July 17th @ 2.30: Ettrick Valley.
Visit to Sheila Tyldesley’s apiary. Contact secretary for car share/location.
Please note: we usually have a picnic, so bring a suitable small item to share, and something to drink, if you want some. Parking can be limited at these sites, so please car share if possible – contact Secretary* if you need/can offer a lift, or need directions.
An informal chat about what’s happening at the association apiary, and beekeeping in general.
If you have any ideas for the association or questions about bees and beekeeping this is a great way to get information from other beekeepers.
The meetings are at 7.30pm on the first Wednesday of the month in the back bar of the Neidpath Inn in Peebles.
June 19th: @ 2.30 near Cringletie
Visit to the apiary of Peter Stevenson and Helen Dewberry.
Meet just past the hotel on the left at the gravel parking area by the walled garden. Car share will be arranged from there as there is limited parking.
Please put beesuits on at the apiary. Do not park outside the hotel.
Please note: we usually have a picnic, so bring a suitable small item to share, and something to drink, if you want some. Parking can be limited at these sites, so please car share if possible – contact /">Secretary if you need/can offer a lift, or need directions.
The visit was cancelled because of the cool and damp cool weather conditions.
Peter took a load of kit out to the apiary so that its ready for when we can get out there next – hopefully in the week.
Mandy has been busy making up brood frames including a couple of nuc boxes.
The frames with foundation have been put in the stack of spare boxes by the side of the storage units.
Peter looked at topping up the syrup on the nucs. The poly nuc’s feeder was still half full so he didn’t open it to top up.
The nuc in the central hive was topped up with syrup. Its entrance block had fallen out and there were possible signs of robbing – dead bees at the entrance and more activity than might be expected. Peter put the entrance block back in plus some extra grass to close the entrance better.
There is syrup in the storage sheds for future visits.
Peter
Mandy, David, Jo, Eric, Linda
An informal chat about what’s happening at the association apiary, and beekeeping in general.
If you have any ideas for the association or questions about bees and beekeeping this is a great way to get information from other beekeepers.
The meetings are now at 7.30pm on the first Wednesday of the month in the back bar of the Neidpath Inn in Peebles.
A group of us visited the association apiary on Sunday 29th May.
The weather was lovely sunny and warm, about 18C, so a good afternoons beekeeping was had.
In attendance were Mandy, David, Emma, Daniel, Jo, Eric, Helen and Peter.
We went through the hives in the usual order, weakest to strongest. We were looking to see that they were building up well and there was no signs of swarming.
This was true and all the colonies were looking well, with fully laid up brood frames and busy foragers.
The only puzzle came with the last and strongest hive. Last inspection, 3 weeks ago, this had had almost wall to wall brood and a second brood box had been added in the meantime. Now there was no brood at all in either of the brood boxes, except a solitary charged queen cell! This puzzled us for a while until we looked in the supers (3 of these (its a BIG colony)) and discovered that was where the brood was, and presumably the queen, although try as we might, we couldn’t find her. Since we want to split this colony asap now we put queen excluders between each of the 2 full and 1 half brood boxes so that we can narrow the search and hopefully find her next time.
In retrospect, I remember that we put a queen excluder in at the last inspection without seeing the queen and assumed she was in the main brood box. So not a good assumption and compounded by the fact that this wasn’t in the hive notes. I’ll plead guilty to that because I’m pretty sure it was me who was writing the notes. So must try harder at keeping good notes, especially in a communal apiary where folk doing the inspection may only have the notes to go on for the history of the hive.
A last interesting point as Helen pointed out at the time – the queen cell in the brood box, charged with royal jelly, could not have been laid in by the queen because she was trapped above the excluder and had been for 3 weeks. So the only way the queen cell could have been started was that the bees had transported an egg or young larvae into that queen cup.
Hopefully we can get out to the apiary again this Sunday 5th June, catch that elusive queen and split our bumper colony to avoid them swarming.
Peter.
The bees were generally doing well. The colonies get stronger from one end of the row to the other.
Supers and queen excluders were added where needed. We saw a couple of the queens. John did well to catch one of the queens and move her under the queen excluder.
Photos courtesy of David.
Apiary 8th May 3
Apiary 8th May 2
Apiary 8th May 1