April 15th - OSR

Had some real fun today and scared the wife silly at the same time.


Earlier today I went to the apiary to double check on a colony ready for their move to OSR. Once the air temps started to fall we (wife and I) went to pick up the colony. I parked the car within 40 feet of where I had chosen to site them and roughly levelled up the hive.


Pic 1 - Opening the hive

As predicted as soon as I opened the entrance hundreds began pouring out like bullets covering my hat, veil and shoulders. At this point I decided it would be a good idea to retreat some distance and let them calm down.


Pic 2 - 10 minutes later

I still had plenty running around on my veil looking for a way to get in. Sorry, I'm trying to watch the bees on my veil and not look like some cross-eyed gormless nutter wondering around the edge of an OSR field after the sun had gone down.


Pic 3 - Another 10 minutes later

The front of the hive still looking very busy. Lots of bees fanning and the odd one trying to attack the camera after each flash. All in all a fun day, never laughed so much when so many bees are so desperate to sting me.

April 12th - Swarm Hive

As it was a lovely day I decided to quickly open the swarm hive to see how they were doing. Well, the good news is they are drawing out all the frames roughly equally. I carefully lifted out the old pre-drawn frame to check to see if I could see any eggs and was very pleased to see the Queen has been busy laying up a few hundred cells when she just casually waddled across where I was looking.




So today I am very happy, the colony is very gentle and calm and a pleasure to have in our small back garden for now.

April 9th 2011 - Swarm

They don't get much easier than this. I left several bait hives out in my back garden and today a swarm took advantage. They decided to ignore all the larger hives and went for the one with the oldest combs.

A few hours later I transferred them into my nice new national poly hive with one old stores comb and four new wax coated plastic combs and one with regular wax foundation.

Happy days !

Lemon Grass Oil - Poly hives

Just a word of warning to all of you who use poly hives or nucs. Do not put any lemon grass oil on the polystyrene. 

The oil dissolves the polystyrene. Instead just put a couple of drops on the top bar of one or two of the frames. Remember to reapply every couple of weeks. 

April 4th 2011

Bait hives
As swarm season is about to start its time to set up the bait hives.
Previously I've made up a few frames with foundation but this year I bought 20 sheets of wax coated plastic foundation instead as I found after awhile the normal foundation turns stale and is useless after a few weeks of hot weather. The trick I use is simply added a few drops of lemongrass oil on the top of a couple of the frames and wait. 
The lemongrass oil scent seems to attract bees like iron filings to a magnet. The idea is when a colony swarms they then settle some where and send out lots of scout bees to find a potential new home, once one of the scouts finds some where suitable it returns to gather more bees to come and inspect the site before they in turn return and so on until a critical number decide to take a look then the whole swarm moves in. Last year the 4 frame nuc I left in the garden had plenty of bees interested but I guess it wasn't big enough to house a good sized swarm unlike the empty Dartington hive which attracted a massive swarm. So this year I have a langstroth medium chamber and one of the new 6 frame poly nucs I bought sat out in the garden about 4 feet off the floor in a sunny spot ready and waiting. 


I'll let you know if I have any luck.