Brilliant, must spread.Originally Posted by prakel
Brilliant, must spread.
It is going to be 12C tops tomorrow, 12C!! And that is at midnight. It goes downhill from there, staying at 10C or 11C for the rest of the 24 hours. And there will be a stiff NE breeze.
Watching the forecast a week or two back caused me to hesitate getting colonies up the hills. They seem to have more chance of finding something in the sheltered lowlands even if a semi-decent lime crop is unlikely. Even better, they are not as far away and so feeding is easier. All my smaller colonies have feed on them now.
We seem to be getting a succession of mini flows down here. One minute no activity then a frantic dash out for a couple of hours then it all subsides again. Himalayan balsam now in full flower and is attracting swarms of bumble bees of all colours. My bees seem indifferent to it at the moment., they've obviously got a better source elsewhere. After yesterdays sunshine - its been pouring down all morning - thank heavens I managed to cut my 1 acre of lawn yesterday.
Weather better than forecast: around 15-16C and rain held off during long session in the apiary ... queens due from Colonsay this week and some of ours going out.
Trying a late batch of queens and, lo and behold, found eggs in 2 of the queen cups on the cell-raiser frame put there for familiarisation before grafting. Using Pasaga Ramic method so this was in bottom box, bees roaring queenless, with the queen above a Snelgrove Board. Proof of eggs moved by workers? (from a frame of mostly-capped brood which must have had an occasional egg). Replaced these with larvae and will watch with interest.
Kate. I see eggs in cups quite often. They are laid by workers I think. I was showing this to some of the members of our queen rearing group last Monday as a frame in a queenless colony had several eggs in the cups. This is a cell starter which has been queenless for about a month.
Swarm of bees on the goalpost at Oldham Athletic footy ground … cue a series of rubbish jokes
If Bee suits had a CE standard like motorcycle protective equipment then they would be made better and offer real protection
They all work great until the bees really want to sting you
Then you end up relying on what's underneath the thing
What's the point in that ?
Even a Primark sweatshirt underneath does a better job of keeping stings out
As for single layer fencing hoods that's just an invitation to get stung in the head
Of course we should be wearing a hat as well I suppose
The sooner either the European CE mark or some BSI standard has to be met the better
Most of them are just a cheap boiler suit with a hood on
Jon, these bees had been separated from their queen for less than 24 hours. It seems unlikely there was a laying worker?
I don't think that it's that uncommon for a few laying workers to be present in queenright hives although they're kept under check by the rest of the colony -sure I've seen some research on this. This might also go some way to explaining why some strains (the ones which tolerate a few through the season) seem to go into laying worker melt-down much quicker than others -they're already there.
Of couse, I'd rather believe that you're half way to developing a line which actually does the grafting for you (might tempt me back to grafting if that was the case!).
Thanks Prakel. Fascinating re the laying workers.
Ahah! Yes I was tempted to leave those eggs and see how they developed.
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