An account of my journey into beekeeping
Well hello again. I haven’t written a blog post for ages (not the first time ). Life happened and I let posting slip for quite some time. A lot of things have happened in the mean time. I’m just going to post an abbreviated update of what happened in the time sinds my last blogpost.
Continue reading “Expansion”
So I bought a colony from a fellow beekeeper about a month ago. To accompany my other colony, which I’ve been bitching about for two years. Even though the old colony is the only ones which is still alive sinse I first started my beekeeping experience, three years ago. I have a spot for them close by home, at our communal vegetable garden. The other colony is staying where they are, about 3 km from my home. I must say a month later that having the colony a five minute walk from home is really very nice. They are getting way more attention than my other colony, who compared to the new colony I now know are a vicious bunch. I’ll add a video where I move them from an old hive to a new Styrofoam home, you will be able to see how docile they are.
Continue reading “New Colony (again)”
So, the year is almost halfway done and it’s been quite some time since my last post. I’ll just go over what has happend in the mean time. We had a winter with really high temperatures. I was lucky that there were a few days with freeing temperatures near the winter solstice, otherwise any Varroa treatment wouldn’t have been all that effective. Not that I know how effective the treatment was…my varroa drawer is completely weather worn and no longer fits. Apparently wasn’t water proof plywood.
Continue reading “New Year”
I recently watched That Sugar Film, on everything wrong with (the) sugar “industrial complex” and consumption, and here I am feeding my bees 15 kilograms of this dreaded substance. I made my own feeder based on a design I saw a few years ago. It’s basically a tub with a hole and over the hole a tube though which the bees can enter. Around the tube is a floating platform and around that and over the end of the tube is the bottom end of a pet bottle so the bees can’t enter the tub of sugar syrup and drown.
Continue reading “I’m a feeder”
Really short post this time. I was working in our vegetable garden today and I noticed there were a number of honey bees visiting unlikely flowers. Herbs in our garden have either given up on life, making flowers sometimes is a last ditch effort for plants that aren’t doing so well to ensure survival of their genes (even though these look fine), or this is normal for this this type of herb. The basil and oregano have produced lovely flowers which the bees are happily making use of during this time of nectar dearth.
To me they seemed unlikely honey bee flowers but apparently honey bees think them perfectly acceptable.
Andrew
Just a short update.
Because the weather was lousy here for a few days. There even was some record number of nonstop rain hours, 60, which apparently this is not unheard of in autumn, winter or spring but quit rare for summer. Anyway, the rain prevented me from continuing the Apiguard treatment, replacing the tray for a new one. Saturday was cold-ish so I thought “I’ll do it tomorrow in between showers”…but there was no “in-between”.
Continue reading “Second Apiguard treatment”
This time of it’s possible to find two queens in your colonies, don’t panic, this is often caused by a silent supersedure. That’s where the bees decide that an old queen or under performing queen gets dethroned by the worker bees. So I guess bee colones are more of a democracy rather than a monarchy than you would think. Continue reading “Two queens”
Just a short quick update this time.
I’ve just gave the bees their first Apiguard tray, which will start the end of summer Varroa treatment in preparation for winter. I’m a little early this year but as I tend to be late so this year I choose to be early. It is also quit convenient to start the treatment on the first day of the month which coincidentally happens to be a Saturday, perfect. So the tray will need to be replaced on the 14th and the second and last tray will stay with the bees till they are finished with the stuff.
Although I will probably remove the tray beginning of the next month, assess the hive and start feeding soon after, perhaps in the middle of august. That should give me and the bees plenty of time to complete the winter preparations before the weather starts to deteriorate.
I’m borrowing a honey super from a fellow beekeeper (I tend to not paint flowers on my hives…) as my super has vanished from the apiary. It looks like the colony that was in this hyve has either died or the beekeeper found a more suiting hive…
First time going into winter with just one hive….we’ll see.
Andrew
I came across this video about solitary bees that I wanted to share with you, enjoy.
I’ed like to discuss two scientific articles on the possible cause of colony loss over the winter period (referred to as colony collapse disorder (CCD) in English speaking countries). The first article was published in the peer reviewed online publication PLOS ONE this month. Continue reading “Winter Colony Loss”