todays news

[Feckless Drone]

The news in Oz from a friend of mine is all about honey rationing in Sydney supermarkets and curtailing exports. The crisis is the drought and record high temperatures not neonics or CCD. Here is a link to a reasonable, well informed newspaper article (http://www.smh.com.au/business/sweet...516-38feh.html). I notice 3 or 4 government enquiries there into the state of the bee industry and really trying to address issue of keeping Varroa out. There is an opportunity here - since Oz has had to curtail exports in particular to China then our bee farmers might consider promoting their products to that market.
Surely heather honey would hit the mark!

[prakel]

A short video from Martin Cade of the Portland Bird Observatory showing a gang of bee-eaters who are paying us a visit at present.

[prakel]

"There's definitely a queen mating apiary around here somewhere...."

[greengumbo]

Trials and tribs......my queenless hive is no more queenless ! The queencells that resulted from a cut out of eggs from my best AMM colony have yielded a queen. Three torn down and empty and 1 that had hatched. I even managed to spot the virgin running about. Fantastic. Hopefully this weather will stay for her to get mated. She was not huge but I guess that will change ?

As for my 2 big hives.....lets just say they are about to swarm (queen cells maybe 3 days from capping) and I don't have time to do much this week

Checked the hive with the virgin quickly today as its been 2 weeks since I saw her running about. Nice patch of eggs that look about 3 days old and saw her majesty looking nice and plump. Great stuff.

[lindsay s]

I’m sure the colonies will be ignoring the foundation that needs to be drawn and rapidly using up their stores.

I went through the hives today after eight days of cold damp weather and my above quote was spot on. Most of the colonies are OK for pollen but they have very little nectar coming in or honey stored. Laying is almost at a standstill with very little open brood and in two colonies chalk brood has increased dramatically. Only two colonies have a super and my weak over wintered nuc has been written off, it will be united tomorrow. By the way Jon I found only two queen cups between seven colonies.

[gavin]

"There's definitely a queen mating apiary around here somewhere...."

Love the synchronised balancing act. Cracking birds, I'm green with envy. I saw some (not necessarily the same species) in Tamil Nadu a few years ago.

[Jon]

I used to see them in the summer for the couple of years I lived in Andalucia.
The other bird I loved from that era was the Hoopoe.

[snimmo243]

I'm sure there was something in the paper a couple of weeks ago about a hoopoe being spotted in peebles!
I like dippers

Sent from my C5303 using Tapatalk

[Bumble]

A short video from Martin Cade of the Portland Bird Observatory showing a gang of bee-eaters who are paying us a visit at present.

Do you have any idea if they're just passing through or if they might stay for the summer?

[prakel]

Not totally sure, they tricked us the other day by appearing to be heading off into the channel but have made a reappearance today. Should be able to have a word with the bird guy when he's not too busy as we put bees on some of the cover crop land that they manage at different times. We've now acquired a (solitary?) Honey Buzzard and the rain's stopped so the cabin fever has passed too!