Summer beekeeping course

Here in Ireland we have a week in the summer dedicated to beekeeping.  There are lectures, workshops, practicals and demonstrations.  The week event is held at Gormanstown in County Meath, near Dublin.  (The venue is usually a boarding school in term time.)  It's a national event and attracts beekeepers from abroad.  I was working this year so I couldn't attend.  

Anyway, I see that at Gormanstown this year the main guest speaker is from the U.S.;  Dr Dewey M. Caron, retired professor of the Univ of Delaware.  

I'm hoping to attend this July if work allows it.   Should be interesting to hear him speak especially given that most of the beekeeping blogs I follow originate stateside.  

On the bee front, there is little to report.  It's been cold here and I guess there's little incentive to venture outside when you have all the food, warmth and sisterly company you need!

Water, water everywhere!

It's just a quick post as much for the record as anything.  Ireland, especially the south and western parts, has been experiencing the worst weather in years and this has led to major flooding in those areas.  The River Shannon, probably Ireland's most well-known river, has burst its banks in many areas including Athlone town which is about 35km from us.  Fortunately, our own house is on high ground and we'll escape the flooding.

A lot of Scotland and the northwestern areas of the England have been badly affected too - especially in Cockermouth in Cumbria where, about 15 years ago, I lived in a beautiful converted mill on the river.  Probably much of this amazing building was submerged in these floodwaters.

My heart goes out to all those poor souls whose lives have been so dramatically turned upside-down.

Bees flying

Of little interest to the general public out there but I want to record the fact that in yesterday's glorious sunshine, I took the opportunity to remove the Ashworth feeder from the hive.  [I hadn't been able to go near the hive for ages for one reason or another.]

Plenty of bees were flying and there was even the very occasional forager bringing in ivy pollen!  As you'd expect there was a massive fall in the number of bees under the cover and thankfully no sign of those cursed earwigs!

That's all for bee news. 

On a personal note, I have to congratulate my wonderful fiancee, Elva, who completed her first 10 kilometre run on Saturday morning in the most dreadful conditions.  Until 2 months ago, she'd never run anywhere.  The course was along a stretch of brand new motorway about one and half hour's drive from us.  The motorway is yet to be opened to traffic so don't worry there wasn't any traffic to dodge!   The local school which was bypassed by the new road organised the run and would have benefitted from sponsorship and the entrant fees collected so it was a great day for everyone involved.  I even bumped into one of my fellow members from the local beekeeping association who coincidentally had completed the race with his wife!

Let It Be(e) 2 - ref post 30th September - thinking ahead

As some of you may have read I wrote on 30th September how I had messed up and allowed a whole load of wild comb to be built below the brood box (where I had placed a super with only 5 frames).  Upon lifting out brood frames during the following inspection, it became clear that the lower box was a mess.  See my earlier post for photos.  I've decided to leave it to Mother Nature but have just realised that come Spring 2010 all going well, I could carefully use a "cheese wire" technique to slice through the wild comb (below some of the brood frame bottom bars) without opening the hive and then I should be able to remove the upper brood frames for a proper inspection.  Hopefully the Queen, by this stage, will have climbed into the upper box and I'll find her.  I will then transfer the brood frames into a spare hive which I can return to the original location.  As far as I can anticipate, the problem will be if the Queen makes a run for it and stays down below in amongst the wild comb which will now be fairly structureless.

The number of bees will be far less so that should help.  I guess I could wait for three days and try to spot new eggs in the spare hive now with the transfered brood frames.  What if there are no eggs?

If the remaining part of the original hive were tidy I could shake out any bees but the lower part will be mainly wax without honey or stores I would expect.  Are there other techniques to try?  Are there other pitfalls that I could trip into that I haven't foreseen yet?  (I mean in relation to this problem!) 

I welcome your thoughts and aplogise if my writing is confusing.  Anyway, sure isn't it good to keep the old beekeeping part of the brain ticking over during these colder days?   Hope you're all keeping busy :)

SOS for Bees

I have just discovered that it is Bee Aware Week which is being promoted in the UK.  It was by accident that I found the website - I'm not a regular visitor to the Women's Institute!

http://www.thewi.org.uk/standard.aspx?id=15584

Fasten your seat belts ready for landing please!

With the quiet times for beekeepers here, I thought I would survey your opinions on the use of landing boards in frame hives.  This has been my first year and "unseasonal" to say the least but I did not purchase a landing board with the current hive set-up and there seems to have been no major difficulty but I'm curious.  Any ideas y'all?

Planting for bees

Hi folks - this weekend as our Indian Summer melts into an Indian Autumn, we put in a lot of work in the garden.  Following a friend's advice, we bought a selection of daffodil bulbs (€40 for ~ 600).  Not only will they bring a beautiful look to the garden and driveways throughout February, March, April, and possibly even May, they should help to provide the bees with some food in the new season when there's little else in flower.  Not surprisingly, my back is aching and my hands are blistered!

The dogs helped us decide exactly where to place the bulbs.

It's that time of the year to clear out the old beds and we took the opportunity for a final cutting of the sweet-peas (lathyrus odoratus) for indoors - this year they've been amazing - I'm not sure why.

Today we took the dogs on a long walk along an abandoned canal nearby.  A beautiful afternoon in the fantastic autumn sunshine.  Elva had her camera so we were able to record some of the vibrant-coloured berries that were on show in their full glory.

The common ivy is still in flower so the bees are being spoiled with all this extra pollen.

Inspection 04/10/09

The weather is remaining dry which is a relief after the rainfall which we had during July and August.  I wanted to have a look at the hive after the last inspection when things looked pretty messy.  Unfortunately time and the ambient air temperature didn't really allow for a thorough look.

The bees were still out and about and bringing pollen (dark vivid orange).  I used a little smoke as I removed the roof, there were masses of bees below.  

The bees were very well tempered so I am happy that everything is in order with the Queen and her subjects.

I added a top super with the 5 "extra" foundation-only frames just to allow the bees draw some comb if they wish (with hindsight I should have done this whilst we were away).  I added the large feeder above that and gave them around 4 pints of syrup.  My intention is to let take this syrup down and store it.  I'll keep an eye on the upper super frames because I don't want them to store nectar, honey and certainly no brood here.  

As far as the potential mess below the brood chamber, which I wrote about in my last post, I am letting Mother Nature do her own thing for the time-being. I haven't ruled out some form of intervention altogether but, as I say, the air temperature makes it unwise.  Let it be(e), I suppose.

Not much else to report as I didn't extract any of the frames inside the hive body.  There were quite a lot, say 50, bee corpses lying around the outside of the hive which I imagine is typical for this time of year but worth recording for the sake of my "bee diary".  

In the past I have seen quite a few earwigs in the hive.  This time when I opened the hive, I noticed one of these pesky lads having a good ol' scrap with a few bees.  My money was on the bees!  It made me smile to see the girls fight their corner, I have a marked dislike of earwigs especially when they're trespassing on private property!  

Lastly, perhaps slightly wastefully, I used up some excess beeswax to make some firelighters.  The ones in the shops are full of chemicals and have a really nasty feel about them. It was a tiny amount, but when the molten wax is poured into cardboard eggboxes and allowed to cool, Bob's your uncle!  

I'm hoping that during this off-season I'll learn about the things that can be made using some of the hive by-products. 

Fauna and flora from the Adriatic.

I'm not really sure of the name of most of these species - they just caught my eye when we were wondering around in the glorious weather and admiring the landscapes.

This plant had some wasps and butterflies feeding off it in the morning sunshine on the mountain near Kotor, Montenegro - zooming in the detail is extraordinary.

    

One of the plants you see frequently growing up the sides of houses and over old walls is, I think, bougainvillea with its vibrant pink-purplish flowers - amazing sight although this photo doesn't do them justice as a lot of the flowers were going to seed.

This ipomoea or Morning Glory was out in full flower - probably one of my favourite climbers.

Can anyone tell me the name of this plant? I recognise the leaf pattern from houseplants but the name escapes me. I reminds me of a cyclamen leaf??

That was short trip to the Adriatic along the Croatian and Montenegrin coastlines - thanks and please excuse the awful formatting. Once again, credit is due to Elva from whom I borrowed some of the photos! I am developing an ever-increasing respect for those accomplished nature photographers.

What busy bees but somebody forgot to show them my plans!

Well we're back from holidays and the weather here has been superb during our break away.  Murphy's Law - not really.

Anyway, to continue from the last post, I checked on the hive this afternoon.  Plenty of pollen was still coming in - things were looking good.

However, and it's my own fault, when I exchanged the super to below the brood chamber, I only put in 5 frames (that was all I had available as drawn frames). Big mistake and one which I cannot justify since I had more just that they weren't drawn - what was I thinking?? Why didn't I add all the frames??

What the girls have done, and it's completely natural, is to draw fresh comb and store nectar on the base of the brood chamber frame bottom bars.  The comb added is the depth of the super.
One or two had collapsed into the mesh floor with a right old mess although one that I didn't want to explore until I had considered my options.  I actually think it was my poking around that precipitated the combs to collapse.  Where the super frames coincide with BC frames above, all is hunky dory. A couple of the frames I took out were robust so I removed the "extra" wax comb and collected in a jar which I am leaving for them to recycle.

The photo below shows the view looking down into the lower chamber - what a mess!

My options appear to be;

1) Do nothing - the bees will rebuild and recycle the honey, nectar, wax and pollen - this is obviously easier to me and will be less stressful to us all. The disadvantage of this method is that the super below could be a right old mess and come next spring, I could in trouble trying to lift out BC frames with these "comb extensions" attached.

2) Dismantle the hive akin to carrying an artificial swarm but return everything to the original hive location but with cleaned up frames etc i.e. return the brood chamber frames to a spare hive but with the super frames all in place.  [This would, I think need to be done in two parts - firstly swapping all the brood over and then the supers.]  Could be risky given the cooler temperatures and the chance of losing the Queen. (There are masses of bees and the chance of finding the Queen and keeping her safe during the swap-over has to be factored in).

3) I cannot think of a third option - all suggestions will be gratefully received although, in time-honoured beekeeping tradition, there are probably as many likely solutions as there are folk who might know.

The photo on the right shows a worker about to emerge from her cell.

Given the above, it's such a shame following the great weather of the last 4 weeks and the girls' wonderful work ethic. There could have been great wintering potential.  To be honest, I feel like I have let them down.  It's my first big mistake but hopefully not irretrievable at least in terms of keeping a tidy hive.

I'll be posting some photos later of some fauna and flora from the Adriatic!!