Bromley
Bee News Monthly Update
Published by the Bromley Beekeepers |
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Top Cover picture from the May Apiary meeting © Tom Winks Welcome
to the July 2002 issue of Bromley News.
The
poor weather in June played havoc with my weekly inspections, and
I lost a swarm of yellow bees in the Catford area; which so far has
not been found. Checking my bees during late June (mid Summer) shows
we are enjoying a very good honey flow, my supers are filling up very
quickly indeed. To take advantage of this you need strong stocks and
loads of supers piled on.
My inspections have shown that wax moth is making a mess on some of my older brood combs, if you see a greyish trail across the brood you can easily remove the unwanted larvae with the corner of your hive tool without doing any more damage to the comb. The June Sunday afternoon apiary meeting was most unusual, the observation hive was found to be queen-less, and most of the meeting was spent looking for a replacement queen. In the end drastic action was needed. This was again captured and put on the web as a beekeeping picture gallery: www.kentbee.com/bromley/june1602 SAVE
MONEY Clive Watson will be bulk ordering Apistan or Bayvarol strips
for end of season Varroa control. Please contact Clive with your requirements.
Internet
News Steven
Turner
Operation Sting The middle of June is about the worst time to move bees, I had six colonies to move, four of them had three supers, and the remainder had two. All were pretty well full and sitting on national 14 x 12 brood boxes so each hive was fairly weighty. The last thing I wanted was to have to move them. But because of circumstances out of my control I was asked politely to 'Bog Off' from my apiary on a local allotment. So, Saturday night, 22nd June at 10pm I went to close up the bees only to find a very warm and bright evening with the bees flying quite happily in and out of their hives. I fitted the travelling screens then I waited and waited until about 11.30pm when I thought enough was enough and proceeded to seal up the hives. To my horror I discovered I had forgot to take a torch and the foam had gone solid and crumbly, so I sealed the entrance holes with gaffer tape then departed for a well earned night's sleep. I arranged to meet Barry Mils, Steve Turner and Ian Coleman at 9am Sunday morning, they had kindly volunteered to do the transporting with me and Barry was to supply a second trailer.
I arrived at about 8.40am Sunday morning to fit the hive straps. Again to my horror three of the hives were leaking bees. The gaffer tape was not sealed properly with the early morning sun the tape started to curl. The air was full of bees and expletives! I decided to go for it anyway, I had no alternative. Barry, Steve and Ian were due to arrive at any minute I quickly sealed up the leaking entrance holes and started fitting the hive straps when Barry, Steve and Ian arrived just before 9am. We continued fitting the hive straps and started loading onto two trailers. By now the air was thick with the returning bees obviously wondering what the hell was going on. I left behind an old empty WBC hive, placing this in the centre of the area we quickly loaded up all six hives, stands and blocks, making a speedy departure onto our new location which was some six miles away. With the aid of the hive carrying tool the six hives and stands were soon in place, the sealed entrance holes released and bees flying! They were all fired up by now having had a very bumpy journey to their new location. Steve received a good pasting and took shelter in one of the cars, so bee suites were hastily donned and a speedy escape was made, we managed to leave the site at 11.45am. Later in the afternoon I went back to the old site to look at the remaining bees who, I am happy to say, had taken up residence in the old WBC. After that I went to the new site and walked around the hives taking off the travelling screens and replacing the roofs. Everywhere was quiet and peaceful with bees flying in and out as though nothing had happened. My grateful thanks to Barry, Steve and Ian, whose invaluable help along with a good sense of humour made an exciting and entertaining Sunday morning. Steve captured the whole event with his digital camera, and can be viewed from the beekeeping picture gallery on the Bromley Branch website: www.kentbee.com/bromley/movingbees Tom
Winks Apiary
News You may well think that your bees have not swarmed, but unless your queens are marked there is every chance that a swarm has escaped without your knowledge, it only needs a moment of absence and all is back to normal within 15 minutes. Much of the trouble is of course that we are continually replacing our lost colonies with swarms, which is just propagating the tendency for bees to swarm. The other course of action is to replace these swarmy queens with queens from a low swarming strain. As you know, I am back on the breeding programme and all is going well. Not only docility but also lack of inclination to swarm are high on the list of desirable traits to breed for and hopefully both these elements are in the queen I am breeding from.
Originally members were bringing nucleus hives to the apiary and I was installing larva from my breeding stock but this has proved to be a little cumbersome and I have now resorted to mini nucs and at the time of writing I have 7 queens in the pipeline. If you are interested have a word with me at the next meeting on the 21st July. Don't
forget we still need your honey as there are still some shows due
to take place and as I've said before we get a good price. Jill
Dunn who has been looking after our bee garden has found it necessary
to give up so we are looking for a volunteer to take over. It's not
a particularly onerous task but just a case of keeping up with the
weeds and trimming the edges of the flowerbeds. The
honey is still coming in albeit slowly but the last couple of cooler
days has not helped and in my experience once the flow takes a downturn
it seldom recovers. Peter
Springall Diary Dates Sunday 14th July 12pm-5pm (Bromley Beekeepers)Foal Farm, Jail Lane, Biggin Hill. Sunday
21st July 3.00pm Download the schedule and entry form from the URL: http://www.kentbee.com/kbbka.htm For
more information Advertising |
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