todays news

[GRIZZLY]

Checked the bees yesterday.No honey in any of them,some unsealed and unripened nectar.They are living hand-to-mouth this year.As soon as nectar is brought in its consumed.I'm thinking of putting some serious feed on to prevent starvation.I heard on "Farming today" on thursday a B.B.K.A. spokesman talking about a hopeless year and cases of starving bees down south .

[Neils]

I might get 3 supers of honey. There's plenty in flower at the moment but the flow looks to be over at the moment.

I've got two hives where the queens are happily wandering around but there is no brood whatsoever in one and only drone comb laid up in the other, if she's gone drone laying I'd expect her to be laying as normal so I'm at a bit of a loss to explain those two right now.

Also finally been stung again and I appear not to be dead which I'll take to be a good sign.

[Jon]

Two colonies with clipped queens which swarmed when I was away in July now have laying queens again.

[kevboab]

Thats the drone layers sorted along with a couple of other small colonies and the autumn uniting is completed. Have been completely ruthless this year and taking no chances whatsoever going into winter with small colonies. Finally seeing some honey in the supers but not sure if its gonna be worthwhile harvesting any. Feel the bees need it a damn site more than me at moment.

[Feckless Drone]

Spent yesterday morning helping a more senior keeper, to clear out a storeroom of old equipment. This belonged to a long time keeper, no longer with us, and I've inherited his site. The equipment was mostly made by him and there were lots of ideas and tricks for feeding, keeping comb straight, modifications to Wormit style hives etc. This keeper was very thoughtful about his craft. It was sad clearing out the room but it needed to be done - we found a bucket of honey, about 3-4 L worth, that is at least 6 years old. It looked like a mixture of molasses and crude oil and (ignoring years of H&S training) tasted absolutely brilliant. It had not crystallised and might be honeydew. I did suggest that we bottle it and enter it in the Dundee flower show but was told best not in case it came first. Its going to be burnt along with the other stuff which is also a bit sad.

[HJBee]

Bees foraging well on the Rosebay Willowherb today.ImageUploadedByTapatalk1344795450.247277.jpg

[Jon]

I took this one of one of my bees on the willowherb a few years ago. I wanted to use it for my honey label but Thorne rejected it as it implies that the honey in the jar is monofloral apparently.

willowherb7.jpg

I love to see the blue pollen coming in.

[HJBee]

Fabulous picture Jon!

[fatshark]

Checked grafts from Sunday ... only 10% take I thought I was taking a risk as the flow was lessening. I'll have to reassemble the Ben Harden setup on a hive without supers and feed lots of syrup. I want some late-mated queens to overwinter in a rather more organised way than I did last year.

[Jon]

I have had little or no success with queenright queenrearing this past fortnight but I got 70 cells started easy enough in queenless colonies.
We are getting them into apideas this week.