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Thread: todays news

  1. #3351

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    Quote Originally Posted by Feckless Drone View Post
    Questions for your C4U. At the stage after applying the freshener - do you just put one box on top and leave for a few days then rearrange frames? Or just blast and put frames together? Or winter on double brood?

    I'm now checking that hives are Q-right and pretty much going to stop full inspections but try to make good decisions about what to keep, what to unite. I've one 2015 Q (wintered in a poly-nuc after two-frame mating setup) who has not tried to swarm, decent colony, heavy super but the colony still has drones and drone brood. Other colonies have only worker brood and no drones present. Not sure if this represents low swarming trait or just that the colony was not at full strength in the spring and is lagging behind. I'll do another few inspections of this colony to monitor it as it could be a good Q to breed from. I've a 2016 Q and finally worked up the courage to see if her three Q-cells were an attempt at supercedure rather than interfere. A new Q was due to start flying yesterday and depending on outcome this is a hive that I might try the air freshener with. Week looks OK for mating flights.

    Overall, I think colonies have done well this year on Tayside and still the prospect of heather crop to come.
    We tend to do it at the heather and just spray both side of the interface and stick them together. The bees then generally fill in the empty frames them fill in down behind them so not much sorting to do.

    We have had lots of colonies evict the drones way earlier than usual. I don't think its a bad trait in general hives but it a bummer in the mating yard where (a few) chosen drone mothers are now devoid of drones. Largely it means that the colony itself is now stable for the season as they now have no use for drones and thus new queens preparations are over. Oddly I might be a bit more concerned about the one that is still making drone brood.....but concerned in a very minor way, probably ranks about 97 in the list of the top hundred things to worry about. (Non existent list btw before anyone asks.)

    We finished nest examinations about 5 weeks ago at the point we give then unlimited space. The number that swarm after that are not viable to look for and frankly, as they do not fit into our ways of management, are no great loss.

    Fatshark mentions the nucs. It is an issue here too and the queens are trying to ease back laying somewhat. As the brood in the outer frames hatches they are not relaying in those faces and they are starting to tighten in the stores arc round the nest. Stimulative feeding needed to keep them going forward AND to avoid starvation setting in. It has been a very autumnal spell and hopefully the weather itself will reverse this in the coming days, but this better spell has been long predicted but when we get to within a few days of it it fades away and a new set of low pressure areas appear instead. Shame as the heather looks SO good. Was a potential klondyke up to a week ago, still has the potential to be well above average, but the earliest areas have about 10 days left before the flowering is in decline.

    I would agree that the bees have indeed done well (for themselves) and are off to the heather in generally not too bad condition. Honey yield is a different matter but then the way we manage the bees blossom honey is essentially a by product, with the heather being the goal from day one. Our blossom yield was looking like it would be good, but then we went *seven weeks* with no nectar and much was eaten (costs me 30K to do a full round of feeding so we are careful not to over harvest the OSR) and the end result is a much below average early season honey crop.

    If its any consolation the unit of hives in England was even worse! No honey at all until the last three weeks, and the hot weather fell smack in the middle of the gap. No nectar and lots of swarming and robbing in the middle of a heatwave.

    Our best areas this year would be a small pocket west of Edinburgh (and even two miles away it was poor), Crieff, and the area round the Kincardine Bridge.

  2. #3352

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    Quote Originally Posted by Calluna4u View Post
    I might be a bit more concerned about the one that is still making drone brood.....but concerned in a very minor way, probably ranks about 97 in the list of the top hundred things to worry about.
    Thanks C4U. If I remember correctly you use deeps for the heather crop as well so I can see how this works. And yes I'm uneasy about that 16 month old Q still with drone brood mainly because that nest is now different from all the others. I maybe should unite and get rid but will probably just monitor and see how she is going into and through winter - if she does not do a runner (she's clipped) or gets bumped off before then. I don't want to interfere too much at this point because they have to cap off the stores for me.

  3. #3353

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mellifera Crofter View Post
    I united two colonies this afternoon and it resulted in a horrible war that I couldn't stop.
    Kitta
    I can so sympathise, Kitta. I seem to manage at least one new disaster a year. I console myself by trying to learn fast and never making the same mistake again. But I find brand new ones instead. Last year it was when I united two warm-way colonies. I used newspaper, always do. But with warm way, and a dummy board, there's sometimes a space at the back with no frames of bees underneath it. To the bees above that gap, it must have seemed like a clever way out of the trap, a way outside without confronting the alien colony. So they chewed a small hole through and slipped through, one by one... only to find that they were in alien territory and that the only way outside was past a massed rank of frames full of unfriendly bees. Hundreds died. Very horrible. So now I put a sheet of hard plastic at the back, & every time I do it I think: never again.
    The other way I console myself, of course, is that hundreds of thousands of bees have emerged and thrived through my efforts, and a fair handful of colonies & queens have found their way into the wider world along the way. I'm sure you've achieved the same.

  4. #3354
    Senior Member Mellifera Crofter's Avatar
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    Thanks Emma - I'll follow your thoughts, and console myself likewise. I now have newspapers and Airwick 6 in 1 in the car.

    I've been to check them this morning, and the queen survived the mayhem. She is there and laying.

    Kitta

  5. #3355

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mellifera Crofter View Post
    Thanks Emma - I'll follow your thoughts, and console myself likewise. I now have newspapers and Airwick 6 in 1 in the car.

    I've been to check them this morning, and the queen survived the mayhem. She is there and laying.

    Kitta
    Yay! - so the colony survives. That's their number one goal achieved then, for a start. Lovely news.

  6. #3356

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    Has anyone heard about this ? Why did he need 1000 litres of feed for 10 hives ?
    https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news...00-honey-bees/

  7. #3357
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    Quote Originally Posted by SDM View Post
    Has anyone heard about this ? Why did he need 1000 litres of feed for 10 hives ?
    https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news...00-honey-bees/
    He probably bought enough for a good few seasons. We have an IBC of invert syrup that we use for 20 hives only. Still got plenty for the next few years.

    We don't import ours all the way from the states though ! Pretty easy to get hold of in the UK for far cheaper than this article suggests.

    Pretty annoying for the owner though.

  8. #3358

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    Did you have a forklift to move your IBC when it was delivered GG ?

    Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

  9. #3359
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger View Post
    Did you have a forklift to move your IBC when it was delivered GG ?

    Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk
    Not my own but yes used a forklift. How do you move yours Gavin ?

  10. #3360

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    I've always wondered how people get them set up at a sensible height to use
    I assumed you would need something like a forklift and a stand of some kind

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