Skip to main content

Early Cold Snap, Seeking Sunlight, A Quilted Top Cover.

I've had my 8 frame nuc at my parents' place for a week now and the cool weather has hot with vengeance: the coldest May maximum temp for decades.  The snow fields received a drop of 50cm of snow,  five weeks before the start of the season. 
I checked my baby hive through the week and it was very busy with bees added lots of sealed honey.  In fact it was too busy to lift a frame without upsetting them.  They're a lively enough bunch anyhow. 
But it was concerning to see them not working this afternoon,  knowing they were in "heat generation mode" and using up honey stores already,  before winter is officially underway. 
I also noticed that the sun goes of the hive in the early afternoon.  So,  I now want to move them out of the shade about 2 minutes and add a quilted cover.  This is just a standard lid,  hessian tracked across it's bottom and filled with wood shavings.  This adds insulation and absorbs moisture which is manufactured by the bees heating the hive in cold conditions.  Moisture is destructive to honey stores and the structure of the hive. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

More Spring Bee Lessons

 Well my bees beat me up these last two weeks. To be fair though  it was mostly my fault. So,  I started with radix hives; two at coastal Merewether and two on my property near Paterson.   Obviously the Merewether hives produced through winter and with a bit of an up-change in the weather they needed space for brood and honey.  This caught me out (Lesson 1: don't procrastinate or aim to do the least amount of work. In other words don't be lazy.)  I then had to rush around buying and assembling frames. Penders Bees reported that from their orders it's a bumper season. But I  really need to not be so unprepared again.   Adding Supers and extracting helped create space,  but I'll be extracting again very soon with my spanking new machine. Unfortunately in hive #4 the Queen spent the winter above the Excluder and it really knocked them about. Removing the Excluder (which was a third full of dead Drones) got them working ok again.  ...

Swarm Cut Out.

Today's principle task was to participate in my first cut out of a wild bee colony. Leading the extraction was my bee mentor Warren Bee and his neighbour, also experienced extractor, Dave. Well, the colony was hiding in a wall in an abandoned dairy building. Two things straight up to assault the senses, the smell of rear poo (and dust) and a vast number of dead bees. In a north facing wall below the kitchen sink, these bees head cooked in hot weather. The process was to remove all the internal fittings and linings, remove comb and suck up as many bees as possible. Good comb was saved for honey extraction, old comb was trashed. Sucking up the bees was done using a little vacuum cleaning drawing bees through a filtered hive box especially designed for the job. It took about 3.5 hours. I never got stung, so I liked them all. Hopefully, of those that survive this process, they will have a brighter future than their old buddies. PS. As it happens I went to my mentor's yard ...

Separation > Life

 That cryptic header refers to life after separation. Up until 5 or so years ago I was married for 30 years, before my wife decamped. I was left unemployed,  with regular weekly debts and responsible for the daily care of two children.  The psychological and social impacts of this situation for children I will avoid commenting on. Even though our society totally supports separation as being good for the economy, it's disastrous for children as it undermines their sense of stability and trust in humankind.  But this is my blog, my post about what it's been like for me. Well obviously,  straight up there are some sleepless nights spent planning how to generate an income.  Even though my ex, (whom i don't talk to for obvious reasons),  left the home, I believe she expected me to fall in a heap and allow her to sell this property and then toss me a bag of lose change. But here's the thing,  becoming free from  her ah, negativity, and having a fre...