On Monday they were very busy on the rape, for a while anyway. Some were lighter, some holding their own, but they still have stores from the better weather previously. They should be able to forage again a little on Friday and Saturday so I'm not too worried about starvation but the weather is certainly holding them back and risking any crop at all from the rape. Chalkbrood has had a resurgence. It was bad early on then declined in the better weather but has worsened again.
Benign I was promised, balmy at times, bollox I thoughtOriginally Posted by greengumbo
Today we have 40 mph winds and rain predicted all day. A pile of supers have just blown over - unsurprisingly they were empty.
As Jon says, the bad weather we are getting now is making the bees eatup all their stores, queens are getting closer to maximum laying rate, supers containg danylion honey are now getting lighter but do have a lot of pollen in them. what worries me now is the forcast for May is not great and sugar feeding might be needed for some colonies to survive (i have 200 litres in preparation ready to use), other colonies are beginning to become very populated and if not examined in the rain means that just a blink of sunshine in between the bad weather and its swarms away. Looks like May is going to be a testing month.
No rape here, only very few farmers grow it, sometimes there is a field grown near minnowburn but have not seen it for a while, it really needs to be spring/summer planted rape to get a decent drop from it. I have never managed to get much worthwhile from winter sown rape due to it flowering in bad weather.
It's cold and wet, STILL Grrrr
This cheered me up a bit if only because it's not just cold in the highlands. It got up to 14 degrees for a few hours on Friday so managed to have a quick check. Was surprised to see how low stores were so syrup all round. Kg bags sugar 49 p at Aldi. Although nearly 7 frames of bees in two hives it feels far too cold to put supers on and anyway they need feeding first. The nuc that had a poor winter slowly building but the queen looks pretty ropey to me and where am I going to get another one in this weather?
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Has anyone seen any swarm preparations yet, in Scotland? Last year I caught my first swarm on 8 May; this year the nests are much smaller and, crucially, there's no sign of drones emerging yet.
I'm just about to go away for work for over a week - happens every year in swarming season, makes me very jittery! - but haven't had the heart to do inspections today. It's warm enough for foraging today, but not great. I had the same chalkbrood spike that Gavin saw on t'other side of the Tay: I don't want to let the draft in and bring it on again.
All the signs - including earlier comments in this thread - are that swarming will be late this year, but it'd be nice to know if other people are thinking the same!
Emma
I gave a talk on swarm control on 22nd April to a local association and 3 people had had a swarm that very day.
My father had a swarm from his log hive on the 23rd.
A colony at our association apiary had queen cells and no (clipped) queen so I reckon it swarmed at some point in the last 2 weeks.
Not Scotland but pretty much as far North. I am sure there have been a few swarms in Scotland already.
Murray had a small swarm (not his) in the Blairgowrie-Coupar Angus area a couple of weeks ago but that, from its size, was likely to have come from a small nuc running out of space in the early warm spell.
Just back from the association apiary where they are nowhere near swarming and where I've just added fondant to four colonies with nothing left in the larder. My usual first swarm preparation dates would be in the third week of May. I'm not expecting it any earlier this year.
Happy travelling
G.
I'm a few hundred miles S of Scotland.. A friend had an attempted swarm last weekend - well two attempts as the clipped queen probably came back. I went through the hive with him on Wednesday, opened a bronzed queencell for the queen to scuttle out and removed the rest. We'll leave them be for a while. I also had a swarm attempt on Thursday. My fault - not enough room. The colony had 14 frames of brood and the brood boxes and one super were also full of honey. I found the clipped queen who was back in the hive and removed her to a nuc. I pulled a virgin queen in that hive too and removed the remaining queencells. I was dealing with the colony when the bee inspector came. With EFB nearby last year (2 km) it was comforting that she confirmed my own diagnosis of 'all clear'.
My folks used to keep bees in south Northumberland, and even that was a whole different world, never mind Norfolk. I guess you must get the cold east winds, Adam, but the season just doesn't sound the same... I'm certainly nowhere near 14-frame brood nests as yet! & the stores are still empyting, even though there's a flow on at last. I'm more worried by what you've seen, Jon, but I've never known mine start shifting by April. Maybe further west is that much warmer??? In Aberdeen 3rd week of May was the earliest I saw... I loathe being away this time of year; this time it's to go to Finland but even that doesn't make up for it.
The state of mine sounds much more as you're describing, Gavin. Too late now, anyway. In a week or so I'll tumble off the sleeper coach straight into the brood nests, weather permitting, & see what they're planning :-)
Emma
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