todays news

[gavin]

The bumbles and honey bees were going daft in this tree tonight

Norway maple, I'll wager. There is one along a bit from my work window, just coming into flower as yours is. It is always just ahead of the local sycamore, has leaves that are similar, but it holds its flowers erect rather than dangling under leafy umbrellas as sycamore does. Bees often work sycamore in light drizzle and I reckon these umbrellas help keep the flowers and bees dry.

http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/lear.../norway-maple/



G.

[HJBee]

I thought they were sycamore but I will have a look again to see if they are upright flowers or dangling. H

[gavin]

I thought they were sycamore but I will have a look again to see if they are upright flowers or dangling. H

Norway maple: flowers out before leaves open, earlier, erect, not organised into a spike with a central stem and flowers off that. Smaller tree.

Sycamore: flowers wait until their umbrella is ready, dangling, in a well-defined hanging spike. A big butch tree in time.

They are closely related Acer species. Here's a sycamore from last May on the outskirts of Longforgan.

[Adam]

Bagged my first swarm of the year this morning ...

How does the saying go ? "A swarm in April is worth .... "

A bagel?

[fatshark]

Filthy wet day here (and more to come) so no need to peek at the bait hives expectantly …
However, I did get an order for a load of honey

In yesterdays news, I checked a nuc late in the afternoon where I'd added a foundationless frame (see the fishing line thread started by Jon in 2012) on Sunday evening. The entire thing was drawn out and the queen had laid up many of the cells … beautiful

[snimmo243]

On the issue of things in flower I can report that on my travels today the osr in broxburn and kirkcaldy are about 75% in bloom whilst at inverkeithing it is barely in bloom, meanwhile sycamore in kirkcaldy is flowering whilst willow catkins are everywhere!

Sent from my C5303 using Tapatalk

[brothermoo]

Found one solitary queencell in my hive today. Put the frame with it on into a nuc (I did transfer cell from bottom of frame to middle) then added few frames and shook some bees in to create a nice wee easy split. Doubled my hive count which is nice! There were no other queencells just a couple of cups that were empty, but the one with the larvae was loaded with royal jelly!

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[Little_John]

A bagel?

I decided to look it up in a rhyming dictionary - apparently there aren't any English words which directly rhyme with 'April'.

There are a few words which are close, like 'Sable' - but maybe a Sable coat for a swarm is a bit ambitious - maybe a Sable Mitten ? I've heard there are ladies in Soho who can do wonders with such things.

[HJBee]

[QUOTE=gavin;24764]Norway maple: flowers out before leaves open, earlier, erect, not organised into a spike with a central stem and flowers off that.

Definitely Norway Maple!

[greengumbo]

Off with her head ! Queen that has layed nothing in the past 2 weeks despite a lovely patch of polished cells ready for HM and the odd drone got the chop tonight. I suspect late supercedure as no colour maring on her back from last year. Cut a square of eggs out from another hive and patchworked it into the new hive. Should I give them a few days before checking for QCs ?