Well at Lydney we have spent the last four weeks doing the Varroa treatment - APILIFE VAR or as I wrongly called it apivar Life.... I don't it is horrid smelly stuff that takes a good few hand washes to get off your hands even when you handle it wearing gloves... anyway it kills the nasty varroa mights...
It comes in packets and you need two packets for one hive and it is a treatment of 1 block - (there are two blocks in a packet) cut into four pieces, with a piece placed just above the brood in each corner. If you had a double brood hive then it was necessary to put all the brood into one box for effective treatment, which is fun, and as you need two people really and then you play pass the frames, one of brood being switched with one of food, and you just about squeeze them all in. Then comes the feeding, most of the feeding takes place with a JUMBO feeder. Although if after one week they had not taken the food down then we changed this to Frame feeders.
In the past two weeks we have also being taking samples of 30 bees, and "deheading" (sorry if you are a bit girlly, but we do kill them first in the freezer... it it is for the greater good, and the bees would only have a couple more weeks to live... as we take the older flying bees) and testing for Nosema. So far only one (out of four) has had a very minor infection, the langstroth. But we will be doing some more tests during September.
The more fun bits has been the queen movements. If you can remember we split hive 1 into a circle of 5 nucs, well unfortunatly not everything has gone to plan... only ONE, bless her, queen manage to get mated correctely, with 3 having DRONE layers (OH BUM), and one being queenless. Luckly for us in our apideas we had 3 queens to use, and as we merged a couple of other colonies, there was another queen to spare... so we were back to 5 nucs again.... then disater again... one of the queens from the apidea was another DRONE layer... how much bad luck can you have... well this time there were no more spare queens, and by now a couple of the nucs are looking short on bees, so we had to "squash" her whcih I took great delight in doing although I have to admit I did look around to make sure no body was watching, just incase anybody got the wrong end of the stick and swung a smoker in lieu of a handbag at me. Then we had to combined the two nucs together using newspaper. There was some improvisation as, because we have solid floor nucs... we could not put one on top of the other, so we had to put them both into full hive boxes, using frame feeders as dummy boards either end, with the five frames in the middle, and then same in the bottom with a layer of newspaper inbetween... will be a job to sort those out nextime. I hope it has worked.
Also in the last month, we have merged a couple of the colonies into double broods, primarlily to make sure that they are strong enough for the winter, and also because I took as disliking to one of the queens, as she seem to make the one hive cross and sting people... although of cause the day the deed was done she was good as gold so we did not have the heart to kill her and she was one of the queens used in the nucs as above.....
Tuesday 31 August 2010
A Visit from the Bee Inspector
My home APIARY (Not Lydney).
Well, a visit from the Bee Inspector is something which you should look forward to, as they can be really educational, but somehow when the phone range on Friday evening, asking whether Monday was a convient day to look at the bees. My first reaction was WHAT ON A BANK HOLIDAY.... and then oh yes no problem, can you let me know a time... "sorry don't know a time" comes the reply. Anyway after the phone goes down, all reason leaves you brain, and somewhere in the back some small niggle and worry starts... what is he going to be like, will he be gentle with the bees, will he respect my way of beekeeping, oh and PLEASE please don't find anything wrong.... and somehow the tenision just built because it was not until late afternoon that finally on Bank Holiday Monday did the bee inspector arrive. I must admit that I had virtually given him up a couple of hours before and having not looking at the bees for a month... I starting going through them.. because I needed to know if they need more food or not.
Anyway the he did finally turn up, all suited and booted with his posh bee suit with "national bee unit" embroidered in on the front pocket. A nice cuppa to start just seemed to put me more on edge, and him being a quiet man with few words somehow did not settle me down much...
Anyway, away we went, starting with the observation hive, so out came the glass, and he runs his finger over the frames.... There the queen he says.... well yes obviously she has a big YELLOW mark on her back, and she is always easy to see it is an Observeration hive... and then comes the first question, is she last years queen as she is yellow.... and as it happened she was last years queen.... but then all my queens are Yellow so it took me while to twig, and explain to him then I keep a record of the year queen on the record not by the colour she is...."no commment".... but then I refection he is not allowed to pass comment,,, he is not hear to tell us how to keep bees just to make sure that there are no dieseas.
Now we are half-way through and to my amazement, this is the first half which has a problem with Chalk brood, very easy to recognize... and so on we go.
Finally after 2 hours we have been through all 11 hives.... and he says " no notifiable diseases" the relief is just amazing you do not realize the tension that has been building for days, and he was so tight lipped that I had no idea till he reached the end..... but I knew in reality that I did not have any problems as I am always very careful and inspect myself... but still it is nice to know that I have not missed anything.
What followed was another cuppa, and a bit more friendly chat... he is a nice man just a bit quiet. Then comes the best bit of the day.. as I am in WALES, and as WELSH as can be, I can get some great free hand-outs thanks to the Welsh assemble... sorry not available in England...ha ha... at last a benefit for being in Wales.
Well, a visit from the Bee Inspector is something which you should look forward to, as they can be really educational, but somehow when the phone range on Friday evening, asking whether Monday was a convient day to look at the bees. My first reaction was WHAT ON A BANK HOLIDAY.... and then oh yes no problem, can you let me know a time... "sorry don't know a time" comes the reply. Anyway after the phone goes down, all reason leaves you brain, and somewhere in the back some small niggle and worry starts... what is he going to be like, will he be gentle with the bees, will he respect my way of beekeeping, oh and PLEASE please don't find anything wrong.... and somehow the tenision just built because it was not until late afternoon that finally on Bank Holiday Monday did the bee inspector arrive. I must admit that I had virtually given him up a couple of hours before and having not looking at the bees for a month... I starting going through them.. because I needed to know if they need more food or not.
Anyway the he did finally turn up, all suited and booted with his posh bee suit with "national bee unit" embroidered in on the front pocket. A nice cuppa to start just seemed to put me more on edge, and him being a quiet man with few words somehow did not settle me down much...
Anyway, away we went, starting with the observation hive, so out came the glass, and he runs his finger over the frames.... There the queen he says.... well yes obviously she has a big YELLOW mark on her back, and she is always easy to see it is an Observeration hive... and then comes the first question, is she last years queen as she is yellow.... and as it happened she was last years queen.... but then all my queens are Yellow so it took me while to twig, and explain to him then I keep a record of the year queen on the record not by the colour she is...."no commment".... but then I refection he is not allowed to pass comment,,, he is not hear to tell us how to keep bees just to make sure that there are no dieseas.
Now we are half-way through and to my amazement, this is the first half which has a problem with Chalk brood, very easy to recognize... and so on we go.
Finally after 2 hours we have been through all 11 hives.... and he says " no notifiable diseases" the relief is just amazing you do not realize the tension that has been building for days, and he was so tight lipped that I had no idea till he reached the end..... but I knew in reality that I did not have any problems as I am always very careful and inspect myself... but still it is nice to know that I have not missed anything.
What followed was another cuppa, and a bit more friendly chat... he is a nice man just a bit quiet. Then comes the best bit of the day.. as I am in WALES, and as WELSH as can be, I can get some great free hand-outs thanks to the Welsh assemble... sorry not available in England...ha ha... at last a benefit for being in Wales.
Monday 2 August 2010
Honey Extraction + rainy weeks
It has been a while since I posted, as we had two rainy weeks.
In the first rain week, we had a great lecture on Microscopy, and learned all about how a microscope is put together. On the bees we just did a little feeding, getting very wet in the process.
Second rain week, was not as bad, well the rain was very hard, and we spent an hour sheltering from the rain, chatting, and learning how rhombus boards work and talking about how we were going to use apivar life, which is the newly licence treatment for Varroa this year. After the rain we did manage to go out a look at the bees, but only the small nucs, did not really learn anything intersting apart from that one was no longer viable and therefore it was thrown out. All this rain meant that I had to make a special trip to the apiary on the Saturday to get a few jobs done.
On that Saturday; I went through any hives where we were waiting for queens to lay. I must have checked about 7 - 8 hives and only one of them was still waiting for the queen to lay; which was hive 10, which was the last split we did. The two introduced queens where both laying.
Thursday 27th July Clearer board -DAY
I am not sure what happened in the hives themselves, but any hive which had honey supers on, we had to put an Rhombus clearer board on. We first attach the rhombus to the crown board, which then becomes a clearer board, taping any unused holes up. This clearer board then goes directly below the honey suppers with an eke, (an empty super) below this, to allow space for the bees to move down into.
In the case of one hive instead of using an eke, we gave them a brood box of foundation to give them something to do. This led to a very very tall hive, Three brood boxes an eke, plus four suppers, see images.
Saturday 31st July - Extraction Day.
This was a Very busy and long day, the hardest day beekeeping of the year. Starting early to arrive at the apiary before 9. We remove all suppers all 22 of them and then sort them so that we only have to transfer home frames which have honey in it the extracted. 14 of them. The bees are then squeezed back into their box and the eke and clearer board removed. Then the uncapping, spinning and filtering all take place. Finally at about 9.30 at night we bottle/tub up the honey after it has been left for a few hours to float, any final bit to the top of the filtered honey. The wax all then needs processing. There was a fairly good crop of about 280 lb, however some of it had granulated (about 40lb) so we have choices left to make either melt it down or feed it back to the bees.
The honey moisture content was checked and came out at approximately 18.5%.using a refractometer
.
Finally above is an image of how bees if they don't like a draft will use propolis to fill the gaps, leaving us beekeepers a lovely stick mess, with it almost impossible to take one frame out at a time.
In the first rain week, we had a great lecture on Microscopy, and learned all about how a microscope is put together. On the bees we just did a little feeding, getting very wet in the process.
Second rain week, was not as bad, well the rain was very hard, and we spent an hour sheltering from the rain, chatting, and learning how rhombus boards work and talking about how we were going to use apivar life, which is the newly licence treatment for Varroa this year. After the rain we did manage to go out a look at the bees, but only the small nucs, did not really learn anything intersting apart from that one was no longer viable and therefore it was thrown out. All this rain meant that I had to make a special trip to the apiary on the Saturday to get a few jobs done.
On that Saturday; I went through any hives where we were waiting for queens to lay. I must have checked about 7 - 8 hives and only one of them was still waiting for the queen to lay; which was hive 10, which was the last split we did. The two introduced queens where both laying.
Thursday 27th July Clearer board -DAY
I am not sure what happened in the hives themselves, but any hive which had honey supers on, we had to put an Rhombus clearer board on. We first attach the rhombus to the crown board, which then becomes a clearer board, taping any unused holes up. This clearer board then goes directly below the honey suppers with an eke, (an empty super) below this, to allow space for the bees to move down into.
Saturday 31st July - Extraction Day.
This was a Very busy and long day, the hardest day beekeeping of the year. Starting early to arrive at the apiary before 9. We remove all suppers all 22 of them and then sort them so that we only have to transfer home frames which have honey in it the extracted. 14 of them. The bees are then squeezed back into their box and the eke and clearer board removed. Then the uncapping, spinning and filtering all take place. Finally at about 9.30 at night we bottle/tub up the honey after it has been left for a few hours to float, any final bit to the top of the filtered honey. The wax all then needs processing. There was a fairly good crop of about 280 lb, however some of it had granulated (about 40lb) so we have choices left to make either melt it down or feed it back to the bees.
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