todays news

[EmsE]

I've been promising the hubbie home grown mead for the past couple of yrs and he's still not got any As they say, good things come to those who wait- it'll taste so much better when it's finally brewed (come on bees pleeeeeeeease!)

[b.lambert]

putting a second super onto double brood this morning, looked at them on Tuesday and it is boiling over with bees! placed first super on 14th with drawn comb and some foundation has drawn it all out and honey being made. Could not find her Maj but plenty evidence of her presence 13 frames of brood, eggs and larvae. Yesterday neighbor had gardeners in with noisy machines, just before this I had been sitting out almost falling asleep with the hum of the girls when the silence was broken. Within the next five min's I had about half a dozen bees intent on stinging me! One got caught up in my hair the furious buzzing noise indicating her intent, managed to free it then let it go outside I then went back out only to be attacked by the same bee again! Alas, her valiant actions led to her demise but not without a result! Now the question pondering is was it the machines? or were they still unsettled from the inspection on Tues? Hope they are in better fettle this morning

[Mellifera Crofter]

I have to admit that the site can be a bit erratic about accepting uploads. Chris, if you'd like to email the attachment to me I can try to make them visible.

Regarding your wee cross-combing and dead-end nadiring problem - I'd just put a normal box on top and let them work upwards as usual. Your odd box of comb might be vacated later in the summer, or you could wait until next spring when surely it will be empty as the bees go up above?

Chris, I'm still curious to see your photos, please.
Kitta

[chris]

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Kitta, I've just given my computer a hernia. Does this work?

[gavin]

It does - thanks Chris and apologies for not getting round to it myself.

[gavin]

Hope they are in better fettle this morning

Hope that they were. Mine have been really calm this year but yesterday were a bit more defensive. I think that generally follows a build up - when they are stronger they can afford to be more aggressive with intruders.

Lovely day for a spot of beekeeping! I wonder if Thornes is open today?

G

[Calum]

My mirst 7 queens from 2011 hachted today! Another seven will be out on sunday, and seven more a week later.
Excellent. Cool week so only 7kg weight gain this week so far on the scales... What is the going price for mated queens in scotland?

[gavin]

Thornes charge £48 but their prices for nucs are about double the price if you buy locally and maybe that applies to queens too. To be honest I don't know how much trade there is in mated queens. Some folk will give them away to friends and association colleagues. Folk ought to be prepared to pay for quality locally raised queens, especially from known, bred stocks. Maybe we'll be able to do that one day and at least recover the not inconsiderable costs of doing it properly. We had some plans to do this in the east of Scotland but there are other pressures on folk's time and resources at the moment so I'm not sure that much is going to happen this year. Jon raises queens in NI. Are you planning to sell some of them Jon?

'Only' a 7kg weight gain?!

[Jon]

Dunno. I suppose it depends how many I get mated. I have 18 Apideas.
I have volunteered to get a breeding programme up and running through my bka and we are meeting on Monday evenings starting 9th May.
A lot of my free time will be going into that but hopefully a few others will help spread the donkey work if you pardon the expression.
There should be more than 50 apideas available.

I might concentrate on more queens but less nucs this year as it is hard getting the bees to make up the nucs. I have one queen right cell raiser set up already and I have some cells due to hatch on the 8th May. A few colonies are making drones now.

I can graft from a pure bred Galtee queen mated in the Galtee valley with Galtee drones or I can graft from some of my own queens, some of which have Galtee genetics in them.

There is one guy in my bka who has 40+ colonies so if he wants to get nucs ready for new members, I could provide the queens.

[gavin]

Turns out that Thornes wasn't open. Hrmfff. And half of Newburgh was out having a Union Jack be-decked party! What an odd place.

Spotted plenty of Correx in the fields beside the roads though! Many of them a nice shade of blue.

So I retreated to the apiary and did some box painting and scraping and dusty corner roasting (there's a knack to keeping those blowtorch thingies alight, basically keep them upright). One colony even let me paint linseed oil on the new brood box atop the old one without getting dressed up for the occasion.

I had a few visitors whilst standing with a brush or roller in hand. A few red mason bees, showing that they don't just congretate at my front porch. A queen wasp (she never hesitated and quickly moved on). An even two high-pitched honey bees. You know the noise they make when they are telling the world that they are in a desperate hurry to do something? Ready to go and win a half-mile race?! They sniffed around the piles of woodware giving it all the once-over. They *must* be house-hunting surely, and if so they are none of mine and they were a nice dark colour. Quickly readied a couple of nuc boxes and spotted a few drops of lemon grass oil on the top bars and on the entrance, just in case.