25 June 2020
Beekeepers have something to hive-five about
Couldn't resist the headline on this piece: https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/beekeepers-u-honeybees-had-very-163419742.html
23 June 2020
21 June 2020
16 June 2020
15 June 2020
Honey exhibition, sale held at Baramulla
I like this report, mainly for the phrase "This year during the spring season about 73 quintals of honey has been extracted and processed".
12 June 2020
Swarming in Co Fermanagh
Ethel Irvine of the Fermanagh Beekeepers' Association writes "Swarming problems for beekeepers as summer arrives"
Well, summer arrives at diffrnt times in diffrnt places, I guess. The article includes a good description of a Pagden, among many other things.
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| Very dark queen; most of mine are practically orange! |
07 June 2020
03 June 2020
Bait hive success - with a QE twist
This year I placed a hive, populated with brood frames and super frames divided by a QE, on some spare ground away from the apiary.
Would it attract a swarm? For the first time in 15 years, YES!
In fact, I had largely forgotten the hive, and only checked from time to time. When I noticed a ton of activity, it was at the roof, not the entrance. Ambling over to check, I found a full swarm and queen.
The bees had chosen the roof vents as their preferred entrance, and then clustered in the super. When I looked through the hive, I found the Q isolated, walking around by herself below the QE.
My guess is that the swarm wriggled through the vents, but the Q was too big, so she flew in the normal way, and the bees had not figured out that they needed to move down.
Anyways, I blocked the vents and the foragers soon switched to the main entrance. After a week I looked again, and the Q is now laying in the brood box.