After three weeks and twenty-one swarms I was starting to run out of kit that I’d never thought I’d use again, let alone the “good stuff”. I ended up shaking this swarm into a bucket when it arrived on a tree branch at home, then tipping transferring it into an old brood box with a scrap of OSB for a crown board because I had nothing else.
Thanks to an EFB outbreak locally I have an inspection booked with the seasonal bee inspector on Thursday, so I thought I’d take the time to have a quick check over of the hives beforehand. I opened the first hive and they were really not happy. Having gone through the upper brood box I reached the point where there were so many bees on my veil that I couldn’t see the frames clearly so decided to close up and call it a day.
The bees had not had enough however. I had to drive around a hundred metres with all the windows open before it was safe to take off my suit and gloves. That may be down to the oilseed rape that is going over in the field just over the road from them, but even so it needs to stop. Once the inspector has been I’ll be looking at requeening to get some more pleasant genes into the colony.
I contacted the SBI to let her know what to expect, which seems only fair. She suggested we wait until next week to do the inspection, when the weather is supposed to be better and they might have calmed down a little.
They’ve been in the ground a couple of days, but I didn’t have time when they were planted to net the brassicas I’ve planted to stop the butterflies and smaller pests getting at them so today I put that right, adding over twenty-five metres of fine mesh over the plants.
They weren’t the only things that needed protection from pests either. Most of the new strawberries are covered, but the late-season ones weren’t because I’d run out of the trays I’d used to cover them. Deer have clearly been through the garden since and eaten the leaves off the plants (leaving the fruit, fortunately). For the time being I’ve put some mesh cloches over the top to stop the browsing.
I visited a bait hive today and found this:
As the “clump” of bees outside didn’t appear to be having anything to do with those inside, I guessed that it was perhaps two different swarms that had tried to move into the same bait hive, the one arriving last finding that they couldn’t go where they’d been planning.
I put a second hive on top of the first and with a little smoke they happily trooped upwards into it. I don’t imagine they’d have done that if they’d been part of the initial swarm. Two for one. Good catch 🙂
Then at another apiary I found this:
Again, the cluster of bees outside didn’t look as though they were part of the same colony as the one inside the hive. They were really not keen on moving however. In the end I had to scoop them off the outside of the hive and dump them bodily into another, getting stung on the hand for my trouble. What amazed me most about doing that however was how warm the huddle of bees was. Quite unexpected.
Both colonies seemed quite happy in their new homes once moved. I’ve never seen it happen before, but then I guess not so many people put out bait hives.
Looking through my supers today I decided that I probably don’t have sufficient frames for the Summer, so used my new frame-making jig to make up another twenty (as well as the ten I made yesterday) and dug out a super’s worth of existing Manley frames that needed new wax. This evening I have been putting in the foundation. I think I have at least 100 sheets of wired super foundation so I’ll use as many of those up as I can and then move on to foundationless or starter-strip frames.
Last year our currants and gooseberries produced a reasonable amount of fruit, but we got to eat almost none of it: the deer and the birds ate almost everything as soon as it approached being ripe.
So, this year we have repurposed a fruit cage that I actually bought as a possible “bird flu winter home” for the chickens and turned out to be useless for that purpose. So the fruit cage is now installed over the top of the currant and gooseberry plants and we’ll see how that goes. The blackcurrants are already smelling wonderful even though the fruit are still green.
Also today I finally got around to planting out various brassicas — cabbages, romanesco cauliflowers and calabrese. They also need to be under nets to keep the pests off, but I ran out of time for that today.
Back when I planted up the new strawberry beds I transferred the plants in the old bed to pots of compost and put them in Frankenstein’s greenhouse. It was quite late to transplant them, but it was potentially a better option than just throwing them into the compost. Most of the plants are doing pretty well and either flowering or producing fruit, but a few are really ahead of the game and had ripe fruit already, so obviously I wasn’t going to leave them.
They’re “Cambridge Favourite”, four year old plants now, but still smell lovely and taste great. Plenty more to come yet, too. The only real difficulty is keeping them sufficiently well watered.
Not my nineteenth nervous breakdown, though I feel I could be excused if it were.
I was called out this evening to have a look at this swarm that a couple had discovered entering their chimney and smoked back out again.
Well I tried and tried and tried, but I couldn’t get them to shift. Then I realised that the wall was buzzing and cleared lots of them out of the way.
I don’t reckon they’ll survive that long in there, but there’s very little I can do about them now.
Or perhaps not. Lots of activity around my home bait hive, though I didn’t see (nor hear) them arrive.
But when I went to move them in the evening, there was no sign of them. I think I need to have a better look inside. There’s far too much activity for just scouts, and they’re no longer showing scout-like behaviour. And if there are bees in residence, I want to move them and put up a replacement bait hive.
One the rain started this morning, I retired to the workshop for the day.
I was casting around for things to do when I realised that I had sufficient bits to make two more fat dummies, so I got those done. Given that I’m using four per hive in the general case, taking the opportunity to add to my collection certainly can’t hurt.
I’m quite possibly going to need more super frames shortly, too. But making them is such a faff. So, as I already have a brood frame jig, I thought I’d make one for constructing the super frames (I use Manleys). I had a dig about in the scrap pile and turned up some bits of ply and pine that I thought should do the job. A bit of sawing, gluing and screwing later and I have this.
Obviously I had to take it for a test drive, so I grabbed twenty side bars and ran a bead of glue through the channel at the top.
And then slotted them into the jig, making sure they were all the right way around.
Top bars are put in place and gently seated with a mallet if required.
Then out comes the nailer/stapler and the top bars are stapled into place.
Turn the whole thing over
Fit one of the bottom bars in place and nail it.
Then pull out the retaining bars and they’re done.
If I were making the frames foundationless then I’d probably fit both bottom bars and staple them in place. For the moment though, I have foundation to use up.
