todays news

[gavin]

They'll be back out today though! My experiences yesterday in Fife are recounted below . Thanks C4U, I hadn't considered honeydew as the stuff I have seen has been darker. OK, I'll ask Tony for a sample and I *will* get the microscope out some time over winter to see if that helps. Glad to have the colour issue explained though.

Yesterday was the day to reclaim the last of the hives at the heather. An early start, then a tour round to drop them back at the three sites they came from. A soaking wet, slippy, greasy autumn day and with a challenging schedule to get to Ayr in time to give a talk at the beekeeping association there. Thankfully I had a retired engineer with me, a man who knows a thing or two about getting vehicles out of tricky situations. At site two there was a relatively simple manoevre to drive forward then reverse into a lane behind a walled garden. Hmmn, it was squelchy and I was losing grip. OK, reverse, reverse!



Let's try to crash on through the verge to get back up this lane. Bad move. There was a brick-lined hole in the grass I hadn't noticed before and the back offside wheel dropped down into it leaving the van resting on the chassis with no chance of any traction at all. Bugger! Still, Jeff knows how to sort things. We commandeered (thanks Alan) a mini-tractor and driver but it couldn't lift the back of Vera the Van (blame my nieces for the name) on its own. However Jeff isn't a man to be defeated easily and constructed a lever using a piece of timber borrowed from builders nearby and a pile of bricks. One lever up, I slipped a brick under the wheel, down went the lever and a brick went on the pivot point. Another lever and another brick under the wheel. Off with the lever and another brick on the pivot point. Magic! Before long I was able to drive out of the hole whilst Alan used the mini-tractor to give me the necessary helping push. I don't think the Ayr beekeepers knew how close they were to losing the evening's entertainment.

Will I do it again? Probably! I have a habit of repeating my mistakes.

[Greengage]

Talking of diferent colours I came across this article, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/ny...city.html?_r=2

[Adam]

I have a rope in the back of my car so I can pull my (19 year old) son's car out of a field (again) when I need to. I've taught him how to tie a bowline - he says that it's something that he should have been taught at school for such an eventuality! Practical education for a teenage boy. Logarithums and Archimedes Principle don't work when your car is stuck.

[SDM]

Logarithums and Archimedes Principle don't work when your car is stuck.

If he'd applied them he might have known that the field was too soft to support his car.

[gavin]

Logarithums and Archimedes Principle don't work when your car is stuck.

Archimedes worked for me! Although Archimedes wouldn't have invented it, can't see Stonehenge being erected without levers.

[Adam]

I can still recite Archimedes Principle from when I learned it at school.
"Whenever an object is wholly or partially immersed in a fluid ....."

For today's news:- It's dull & cold. Feels like Autumn has arrived.

[Feckless Drone]

Ivy nectar on tap here in Dundee. Great to see and with the good spell of weather then has to be a big plus for the winter. Now - the only question is how well were those Qs mated?

[gavin]

To the extent of putting something into supers, or just toppping up brood box stores? One year I was enticed into putting a super on a colony working ivy but the flow stopped before they used it. That was in the countryside to the west of you, perhaps the prospects are better in town. Interesting all the same. Ivy flows used to be a thing found only in the far SW (see Ted Hooper's book for example) but seem to have spread north and east some way.

[Jon]

They can fill a super if they get the weather for a week or so but that rarely happens.
Certainly plenty of pollen and nectar arriving at the moment.
My queens are all laying again and a lot had stopped in September.
Nice to see the bees so active. I was getting worried that there would be a shortage of young bees to overwinter but things look better now.

[Feckless Drone]

To the extent of putting something into supers, or just toppping up brood box stores?

I am not going to do that - supers all tidied away, and Varroa treatments still in play so I'll just leave alone. I was tempted to go through my colonies to see what the Qs are doing but chickened out. I was happy enough to think (delude myself) that they would have started laying again with lots of healthy bees to see them through winter. Jon's just confirmed my delusion. Last year Qs seemed to shut down early and I don't recall such an extended period of good weather in the late summer into autumn.