Skip to main content

Winter Underway

It's official. The temperatures have dipped to the teens most days, the nights are single digit and the rain seems to be more on than off.
I read on my new favourite Beek, Sue Hubbell (dec.) that the Italian bee has a habit of getting out quickly to work as each little day of sunshine. That's what my bees have been doing. Of it's raining, nothing doing, but as soon as the sin shines they're out raiding the blossoms about Merewether. They actually cause traffic jams at the entrance and still, they are friendly or non-aggressive. That's so good, a comfort to any new beek worried whether hos bees have plenty of life and honey on the larder. I'd love to open up each hive and check, but it upsets the heat stores and fractures the propolis joins on the hive. So I'll have to wait another 10 weeks or so.
On the cool winter days I've not been idle either. If  I'm not reading social media posts about novice beeks with problems or watching The Bush Bee Man videos, I've been reading Sue Hubbell and  making up boxes. Ten store bought ones, glued, nailed, sanded ready for paint. SB recommends painting way ahead of the time when the box will be used to allow it to gas off and dry nice and hard. I hope O get to fill these guys next year. 

Comments

Post a Comment

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.  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spring Beekeeping. Queen Exluders.

 It looks like Blogger has combined all my blogs,  so reading about bees and bikes ... Anyway! My Merewether bees have ramped up their collective presence these past weeks. There has been a feaux swarm and a bit of aggro. So after a few "emergency" calls from my sister I needed to get to the bottom of it.   Adding Supers is a stock response to the Spring Expansion.  The bees,  like the flowers are growing and being more productive and need space to store nectar.  So steps one and two,  were to add supers and extract honey.  This was for all for hives. But this didn't solve the crowding issue and there was still some major bearding of #2.  So,  I read up on Queen Exluders. Truthfully,  i cannot recall exactly why i twigged to this,  I guess it was just intuition? Once I'd read how some Bee'k's refer to then as Honey Excluders and how Workers are reluctant to pass through them and tend to ashore too much honey in the Brood C...
Post a Comment
Read more