Bee Invasion!

Posted on May 13, 2024 by james

As I was about to sit down to dinner on Saturday evening, the owner of a farm where I have some hives turned up to tell me that a swarm (possibly or possibly not from one of my hives; I hope not) had moved into his house (which he is currently renting out) through a small hole in the wall and taken up residence in the ceiling void above the kitchen. Unfortunately they’re then using the gaps around the ceiling to get into the kitchen itself, upsetting the tenants.

I’m not sure there’s much I can do to help, but I’ll have a look tomorrow morning.

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Bee Inspections, 11th May 2024

Posted on May 13, 2024 by james

Before heading off to the “Team Bees” apiary, I went through my hives at home. Nothing too exciting going on… One colony needed supers and another looks to be superseding. In another colony I found the queen, but most of her red paint spot has rubbed off. I trapped her in a marking cage and repainted the spot, then left her there whilst I inspected the other frames. By the time I put her frame back in the hive, workers had piled onto the top of the cage and almost wiped the paint spot off again! No big deal. It’s better than it was, so I let them get on with it.

My plan at the “Team Bees” apiary was to inspect the colony and replace undrawn frames with “fat dummies” as part of my experiment to run hives as “nine over nine” this year. When we got there it was clear that the queen had gone into overdrive and actually of the twenty-two frames in the double brood box nest, only four frames in the bottom box remained undrawn. That was sufficient to use the fat dummies, but I had to move two frames from the top box down to the bottom box to make room. The queen has been laying like crazy too. Quite a few frames in the top box were solid capped worker brood. I suspect it’s going to be a very busy hive soon. I’ll have to take some supers with me next week in case they’re needed.

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No dig diary, 11th May 2024

Posted on May 13, 2024 by james

Thanks to my wife weeding yesterday I ended up with one more bed to spread compost on, alongside Frankenstein’s greenhouse. That didn’t take a huge amount however, so first I cleared the weeds from half of another bed and covered that, then collected cardboard and filled the trailer with compost to make a new flower bed where there’s an awkward space to mow on one of the lawns. I couldn’t quite finish that because a few weeds need clearing, but I’m starting to see the end of the compost in the bay I’m emptying now.

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Memory Lane, 7th May 2023: “Team Bees”

Posted on May 13, 2024 by james

On behalf of a local charity that has been set up to grow and cook food for people who are unable to provide themselves with hot meals, I have been setting up a new apiary. There’s very little money available, so for the moment I shall be loaning kit and the work will rely on the services of volunteers. To provide the bees, we’re hoping to catch a swarm.

The first job therefore is to set up a bait hive. Here I have one containing mostly foundationless or starter strip frames, with one frame of really nasty old comb that I’ve had in the freezer for a few days.

Because I’m a bit short of kit thanks to so many swarms turning up this May, I used a pair of supers rather than a single brood box, on a floor of my own construction which has a 38mm hole for an entrance in one of the walls.

We were donated the posts and rails for the fence (as long as we removed them from their existing location). At this point the ground was very dry due to lack of rain and putting the posts in was slow and energy-sapping work.

Now we just have to see what happens with the bait hive…

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No dig diary, 10th May 2024

Posted on May 13, 2024 by james

I’m now completely out of space in the compost bins. Most of the grass was mowed yesterday and the “active” one ended up heaped as high as it would go. I need to use up some of the compost in one of the other bins so I can start re-filling it. So, I press-ganged my wife into doing some weeding whilst I started spreading compost on any part of the beds that were available for it, even if it was just a few metres worth.

Unfortunately that didn’t use up anywhere near as much of it as I’d hoped, so I need to find other things to do.

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Memory Lane, 7th May 2023: Next stage of solar greenhouse

Posted on May 9, 2024 by james

To support the north-east wall of the solar greenhouse my plan was to build a wooden framed wall. The wall on this side isn’t going to have any glass, so that wasn’t a problem I had to deal with.

In fact, there would be two such walls. The inner one would be where the original glazed wall would have been and just support the roof and “thermal store”, so to get the rest of the glazed structure built it seemed to be sensible to get that into place first.

That allowed me to stabilise the roof and definitively locate the position of the outer wall, which is what will come next.

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No dig diary, 9th May 2024

Posted on May 9, 2024 by james

I spent pretty much all day in the veg plot today. There’s so much to catch up on now the weather seems to be improving, at least until next week. I’ve had enough of weeding for the moment despite being little more than half way through what needs doing, so I started the day by planting out trays and trays of what in a normal year might be called seedlings, but this year are rather bigger than that. I think I managed about twenty trays worth in the end. There are still more to go though.

Rather than being a pleasant and leisurely activity it now seems to be a rush just to get the stuff done that absolutely needs doing now. Just a question of getting my head down and getting through it, I guess.

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Memory Lane, 5th May 2023: Demaree boards

Posted on May 8, 2024 by james

I thought I’d try the Demaree method for swarm management this year, so I made up a couple of boards to help. They go above the supers, under the upper brood box, so the arrangement from bottom to top might be: floor, brood box, QX, super, super, demaree board, brood box, crown board, roof.

The opening visible in the second image does upwards, so bees, specifically drones, that emerge in the top box aren’t trapped inside.

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First hornet of the season

Posted on May 8, 2024 by james

I reckon they’ve been about for a few days now because I was “buzzed” by what sounded like one when I was painting bait hives on Monday, but today I actually saw a hornet flying in the garden.

I think there’s even one tapping on the window wanting to be let in right now…

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A new beekeeping toy

Posted on May 8, 2024 by james

For me, this makes a lot of sense rather than having to rely on gas heating or lugging a battery to all of my hives. I’ve wanted one for a while, but asked for contributions to the cost for my birthday a couple of months back and finally ordered it over the weekend.

It’s the Instantvap compact oxalic acid sublimator. Easy-peasy varroa treatment. All my hives now have a rim on the floor through which I can drill a 7mm hole and insert the brass nozzle without even opening the hive. I’ve read that a golf tee works nicely to plug the hole when it isn’t in use so the bees don’t propolise it up.

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