Looking forward to March 7th to see if you get your hat or if you fly with the feral swarms and set up your own colony.
Looking forward to March 7th to see if you get your hat or if you fly with the feral swarms and set up your own colony.
Missed it !!
Oh well
Todays little pile of infuriating annoyances included trying to make a donation to the rowers who were on breakfast TV
Google search took me to Virgin Giving, but a read through the small print finds that Richard Branson not content with his Carribean Island , Spaceships, Balloons and buck teeth also wants to skim off 2% of my donation and bombard me with junk mail
On to the next one -- no thats even worse they intend to skim off 5%, presumably they don't yet have a Carribean Island or a spaceship (yet) so they need the extra to fund them
Pretty sure they will still have buck teeth and no chins though
Grrrr!!!
Looks like your not eusocial.
Not if it means handing charity money to sneaky skimming B'st who hide it in the small print
Oh no! no honey badger worth his salt would swallow that
I've had arguments on the phone with the evasive gits
Even if you ask who do you work for they will say
"Oxfam" (or whatever)
Then you ask well who pays your wages ?
"Oxfam" they say
So you are on Oxfam's payroll
"Not exactly we are an agency collecting on behalf of Oxfam "
Right so you are just a bloody parasite skimming money off the top (best to take a conciliatory approach I feel)
"I am NOT"
Agument begins ending 20 mins later with
well you can F off and don't ring my Fn phone again you arsol
p.s. GG I had to google eusocial and thats gone on todays list of minor irritations as No12
Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 09-03-2016 at 03:21 PM.
I've just steamed 15 pounds of wax from a load of "old" frames , leaving them very clean looking and wax free . I'm wondering if they can now be regarded as disease free and suitable for re-use after waxing with new foundation. I thought of using acetic acid on them - perhaps this isn't necessary but, with nosema on the increase I want to get my hives as hygenic as possible, The frames were steamed in spare plastic brood boxes and I guess the steaming should render them hygenic as well.Again further cleaning with bleach might be necessary ??.
I did this and then since I didnt need the frames and brood boxes for a while stuck acetic acid on a nappy and stuck them in large bin bags to kill the spores etc.
Checked my hives today for the first time this year and stuck pollen patty / light syrup on them. Poly hives way ahead as usual but wooden hives not bad either.
Visit to Bee Farmers in Calabria, Italy
John Freeman on the FB Queen Rearing UK page, is inviting folk to join him visiting "two commercial beekeepers" in the south of Italy, Calabria.
Isn't that where SHB was found and not yet reliably cleared?
No prizes for guessing my thoughts on this venture!
I know nothing of this trip or the guy concerned, but know there are some very good and ethical queen rearers out there on the northern fringes of the SHB outbreak that would be well worth visiting.
Apicoltura 2 Ponti, not far north of the core of the outbreak, would be a real treat. I have had some of their carnica queens in the past and they were brilliant for Scotland, their mothers coming from the Alps.
To avoid these people because of an affliction that is not their fault is, IMO, just not fair, and to dismiss them because of SHB is not sensible. They are really hurting as they have been shut off from their markets. Many had really expensive breeder stock from northern Europe and Scandinavia so they could supply northern clients (as far up as Finland) with northern bees in early season, and now its a dead loss for them. They do not have SHB themselves but cannot now sell out of the quarantine zone. Shunning them shows a lack of solidarity.
As far as I can see no-one is proposing to be bringing bees back, and the Italians themselves have been really good about all this. As an educational visit I would suggest it is just about the best choice of all for now. Learn about SHB from those who really have seen it and hear what THEY have to say rather than listen to scaremongers and alarmists (applies equally well to folk like me of course, who consider it likely to be a non issue, and liberalists).
Last edited by Kate Atchley; 29-03-2016 at 02:28 PM.
I apologise if that came across as a personal rebuke of some kind. It was not meant that way. I just reckon that the best way to learn is to actually see, and second best is to hear from those that have actually seen.
I get a bit frustrated at folk in general (and the southern equivalent of this group are particularly prone to this) who are not open to seeing things that do not coincide with their own viewpoint. I know some of the guys out there and have no cause whatsoever to denigrate what they do. I very much doubt that ANY of the professionals in Calabria, or Sicily (where I know the people better) would risk selling on anything. Too much to lose from non compliance with the local rules if nothing else.
At last information I had over 3000 colonies had been burned, jobs and homes lost, compensation grossly delayed. Not good.
I don't know what else they can do about it. The eradication, if it is ever achieved, will take some seasons, for a problem, that in most places, is not considered serious. Sub tropical areas of USA apart, and heated honey houses where combs are stored longer than they should be.
Latest feedback from my Italian contacts is that if it is still showing up in another two years they are most likely to close their whole national border to exports, and declare the southern parts at least as infested. They are at the point of considering if the cure is worse than the complaint.
To be perfectly clear however......despite my lack of alarm at SHB, I consider any imports from southern Italy as very foolish indeed. There are multiple reasons for this, not just my own ambivalence to SHB.
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