Mine were piling in with pollen on sunday. All hives very busy
It was a dirty brown yellow colour so I assume Ivy. Good to see !
Mine were piling in with pollen on sunday. All hives very busy
It was a dirty brown yellow colour so I assume Ivy. Good to see !
Was out feeding yesterday morning (at the time you were making that post) at Gray house just outside Dundee, a place with relatively abundant ivy (nothing compared to the amounts further south). Only a few plants are in flower, most still in tight bud. Most colonies were clustered and not a lot of bee flight. There was more activity later in the day at Star Inn, but only a minor amount of pollen being carried. Nice to see and a *fairly* reliable indication of queenright status. No smell so no significant ivy nectar. It has a powerful smell so you know if anything significant is going on. Not even close to warm enough, but the next day or two, with a bit of Fohn effect in play especially east of the Highlands, might give things a chance.
Last edited by Calluna4u; 20-10-2015 at 07:42 AM.
Flowering generally is about two weeks late here. My apiary records over the last five years in Fermanagh, show that ivy can start from the second week in Sept to the first week in October. This year most is currently still in tight bud but there has been a lot of pollen and nectar brought in for about a week now, with forage searching probably helped by the calm weather.
Its a strange old year.
Feeding 86 hives west of Perth yesterday afternoon not far from the River Earn. The bee flight on arrival was remarkable for the time of year and still loads of 'ghost bees' coming in with or without the dusted bodies but abundant cream coloured pollen. Also a significant number with either orange pollen or the dull yellow of ivy (must be going a long way for that, little nearby). It was so intense and so much fanning and dancing going on that I could not resist a look in a couple of the broodboxes. Brood in all stages, though not on more than a couple of frames, but good to see with all the concerns about worked out bees going into winter, but absolutely zero nectar.
Then I got the very odd phone call.
A swarm. Its the 21st of October for heavens sake. It was my son who knows a swarm when he sees one, and this one had landed on the windscreen wipers of a Unimog he was working on, and was splattered all over the windscreen. 'Have you just parked it somewhere daft and the flying bees are getting disorientated?' I asked. 'No, it is 50 yards from the nearest hives, AND I can see the queen,' he replied. It was actually a very small swarm when I checked it later, but yes it has a nice large queen in it.
It was at our mating apiary, where not all the boxes have been tidied away yet and some still have bees in them. Suspect that after the last queen harvest one of the boxes has raised a queen of its own, that she then mated and laid, and has become overcrowded and absconded. Very odd anyway. Did not intend to do anything with it as not really interested in late mated queens produced after all the good stock is drone free, reliant on drones from the 'defectives', but it has been stuck into a Kieller and fed, just to see what happens.
Could it have been one of the events I described on another thread where the queen is out on a mating flight or some activity associated with mating, accompanied by workers? What I have seen involves the queen and workers settling like a mini swarm. What temperature did you have yesterday? Was it warm enough for a mating flight to take place? Some parts of East Scotland were around 20c yesterday.
No idea. I know it was quite warm in sheltered spots yesterday but it was pretty windy. There was no mating sign on the queen and no drones with the swarmlet. Took it away today, as despite a minimal entrance being left it was being attacked by wasps this morning after the syrup in feed compartment.
There is a pleasing level of warmth across two, three or four frames in the Paynes nucs at the moment. Most of them should be good for the winter (if it isn't too severe). Many are slowly using up the deluge of syrup applied recently but a few have had drained it completely. Perhaps those ones are being robbed quietly, when I'm not looking.
One colony free-hanging in a small tree was transferred (with Emma's help, thanks!) on Tuesday into a Paynes nuc box. The whole thing was on one main branch, so we just snipped it to top bar size and put across the frame rests and placed an eke on top to accommodate the bow in the branch. It is now taking feed. Shame on me, I reckon it was a July swarm of mine that I thought had departed into the distance but in fact had set up home in the open on a small tree nearby.
Still pollen coming in, still holding off applying mouse guards to the wooden hives.
Time to go through the notes, work out what went well and what didn't, and dream of how many full colonies I may have next spring when the nucs move up to full boxes.
Finally got my first couple of colonies into my bee shed ... better late than never.
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Being stuffed with stores these colonies were a doddle to move on my own in the dark over a rather rickety bridge ...
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