Date and time provisional. Details will be posted here and by email when confirmed.

A rota of experienced beekeepers will check the association colonies roughly every 10 days. David will be leading this visit.

Beginners will be welcome to come along to these sessions.

Visits should not take more than an hour. The midweek visits are suggested for the Tuesday-Thursday.

This way the visits can be shared, and place less of a burden on the usual small core of volunteers.

Apiary Relocation Day

We need to shift the spare hive equipment, plus the storage sheds and their contents, and prepare the sheds and hive locations at the new site. The bees are at a temporary location at the moment and will be moved back when the new site is ready.

We will have use of a van to do the heavy carrying but manpower will be the most useful thing. The odd toolkit and spade might be handy, and bring some refreshments for afters. If you need a lift or want to car share please email Peter.

The scheduled inspection of the association hives will be happening the day before, Saturday 9th also at 2pm, at the temporary apiary. Beginners are welcome as usual to help with the inspections. If you want to come along for the inspection please contact either Mandy or Peter.

The 3 association hives were inspected at their temporary site on Saturday.

Richard with his son Sam came along to help Mandy and Peter.

The first colony inspected was doing fine. This is the hive where the queen had been above the queen excluder. So there was plenty of brood above the excluder but only a small amount of of larvae in the brood box.

We think the queen is safely down below again and we whooshed the drones down with her. No signs of queen cells. Next time the drones will need releasing from the top again.

In the second colony we found some charged queen cells but also the queen was in residence. We made up a nuc with the queen on her frame, a frame of brood, a frame of stores plus foundation. Afterwards, Peter took this off to his own apiary as a temporary measure. The original hive had all but one queen cell removed and they should bring on a new queen ok. We will have to be careful about the timing of moving this back to the home apiary as we don’t want to lose a new queen if she is off on a mating flight.

The last of the 3 colonies had 2 sealed queen cells and no young brood at all. We did not see the queen so she may well have swarmed from this one. We removed one of the queen cells and again this one will need to be left where it is for the new queen to get established.

We got through the hives just in time to avoid the early afternoon rain.

Next job is to get the home apiary relocated..

Wilma and Linda will be inspecting the association hives.

Meet at the apiary at 2pm.

Beginners are welcome to come along to these sessions.

Visits should not take more than an hour.

2018 05 20 International Bee Day picnic and apiary visit.

A great way to celebrate International Bee Bay! Although the sunny weather of the previous days had given way to clouds and the occasional drizzle, it was still a very pleasant day. The colonies were all carefully checked through, and all had laying queens (one queen still proving invisible though). Plenty of drone brood was seen, but the numbers of drones in the hives were low – possibly the cold late spring and the late build-up was a factor there. No queen cells were seen, so there didn’t seem to be any immediate risk of swarming. In a couple of weeks – with a few more drones about and no queen cells – we’ll split these colonies and create nucs for members/beginners.

Varroa: the trays in the open-mesh floors were all checked for varroa mites – several weeks since this was done. We need to calculate the DMD – Daily Mite Drop – the number of dead mites per day indicates the level of infestation, so you can decide whether an anti-mite treatment is needed. We were delighted to find no mites in 2 hives, and just a couple in one – so virtually no varroa! Very many thanks to David for his zealous mite eradication.

Picnic: we had a well-deserved picnic afterwards: celebrated in good style with delicious contributions from Richard, Lynda, Ranald, Gordon, Danka’s mum and all the other beekeepers. Good craic and bee puzzles including the mysterious disappearing queen, the two-queen swap-over, and hive visits from other beekeepers’ swarms. Some over-wintering losses were reported, but mostly losses were light.

Moving the PBKA colonies: a chance encounter Steven-the-gamekeeper towards the end of the picnic gave us an update on the need to relocate the hives. Steven kindly showed us an alternative site, which after a walkover seemed to fit the bill nicely. We’ll be looking for helpers to move the hives to a temporary location for a couple of weeks, and then bring them to their new location. If you can help, please contact Mandy Clydesdale or Peter Stevenson.

Please join us at 2pm at the Association apiary, to go through the hives, and let this year’s beginners meet some of the other PBKA members. We’ll have a picnic afterwards, so please bring something to share.
Please note: beesuits must be cleaned, also boots and gloves.

PLEASE CAR SHARE – parking is scarce, please let me know if you’re coming and need/can offer a lift, and I’ll try to match you up.
All the best,
Mandy