Peeblesshire Beekeepers Association

Peeblesshire Beekeepers Association

Yearly Archive: 2016

Peeblesshire Beekeepers Association > News > 2016

Apiary Visits 7th July

7th July with the  first break in the cool weather since the nucs arrived, 3 volunteers visited the apiary: 2 local guests arrived as well, and were loaned suits so they could have a good look at the hives. The intention was to check the original colonies and put the new nucs into hives. We immediately noticed that two colonies of bees had taken advantage of the first warm day in a week or so, and swarmed: 2 swarms were tucked up in a large shrub, one at shoulder height, the other about 12 feet up. The first priority was to recover the swarms: a good demonstration for our 2 guests, who were new to beekeeping. We have yet to check which colonies produced the swarms – we thought we’d pre-empted the swarming, but they’d defied our preparations!
    2 of our colonies were quite small, with no queen cells visible at the last check, and looked unlikely to swarm. Out of the other 2 – both already on double brood boxes so they could be split easily and reduce the risk of swarming  – one had already been reduced by taking out bees and combs to create 2 small nuclei.
So a rapid change of plans followed. The first job was to recover the lower swarm, which was fairly straight forward – it was put into a brood box that had been readied for one one the newly arrived nucs, with a queen excluder between floor and brood box, so that the queen was unable to leave. A super with feeder and syrup was added, and this colony settled down in a couple of days – the excluder was removed, and they consumed a full feeder of syrup every 2 days. They must be drawing out the foundation very rapidly, to produce combs so that the queen can start laying as soon as possible.
The second swarm was too high to reach with the equipment we had to hand, so we concentrated on transferring the newly arrived nucs into hives: we transferred 3 but the drizzle started up, then turned to rain, and we had to stop. The remaining nucs were put into hives the next day.
The swarm high up in the tree was finally caught by David, who returned with a ladder and the newly-purchased Association swarm catcher: it worked beautifully, and the swarm was taken away (the apiary having run out of brood boxes!)
Two of the new nucs will be cared for by a trio of beginners, at a separate site; three will be going to another apiary site, to be the core of a teaching apiary in another local area.

Apairy Visit Ettrick Valley

July 17th @ 2.30: Ettrick Valley.

Visit to Sheila Tyldesley’s apiary. Contact secretary for car share/location.

Please note: we usually have a picnic, so bring a suitable small item to share, and something to drink, if you want some. Parking can be limited at these sites, so please car share if possible – contact Secretary* if you need/can offer a lift, or need directions.

Pub Meeting 6th July

An informal chat about what’s happening at the association apiary, and beekeeping in general.

If you have any ideas for the association or questions about bees and beekeeping this is a great way to get information from other beekeepers.

The meetings are at 7.30pm on the first Wednesday of the month in the back bar of the Neidpath Inn in Peebles.

Apairy Visit Cringletie

June 19th: @ 2.30 near Cringletie

Visit to the apiary of Peter Stevenson and Helen Dewberry.

Meet just past the hotel on the left at the gravel parking area by the walled garden. Car share will be arranged from there as there is limited parking.

Please put beesuits on at the apiary. Do not park outside the hotel.

Please note: we usually have a picnic, so bring a suitable small item to share, and something to drink, if you want some. Parking can be limited at these sites, so please car share if possible – contact /">Secretary if you need/can offer a lift, or need directions.

Association Apiary Visit 12th June

The visit was cancelled because of the cool and damp cool weather conditions.

Peter took a load of kit out to the apiary so that its ready for when we can get out there next – hopefully in the week.

Mandy has been busy making up brood frames including a couple of nuc boxes.

The frames with foundation have been put in the stack of spare boxes by the side of the storage units.

Peter looked at topping up the syrup on the nucs. The poly nuc’s feeder was still half full so he didn’t open it to top up.

The nuc in the central hive was topped up with syrup. Its entrance block had fallen out and there were possible signs of robbing  – dead bees at the entrance and more activity than might be expected. Peter put the entrance block back in plus some extra grass to close the entrance better.

There is syrup in the storage sheds for future visits.

Apiary Visit 5th June

Peter

Checked hives 1, 2 and 3 for signs of swarming
Hive 2 had a charged queen cell but only that one was seen – there may be more but weren’t obvious. The queen cell was destroyed and a 2nd brood box with foundation added to give them more space. The queen was seen so they haven’t swarmed. Hopefully delayed them enough until next inspection.
Hives 1 and 3 looked fine with no queen cells (seen).
Lots of bees were flying in the warm weather. Some were a bit feisty, possibly from the new nucs that don’t have a queen.

Apiary Visit 2nd June

Mandy, David, Jo, Eric, Linda

Checked the very large colony – 2 supers about a third full, and one super where the queen had been trapped.
Checked carefully but didn’t see her in the super or either of the 2 brood boxes.
However, in total 3 frames from the super had queen cells with larvae in (about 6 days old) so the colony was split to provide 2 nucs (each with 2 queen cells, stores, syrup feed and extra workers: the brood box still has one queen cell left (as we didn’t find the queen, any eggs or very young larvae).
So we should have 3 young queens hatching out in a week or so: we’ll leave them alone for 3 weeks to give the new queens time to hatch, fly, mate and start laying.

Informal Pub Meeting 1st June

An informal chat about what’s happening at the association apiary, and beekeeping in general.

If you have any ideas for the association or questions about bees and beekeeping this is a great way to get information from other beekeepers.

The meetings are now at 7.30pm on the first Wednesday of the month in the back bar of the Neidpath Inn in Peebles.

Association Apiary Visit

A group of us visited the association apiary on Sunday 29th May.

The weather was lovely sunny and warm, about 18C, so a good afternoons beekeeping was had.

In attendance were Mandy, David, Emma, Daniel, Jo, Eric, Helen and Peter.

We went through the hives in the usual order, weakest to strongest. We were looking to see that they were building up well and there was no signs of swarming.

This was true and all the colonies were looking well, with fully laid up brood frames and busy foragers.

The only puzzle came with the last and strongest hive. Last inspection, 3 weeks ago, this had had almost wall to wall brood and a second brood box had been added in the meantime. Now there was no brood at all in either of the brood boxes, except a solitary charged queen cell! This puzzled us for a while until we looked in the supers (3 of these (its a BIG colony)) and discovered that was where the brood was, and presumably the queen, although try as we might, we couldn’t find her. Since we want to split this colony asap now we put queen excluders between each of the 2 full and 1 half brood boxes so that we can narrow the search and hopefully find her next time.

In retrospect, I remember that we put a queen excluder in at the last inspection without seeing the queen and assumed she was in the main brood box. So not a good assumption and compounded by the fact that this wasn’t in the hive notes. I’ll plead guilty to that because I’m pretty sure it was me who was writing the notes. So must try harder at keeping good notes, especially in a communal apiary where folk doing the inspection may only have the notes to go on for the history of the hive.

A last interesting point as Helen pointed out at the time – the queen cell in the brood box, charged with royal jelly, could not have been laid in by the queen because she was trapped above the excluder and had been for 3 weeks. So the only way the queen cell could have been started was that the bees had transported an egg or young larvae into that queen cup.

Hopefully we can get out to the apiary again this Sunday 5th June, catch that elusive queen and split our bumper colony to avoid them swarming.

Peter.

Association Apiary Visit Sunday 29th May

We will be visiting the PBKA apiary on Sunday 29th May to see how the colonies are building up.
Meet at the apiary for 1.30pm. All welcome.
Email Peter or ">Mandy if you need directions, want to car share, or need any more information