todays news

[GRIZZLY]

Not so much as a peep from my bees for the last few days. It's been quite cold plus the wind chill factor makes quite a chill in the air. Our Ass'n held its first honey show on Monday with Peter and Christine Matthews doing joint judgeing in front of our membership and explaining what they were looking for and what their findings were. As most of our membership have never entered a honey show and were therefore "beginners" the standard that Peter found was quite high and his commentary of great interest and benefit for the future. We're now looking forward to next years show.

[GRIZZLY]

All the colonies flying today in the sunshine. We're benefitting from the slightly warmer weather today.Didn't see any pollen tho' , although the Ivy still seems to be in flower.

[GRIZZLY]

Managed to get round the bees and dose them with this years oxalic acid. Will be interesting to check mite drops. As we're off "down south" for Christmas and New Year I've added extra bricks to the hive roofs in case we get another horrendous blow.
Happy Christmas to everyone.

[fatshark]

Happy Christmas everyone, particularly those struggling with this weather …

HappyChristmas.JPG

… a carefully posed photo (no, really). The mug on the left contains cold tea and Marmite for the mead I've been making today. Also racked - for the second time - the stuff I made this time last year. Hmmm … nice and clear but a bit insipid. Probably not a shoe in for the 2014 honey show

Penultimate beekeeping job of the day was to take delivery of 5 boxes of jars - now tucked away until I bottle some soft set honey in the New Year.

The final job is to crack open one of those bottles of Waggle Dance

Best Wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

[The Drone Ranger]

We don't have any waggle dance here so Sauvignon blanc is on the menu

[greengumbo]

Happy new year all !

Glorious sun today in the north and there were a few bees shooting off east out of the hives. Oxalic done and clusters looking in good shape. Fondant on all of them.

Garden in an advanced state as well but I expect an almighty late winter will ruin all of this optimism soon !

[beejazz]

Happy new year! I don't know what my bees are up to, but I visited a large garden centre today and saw loads of bees on the hellebores there, a very heartening sight. Wimbledon Asso. has an apiary nearby, so must have been their bees, collecting pollen.

[nemphlar]

No bees out but confused primroses in flower

[greengumbo]

Well a few hardy girls out today as well. Sunny but cold. Had a pleasant surprise on a walk through a local woodland after a tip from a mate. Found about 10 - 15 old smith hives in various states of disrepair and without bees.....I guess about 10 - 20 years since last used by a beekeeper, no varroa boards but some poly sheets under roofs and as dummy frames. Some are totally rotten unfortunately. I have contacted the land owner and can have them if I want so I have the torch ready and a stock of virkon and will assess how many can be cleaned and recovered. A wee project for the coming year. Also stumbled across a hill covered in heather nearby which is generally unheard of in our area so all in all a good day !

[fatshark]

Good find GG … a semi-commercial guy here moved away and left a load of colonies dotted around the place. Some were in a terrible state - toppled over, roofs blown off. To my surprise some still had bees in. I hate to think what they were riddled with so reported them to a friend who operates in the same area. Many were only suitable for firewood (after drying!). I hope you manage to recover something useful.

Treated with OA today in an apiary with catkins on the willows (I think … not good on plants/trees). Colonies were much stronger than I'd expected, with one - on a single brood - with bees in all 10 seams. However, this is a little misleading as I use a thickly insulated crownboard and the bees tend to 'cluster' in a pancake underneath it.

Also treated a friends colony that went into the winter as a weak nuc in a National brood box … at the last inspection we replaced 7 frames with two insulated Harden 'fat dummies' as a sort of last resort. It looked as strong as it went into the winter. I suspect many of the colonies we're treating have not yet had a brood less period (at least here in the balmy South).

Not sure how many people have seen the recommendation from the LASI group in Sussex to inspect and destroy brood before OA treatment (covered here, but the original needs a Facebook account which I'm too old and uncool to have). This isn't something I'm prepared to do. However, with strong colonies now and brood possibly present, it suggests a close eye might need to be kept early in the season. I have one I'm likely to do a shook swarm on if the Varroa/DWV situation doesn't improve.

I'm teaching Varroa treatment on our beginners course in a few weeks … I took some videos of the treatment to show how quick and easy it is. I was pleased to note that the bees behaved impeccably … helped by the temperature which was hovering around 3 degree