Quick Peek

As the air temperature was about 10'C and no wind I went to see the girls today. I lifted the roof off and could hear the gentle hum from inside. As this hive is a Dartington style hive I lifted off the crown board from the unused end of the hive to reveal the block of fondant which has hardly been touched which is great news and I put in about 150grams of a pollen patty. I quickly lifted the crown board from above the colony and could see about 100 bees on top of the frames. As they appear to be in good shape for now with plenty of stores to see them through I don't need to return again until the end of March or early April when hopefully the weather will be warmer and the colony will be expanding very quickly.

Feb 2010

First signs of life from the Dartington hive the other day, the air temps got upto 8'C which is still dam cold but there was very little wind. I watched several bees exit the hive and spiral upwards so I walked round the back and pressed my ear to the hive and gave it a tap and could hear a quick roar from within. Roll on the warmer weather so they can get out and forage some of the early spring pollen.

I'll warn you now this blog is going to become top bar heavy in content in a few months, I have 3 full sized hives waiting to be filled and a 6 bar nuc ready.

TBH Guide

Thank you to all of you who have emailed me about my Hive Guide and I am pleased to tell you I've written a new guide about Top Bar Hives

This year I am converting to using Top Bar Hives as I've built four full sized hives and two nuc's. I also made one for a friend and I'm looking forward to setting them up and starting a colony in them. As I'm currently off work with a bad back (honestly) I decided to write a simple guide on Top Bar Hives to help explain to all bee keepers there is no reason not to build your own hive and use it instead of paying unreasonable amounts on a brand new hive. Included in the guide is a section on how to become a bee keeper for less than £100.

TBH Project

Got the timber yesterday for two new TBH's, 21 Meters in all. I was just about to start loading it into my car and spotted it was at best 20mm. After a quick chat with the saleman I left the store with lots of planks of about 27mm thick. I guess I was ignorant about buying prepared sawn timber, thinking I would get what I asked for... Double check before you buy is my advice.

Started building this hive and so far its going well. I'll update with new pictures as I go to those you see below.   




The build is going well, and so far I am very pleased with it. I decided I will go with a hole entrance, as I want to cut down the chances of robbing as I have a lot of wasps and other bee colonies in my area.

Next project

My next project will be some thing like this, but with a pitched roof not flat.

(picture from - http://www.backyardhive.com/)

 18" top bars

It looks good and has large volume area inside and with the window it will cut down the amount of times this hive should need to be opened. Although I will make my version a little deeper than 10" and add a varroa tray as I believe monitoring mite levels is a vital part of pest control and should be done by every beekeeper.

FDBKA - Honey and Bee weekend

Fareham and District Beekeepers Association held a honey and bee weekend at a local farm center.

I thought I would create a video of Mike H and myself showing a general inspection of the hives then I'd edit it down into a short movie for the public but it didn't go quite according to plan.

I didn't have time to organise myself properly and in the end we didn't show this film. Over the two hours of filming I got stung three times, which was my own fault really, Mike rarely wears his gloves unless he is unsure of how his bees are doing, and as I needed to operate the camera's I didn't wear mine... So thought I compile the stings into a short movie for your enjoyment.



No idea why the third sting hurt so much, but the wife enjoyed watching this little movie.