One other colony is a backup, but eats as much as it brings in, though seems heavy on stores atm. The other was, frankly, horrible, but requeened late so might yet be ok.

[gavin]

Ah well, at least you still have bees. They seem to be overwintering remarkably well here so far with no losses as yet and a good proportion of colonies strong.

Can't complain though, a sting to the boot will not have hurt at all

Have you introduced the puppy to the bees yet? They learn quickly ... (dogs, not bees).

[Neils]

Definitely too early to bring bees and dogs together. It's too cold for them to be out and about and she's too black and stupid to be anywhere near them right now. but she will have to learn come spring...

Hives are look pretty good at the moment, had to move two of them and the field being wet and not mine meant carrying the hives up to the apiary site. They aren't at much risk of starvation right now.

Downside is that I'm still waiting for winter and haven't treated with OA yet. Nothing to do with new puppy, honest. So that is still on the list this week but will be trickle rather than sublimation. The packages I'm less worried about compared to the swarm and that was pretty horrible anyway, so in the short term I simply live in hope for a while.

[The Drone Ranger]

I would just treat them Neils there might not be a better time

[gavin]

I just treat in December no matter what the weather. Brood rearing in mid winter is erratic and likely not that related to weather but once you are past the solstice the clock is ticking.

[Neils]

Puppy been taking up a lot of time so far, hence the delay, now we have winter they'll be getting a dose tomorrow though I suspect there is probably a reasonable amount of brood in all of them.

[prakel]

Well, '16 ended very nastily for me on a couple of levels and '17 has started equally badly but I can take comfort in the fact that I've survived a fire even if I lost a lot of useful gear; the bees are looking good and I've just aquired a couple of very nice new apiaries so.... forwards it is!

february 28 1.jpg
A Swienty dadant nuc box, frame ends look rather wet but I didn't actually catch that when I had them open. Lost a few bees due to crushing too - I'll figure it out by this time next year.