todays news

[fatshark]

Apiguard … epic fail (as my son would say). Just finished Apiguard treatment on my colonies. Limited mite drop from most of them. There was one exception, a colony that had failed to build up after a mid-summer setback. It had quite a bit of sac brood and a very large drop of mites. 4 weeks later (two Apiguard treatments) and there were loads of DWV-addled bees tottering about, some with phoretic mites still attached. I moved the colony away from the apiary, removed the queen and shook the bees out.

Has anyone else noticed that the DWV-afflicted bees are the most difficult to shake off the frames?

I went through the frame or so of brood … 50% of the capped pupae had mites associated. B'stards.

[Jon]

Why did it not work on that colony do you reckon?

[fatshark]

Don't know. A few possibilities. The colony was pretty weak, perhaps enough to cover three frames, with a frame and a bit of brood. The rest was largely stores. Perhaps the cooler temperatures coupled with a lower in-hive temperature failed to get the Apiguard properly 'circulating'? Perhaps the mite levels at the outset were astronomically high? However, a month ago when I started Apiguard treatment there was no more overt DWV in this colony than others (and it was low to non-existent in all). There was obvious sac brood. I'm pretty sure it wasn't operator error ... I use Apiguard buckets and remember scooping the stuff out onto trays on the hive roofs. The only logical explanation I have is an unfortunate combination of ley-lines and heavy neonic usage in the largely urban area surrounding the apiary.

[HJBee]

Has anyone else noticed that the DWV-afflicted bees are the most difficult to shake off the frames?

Yes, I was watching some workers trying to remove some deformed bees (wings and abdomen in some cases). I thought I would help out and they clung on like limpets.

[fatshark]

Nipped down to an apiary this afternoon to collect some cleared supers and top up the fondant on a couple of colonies. Disappointed to discover that they'd ploughed the field to within a foot of the front of the hives. The 3 or 4 yard margin was gone as was the few acres of wild flowers on the other side of the hedge. In the last 5 years the margin was approximately in line with the barrow in the attached image.

20141007-0001.jpg

Removing half a dozen supers over that lot was hard work

[Mellifera Crofter]

Not today, or even yesterday's news. Monday was wild, and today rivers are running down our track - but Sunday's news or observation.

We're busy plastering some inside walls with lime (natural hydraulic lime) and the bees just love it. They gather round the edges of tubs lapping up lime-rich water and buzz around spilt lime on the ground. Maybe they need calcium, or could there be something else in lime that they're after? Their taste for drinking water remain strange.

Kitta

[Jon]

Found a hive blown clean over today. Must have happened in the storm on Sunday night.
I reassembled it and saw the queen in the process so it could have been worse.

[greengumbo]

The kitchen is now full of all things harvested. Reckon I'll finish with 60lbs honey from two hives (mainly heather) after jarring it. A year of learning again and I'll be ready for next year. Lots of queens mated and given away to friends in need and some success with grafting and using incubators. A stray queen landing in one of my hives and setting up shop alongside the incumbent was the oddest thing to happen. They both happily laid eggs at either end of the broodnest for a month until I chose who to chop.

Yesterday while putting the rapid feeder on one of the heather hives I got terrorised by the little buggers. 13 stings across my arms. Boy were they angry. Hope this is just a mix of weather, honey being removed and them having been forced into a single brood box for the winter.

Winter tasks....convert the spare wood in my garage leftover from house renovations into nucs and mating nucs for next year. Build a cider press.

[fatshark]

The kitchen is now full of all things harvested.

Phew ... that's a relief. I saw the images on twitter and thought you were running a meths lab

[The Drone Ranger]

I wonder if having field margins of wildflowers does any good.
They get sprayed along with the crops and plowed up again so is it worth paying a subsidy