Association Apiary

2018 05 20 International Bee Day picnic and apiary visit.

A great way to celebrate International Bee Bay! Although the sunny weather of the previous days had given way to clouds and the occasional drizzle, it was still a very pleasant day. The colonies were all carefully checked through, and all had laying queens (one queen still proving invisible though). Plenty of drone brood was seen, but the numbers of drones in the hives were low – possibly the cold late spring and the late build-up was a factor there. No queen cells were seen, so there didn’t seem to be any immediate risk of swarming. In a couple of weeks – with a few more drones about and no queen cells – we’ll split these colonies and create nucs for members/beginners.

Varroa: the trays in the open-mesh floors were all checked for varroa mites – several weeks since this was done. We need to calculate the DMD – Daily Mite Drop – the number of dead mites per day indicates the level of infestation, so you can decide whether an anti-mite treatment is needed. We were delighted to find no mites in 2 hives, and just a couple in one – so virtually no varroa! Very many thanks to David for his zealous mite eradication.

Picnic: we had a well-deserved picnic afterwards: celebrated in good style with delicious contributions from Richard, Lynda, Ranald, Gordon, Danka’s mum and all the other beekeepers. Good craic and bee puzzles including the mysterious disappearing queen, the two-queen swap-over, and hive visits from other beekeepers’ swarms. Some over-wintering losses were reported, but mostly losses were light.

Moving the PBKA colonies: a chance encounter Steven-the-gamekeeper towards the end of the picnic gave us an update on the need to relocate the hives. Steven kindly showed us an alternative site, which after a walkover seemed to fit the bill nicely. We’ll be looking for helpers to move the hives to a temporary location for a couple of weeks, and then bring them to their new location. If you can help, please contact Mandy Clydesdale or Peter Stevenson.

Please join us at 2pm at the Association apiary, to go through the hives, and let this year’s beginners meet some of the other PBKA members. We’ll have a picnic afterwards, so please bring something to share.
Please note: beesuits must be cleaned, also boots and gloves.

PLEASE CAR SHARE – parking is scarce, please let me know if you’re coming and need/can offer a lift, and I’ll try to match you up.
All the best,
Mandy

Richard, David and Peter went out to the association apiary on Sunday.

The main job was to move the storage sheds back to near the wall.

Richard donated some pallets and we put the sheds on those with a layer of weed suppressant fabric underneath to help with damp.

Mice had been nesting under the sheds and had got into one of them. There was a dead mouse in the shed and a live evicted mouse outside looking for a new home.

Apart from a few chewed smoker bellows, and a lot of mouse droppings, there wasn’t too much damage done. We gave the sheds a bit of a clean and airing before repacking them.

We checked the 3 colonies on site and they are all still alive with plenty of fondant left. The hive by the wall still looks the strongest and the other two are quite small but hopefully will pick up in the next wee while.

The walled garden has had the giant evergreen trees removed at the expense of turning the ground into a quagmire.

We are still waiting to hear from the estate about the plans for the garden and future siting for the bees.

Peter.

Richard L and Peter went to the apiary on Sunday 10th September.

The weather hadn’t looked promising but it was actually fine and even sunny while we there.

The guys doing the walling were also there and had reached the section where the storage huts are. They needed to get their scaffolding in at the wall. So with their help, we shifted the huts to behind the line of hives and repacked the contents. Very kindly they offered to do the bulk of the heavy lifting and we didn’t argue too much!

There are only 2 hives in the central area with bees now and we topped up the feeders on both. One had a super on which we removed along with the used up MAQ’s strips. This one had quite a large varroa count which is hopefully still mites falling from the treatment. All the hives need to be checked for varroa now and judged to see what treatment they are going to get. The third active hive was in at the wall. Since the wallers were actively working here and had the compressor going adjacent to the hive we didn’t open this one up. Peter may go back and check this one if there is a warm evening this week.

The walling work may be completed this week and the guys have just worked around the bees, so in the end there wasn’t any need to relocate the hives. Longer term, it would be nice to find out more about the plans for the walled garden but at the moment this information is hard to come by.

News from the out apiary at Merlindale – Peter went out to Dankas on Saturday. The 2 association hives are doing very well. One which had no laying queen has brood again now and plenty bees. There are also good stores and we left the super on that one. The other hive which has still a huge amount of bees had also filled the best part of 2 supers. We took one of these off for association honey and left the remaining one for the bees. We moved Dankas colony from the association hive into her own poly hive and were amazed at how much brood and bees there were. All were good tempered with us although they had disgraced themselves earlier by stinging the gardener who had been strimming in front of the hives. He wasn’t too put out fortunately and will take some more precautions the next time.

Finally thanks to Brian for the photos taken earlier in the season and I’ll post some more of these in due course.

At work in the apiary.

A shallow frame has been in the brood box.