Amanda Hayes
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Goodnight Ladies

4/10/2014

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Kenwood Apiary

We have had our last session of the season.  All the hives have been closed up with a super full of honey under the brood box for winter feeding and a varroa treatment applied and mouse-guards fitted.  Although members will not be visiting until the spring the Apiary Manager will keep an eye on the hives and take any  winter action necessary.

I was prepared to kill the un-mated queen in hive 1/3 but when we found her she was large and was laying eggs .............. she may not have been properly mated as there are so few drones about and so she my not be a strong queen, but if she gets the colony through the winter then we can review the situation in the spring.


Hackney Garden Bees

Like the Kenwood bees I have done a full check on the health of my bees and made sure that at this point they have sufficient stores to get them through the winter.  Syrup feeder and queen excluder have been removed and the mouse-guard added.  This makes the entrance a bit small but then there is less to defend and as the colony reduces down and the weather gets colder and wetter the flying bees will not want to go out so much.

I will not open the hive again until the spring but I will gently lift it to see that there are sufficient fod stores available.  I need to think about storm cabling so that I have a plan ready to put in place as there is no point in running about in the height of the storm trying to find ways to stop the hive being blown around the garden!

I have put Danish oil preservative on the outside of the hive to protect the wood - except on the landing board, for obvious reasons.  In the early spring I will assemble hive no 2, proof it with oil and  then move the bees into it in their current position.  It will be a good opportunity to finally remove the old dirty brood frames that the queen loves so much but that I want to get rid of.  I have removed two but want to take out the other three.  I will then put two full sized clean ones in and one 'refurbished' short ones which I will keep for 'sacrificial brood' ie varroa inspection of drone brood.

Let us hope for a fairly dry winter for the bees with a couple of frosty spells to kill off any lurking wax moths!

Bee-related Activities


I have been bottling the honey bit by bit but now need to finish this task and store the large settling tank as it is getting in the way in the kitchen.  I sold ten jars to the local Deli for £5.00 all beautifully packaged as I thought the price was quite high. 


Bee Trivia no 8





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Abandonment

4/10/2014

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Garden Hive

I fed more sugar syrup to the garden bees - over 20lbs total!  I did a daily check on the varroa fall which was still high. Then I completed a full hive inspection checking the broodbox and super to see how much there was in the way of stores and also for the health of the colony.  To my amazement the Queen is still laying and producing plenty of brood.  The weather has been great with the bees out flying each day and bringing in pollen and presumably nectar and water.

Tony arrived back from France late Saturday evening and early Sunday a flew off to Morocco leaving him 'instructions' on feeding syrup and doing the daily varroa check.  I took the precaution of telling the bees that I was doing this as there is an old superstition about disaster coning to those who fail to keep the bees informed of family activities. 

I was only away for five days to all well and Tony had produced at thorough report on varroa drop which thankfully had reduced right down to one or tow a day.  He had not been confident about giving them more syrup but I think they had have adequate stores now anyway.


Kenwood Apiary


I missed a week as I was in Fez but I told the others in advance so everything is under control and anyway I am currently 'hiveless'.


Other Bee-Related Activity

Not much other activity.  I keep up with reading articles and books on beekeeping and while I was away I looked out for honey in the souk.  All I could find was in a jar with Arabic writing but also with ingredients including glucose so despite the pictures of bees I suspect that the contents were not 100% pure honey.  I certainly would not have bought any even if it was all honey as I have enough honey at home and do not want to import any bee diseases but I would have been interested to taste it.

Before I left I checked the abandoned WBC hive near Ridley Road Market.  It is still there and now closed up. 


Bee Trivia no 7

A full colony can contain 60,000 bees.  This number reduces in the winter but hopefully not too much!

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Honey cake and detective work

4/10/2014

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Kenwood


All very end-of-season at the Apiary with the focus on ensuring that each colony has a robust queen, is of sufficient size and health the survive the winter and has sufficient stores.  Hive 1/3 may have produced a virgin queen (who will stay that way as there are not drones around).  We could not see her.  The final step will be to find the colony an active queen and kill the virgin who has no hope of becoming a mated queen.


Garden Hive

The MAQS strips have hopefully killed off varroa mites on the bees and in the cells.  The bees have been busy and there were no obvious fatalities or adverse reaction to the medication.  I reduced the hive entrance again and put in the varroa board and will keep a close eye on the number of dead mites each day.

As a reward for putting up with the formic acid I have been giving them sugar syrup (2lbs of 1 pt).  Of my God how much can they consume?  Currently a 2lb bag or more every day but I would rather do this and be confident that they have sufficient food stores for winter and a possible late spring. 

In the brood box there was plenty of capped brood and some larvae so the queen is still laying.  The new frame I put in a few weeks ago remains untouched and they continue to use the dirty old wax in the short frames that the original nucleus arrived on.  I moved it one space in and put a horrid frame on the end.  It had some stores and a bit of brood but probably worth sacrificing this for cleanliness.


Other Bee-related activity

The Association Supper was very enjoyable.  Good company and nice environment.  The competitive show was fun but if you take honey presentation and wax block production too seriously you could lose your reason.  Life is too short to fiddle around like that.  I learnt a lot refining my candle wax and aesthetically the candles were first class but for some reason the test candle could not be re-lit after it was blown out by the judge, so I was downgraded to 'disqualified'!  Better news on the cake front 'First Prize' which is very pleasing.  After all the hoo-ha with jars and finding one of them had a manufacturing fault, then having to bottle late, I ended up with some air bubbles in the honey which I know is a big judging fault so no prizes there.  Tony said "best stick to making cakes" which I thought was a bit cheeky. 

Sue on the egg stall in Ridley Road Market alerted me to an abandoned WBC hive in a local garden.  I went to have a look and to my horror the lid was not properly on and it was full of dark, horrible wax and probably wax-moth and disease.  God knows what horrors are being unleashed just a few roads away from where my hive is.  I was loaded down with shopping so left it at that but did alert the Regional Bee Inspector.  However, I went back today and spoke to the girls who live there.  It turns out that tow of them are bee-keepers with hives close by and are also members of my Association but have never attended a course or other events.   We closed the hive up and they promised to burn it asap.  I am not sure why they were not concerned for the health of their own colonies.  I will go back in a few days and check that they have done so. 


Bee Trivia No 6

A Queen Bee can lay up to 1,500 eggs per day.  So having a healthy fertile queen in the colony is essential



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    Hello, for many years I have been a passionate gardener and have encouraged wildlife into my urban garden.  Three years ago I joined a Beekeeping Association.   Last year I installed a beehive in my garden and started this blog to record my  experiences.


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