Getting ahead of the game a little (for a change), I decided to use my new frame-making jig to, err, make frames.
I got a little carried away (because I’ll need them one day, regardless) and ended up with around one hundred.
Fortunately most of them can be stored in my new “under-roof frame store”. The first two rows are foundationless. The far ones have a starter strip and fishing line supports horizontally across the frames.
Sadly not in a good way in this case. My first EFB alert of the season has just arrived together with a request from a seasonal bee inspector to check some of my hives. Fingers crossed that none of them are affected. On the positive side, it’s good that I should have been contacted now rather than after I’d moved the colonies in question elsewhere so I could re-queen them. They are, or have been in previous years, a touch “feisty” so I want to split the flying bees off in order to look for, and squish, the queen. There’s not room at the existing site to do that however.
Just waiting for an opportunity to plant out now…
Though it’s mostly been yet another fairly grim day weather-wise, there was sunshine earlier this morning and bees were flying, so before lunch I took the opportunity to check on the site that I’d moved the hives from yesterday.
There was no sign of bees around the stand (which I’d left in situ in case I needed to put a box there to collect up errant foragers), so I’m going to declare the process a success.
I don’t think I’ll be moving them back until after any harvest at the end of the Summer, though I will set up a new bait hive there once the maintenance work has been done on the water mains.
At last! I finally finished rebuilding my last roof today (for the moment, at least). Oddly the last one had an aluminium sheet roof covering rather than the more common rusty galvanised steel. This whole process has taken far longer than I expected, but other than the roof inners and covers which I managed to re-use in every case, I have been machining all the parts down from whatever timber I had lying about. It’s a relief to have it done.
There are quite a few candidates for the next project including a new solar wax melter (which looks to be a highly unnecessary bit of kit right now), more crownboards, more fat dummies and probably some other things I’ve forgotten about, but on the grounds that it shifts more stuff that’s taking up lots of space out of the workshop, I may deal with a few brood boxes first.
One box is one of the first I bought when I started beekeeping, made from pine and has seen better days, but isn’t too far gone. Two others are from my “What am I going to do with this?” pile. They’re (I assume) home-made boxes with only ½” thick walls and side rails that, rather than being morticed through the adjoining walls, just butt up to them and are screwed through from the other side (using brass screws, no less) into the end grain of the rail. I reckon all of these could be restored to a standard that I’d consider acceptable for a bait hive without too much work, thereby freeing up some other boxes that I’m currently using for bait hives that I could put to use elsewhere. I might paint them too, to make them easily identifiable as “bait hive only” boxes.
It’s quite worrying, the level of amnesia demonstrated by some of the senior Post Office staff being questioned over their part in the Horizon scandal, particularly since it appears to be so selective. I think there really should be some sort of research into the long-term negative psychological effects of holding senior corporate positions.
I’m beginning to wonder if they’re paid so much not because of their level of talent (which would explain why they rarely seem to demonstrate any), but because of the astonishing risks to their mental health. I wouldn’t want to spend years as a “liar for hire” for any money if it meant spending my later life as a drooling idiot who couldn’t remember what they’d done with their time. It’s quite a relief that there are people willing to take on that risk on my behalf.
As the bees were starting to become active again I visited the bees that I’d attempted to protect from the worst of the Winter because the tree cavity they’d been living in had been chainsawed through when it was being cut back.
The first thing to do was to make the branch more manageable and return it to its original orientation, so I chainsawed a fair length off the “bottom” and lifted it onto that so it was upright.
The next step is probably to put a hive on top somehow and encourage them to move into that.
On to the last one now. I assembled the sides this afternoon, but need to find something suitable from my scrap pile for the battens inside. Pleasingly for all five roofs I’ve managed to salvage the roof cover and inner (though that is all).
It’s getting easier to move around the workshop at long last 😀
Another little bee-related job I’ve done today was to deliver some honey to the owner of one site that I use. Only he’s moved house 😀 Still owns and works the land. Bit of a surprise to find someone I completely didn’t expect answering the door though.
Nipped out to the “leak” apiary after lunch today to install a screen under the roof of the last hive I had to move and remove the supers (not necessarily in that order 😀
Then this evening I went back and closed up the hive. Whilst I could normally lift a double brood over the fence there was no way that has happening with this one. I had to barrow it about 100m down a bumpy slope to the gate at the bottom and then push it all the way back up to within 10m of where I started. It was exhausting.
Once installed in my home apiary I removed the ply that I used to close the entrance in the dark. I’ll remove the screen and put the super back on tomorrow.
There’s not a great deal in the garden that’s edible now, but I seem to be doing pretty well with leeks. I’ve not had much success with them until I tried Charles Dowding’s sowing method (four seeds to a cell in a module tray and plant out once they’re growing well). These are quite possibly more than we actually even need though.
