Wednesday 31 March 2010

Frustrated with the weather

What rubbish weather! I have psyched myself up to try and find the Queen and it wont stop raining. Just before the bad weather started Liam and I had a quick look inside the hive without removing any frames. We took the decision to add a super as the bees were now moving over all the frames and it felt heavy and looked busy.

However, we decided to put the Queen Excluder on, and then immediately thought we had made the wrong decision but it is too wet to change it! I am not sure that the bees will go into the Super as we used foundation that was only half drawn out from last Summer.

I am waiting for 5 minutes of sunshine to go and remove it but it is not looking promising...

Tuesday 23 March 2010

A second hive, and a water puzzle



















We have taken the plunge and bought a second hive from Thornes - mainly because Liam didn't want to spend his birthday at the Ruishton Beekeepers Auction.

It has arrived and I am waiting for a nice day to sit outside and apply Linseed oil and to build some frames. I have been keeping an eye on the hive entrance and there seems to be a lot of activity on sunny days with bees taking in a lot of pollen. I am also enjoying the sight of my bees on the flowers in my garden, and I think for the first time I understand the point of all those BBKA leaflets telling you which plants / shrubs / trees to plant as it is somehow very satisfying. (The picture above is of a crocus about ten foot from the hive).


I have been slightly puzzled by the large numbers of bees ignoring a 5 foot high water feature (fountain and pool) bang smack in the middle of the garden to visit a water butt right the other side of the garden from their hive. How do they know it contains water? The lid is on and there are no obvious signs. And why dont they like the pool?

Following David's advice we have put a bowl of water on top of the butt with a stone in it. This will hopefully stop the bees going into the water butt and drowning. However, they seem to be happy to ignore it and keep burrowing under the lid. Very mysterious.

On the next sunny and warm day, we are going to try and find the Queen to check to see if she is marked (and the same one as last year) or not (in which case, we are going to have to try and mark her - gulp.) This is the precursor to starting Robin's artificial swarm method. Watch this space...

Wednesday 3 March 2010

First sighting of pollen

Another inspection, and a quick heft of the hive on Monday revealed more dead bees on the ground but the hive felt heavier (??? can fondant really work this quickly or is this my imagination?!). Looking at the hive entrance, there were also guard bees and plenty of forager bees returning loaded down with an incredibly orange pollen - possibly snowdrop?

Inside, on the crownboard, there was still some fondant left and the bees were clustered around it. From what I could see through the glass partition, bees were extremely active in the brood chamber with bees teeming all over all but 3 frames.

I havent done a full inspection yet - I want to go to a "Disease and Hygiene" talk on thursday at Frome BKA and will ask the experts when they intend to do theirs...

Have just realised that the bee equipment auction at Ruishton falls on Liam's birthday. Tentative questioning has revealed that he does not see this as how he wants to spend his day and so I think it is a case of choosing our hive from Thormes...

NB Until I find my bee notebook (carefully shelved since October), I need to note that I did a varroa check and had a daily mite drop of 1.25 - no concern (yet).