BBKA Forum

Local buzzards get any carcasses well before any foxes, which are becoming quite rare in the countryside around me.

Finished feeding syrup to hives this weekend and removed all feeders today. Forecast is bad all week, cold and rainy so just cracked on with it. Bees were good as gold as I scraped their excess burr comb from top of frames and re-arranged the Apivar strips. I'm becoming more convinced that laying the strips on top of the frames might be more efficient than sticking them between frames. Very low varroa drops from most hives as seen on the inspection trays which are now firmly in and on all winter, giving me the equivalent of solid floors.
Now, apart from one hive with dwindling bee numbers (queenless I think....well didn't spot her on a quick inspection) most are big and strong going into winter. So fingers crossed....but I can't help wondering what curved ball mother nature will throw at us this winter.

Took delivery of a 1/2 pallet of jars this morning. Now to fill them and hope not too many markets get cancelled.

I had a jar delivery (10 boxes) from F&H a couple of weeks ago, some will be to make up Xmas gift sets to sell.
The Urban Vulpes Vulpes are thriving my three siblings visited again the night before last, I quite enjoy there visits and cheap packets of tasty lidl bickiess easily tempt them as they do me.

That's a lot of gift sets ....
Out of curiosity what is one of your gift sets?
Uuup North they seem to prefer straight jars so they can make their own hampers as presents for Xmas.

Went through the four garden hived nucs and all of them needed to be dummied down..the nucs where hived months ago but have failed to build up strong enough to be in full brood boxes.. they had too much space and empty frames so all of them are now on 6/7 frames with the remaining space filled with celotex..i could have put them into poly nucs but i find it better to dummy rather than pulling the frames apart..
Three of the Queen have a good brood pattern but one of them has only a small patch of brood so i am 50/50 whether that colony will make it through winter as i lost a one in similar circumstances last winter..

I shook out the last mini-nuc at the weekend - the queen had been removed from it 3 weeks ago. The bees will strengthen a small colony for winter. Apart from two, the last of the feeders are off. (Very late for me). The weather has not been that special over the past few weeks so there has not been the ivy coming in as I had hoped although on good days, bees have been bringing it back well.

checking colonies and nucs yesterday for weight. Still got a couple of nucs that were light, so fed syrup. Overall everything seemed OK.

Not the warmest of days today but the bees are flying well and working the Ivy...so i took the opportunity and removed all the syrup feeders and Apitraz strips on the four garden colonies..three of which are bursting with bees so all looks good ready for winter...all have 1.5kg of fondant on the top bars which they are slowly nibbling away at...my only concern was each of the hived nucs had three to four wasps running around inside,,so the shims have been brought out of the drawer and now all my tunnel entrances are dummied down to 20mm wide and 100mm long..that should throw a spanner in the works for the pesky Jaspers..

I think that the odd opportunistic wasp popping into a hive for a feed at this time of year, is unlikely to cause any harm. They tend to do this early in the day before the bees are up and about.
Today my bees were drifting in and out of their hives - just ticking over really - but with pollen coming in.

At my out apiary a couple of hives were light a few days ago - so I took the opportunity today to have a look with the sun shining and no wind. Fondant has gone on as required (these two nucs were late ones and although OK now, I doubt they would get through to April without feed).

I have to eat my words from my previous post as unfortunately, on checking one Abelo mini-plus mini-nuc, it's been robbed out. Some bees were dead with their heads in the cells, others were on the floor. Remaining alive were just 3 or 4 lethargic bees and the queen. I'd love to be able to do something with her, however I think it's too late to consider making up a nuc or replacing an old 'caretaker' queen in another hive.