Bee keeping...

Can't see where the queen excluders are...looks like a lot of supers there!!

No, you can't.. I don't run queen excluders. All the boxes and frames are the same size. Same footprint, roof and floor, crownboard as a national. They are called Rose hives. Very simple to manage and the bes seem to thrive. I'll transfer my last Top Bar Hive into this system next spring.

oh wow, never had experience with that type of hive. So you have brood throughout the whole hive?

Yup. But they don't do that in reality. The tip of the brood nest is currently just present in box no. 4 (of 5) but by the end of July it will have shrunk back into the bottom two or three, the top boxes will be backfilled with honey and I'll take them off for extraction. Simply no need for a QX. Tim Rose has some great bids on youtube. I'm a full on convert.

ta!

It's a standard National with a flat roof. Going to use a travel screen both to keep things cooler and so that the roof can be inverted and the hive sat in it, for better stability in the cargo bike.

Sorry, @platypus but the other two hives have gone to other friends of his.

no worries, have fun with yours!

Sounds like you have it well planned, good luck! Needless to say, do. not. lean.

Scoblebees

Today was B-Day. Not the best name for a mission but it was a success.

Good job. Hive position looks good. How are they settling in? Any stores in that super?

Left it a week to do the first inspection, which was a bit tricky because they reacted to the shakes of the move by gluing everything down extra hard. Also, it turns out the mate who put the hive together doesn't do crown boards (rectifying that). We'd only gotten the brood frames inspected before my gf (or, more precisely, some bees) discovered deficiencies in her bee suit and we put it all back together quick. So the super gets a proper look at in a couple of days.

But there's plenty of the buggers in there, lots of healthy activity in the brood box. On a warm, sunny day like this they're out in numbers. So they've survived the move and reoriented well. They don't seem to be starving.

Unusual bee

1 Attachment

Cropped on phone. Shit pic sorry.

Looks more likely a type of hoverfly. I've seen a few funky looking beasts around recently.

Yeah they make a lot of sticky bee glue this time of year, my weekly inspections resemble safe cracking :)

Sounds like they are settled well. Out in the sticks where I am the main summer nectar flow (brambles and clover) is pretty much over, unless there is balsam about but I haven't noticed any. So I will extract some time in August. As you're in London, how are the plane trees around you? Are they still going?

was pretty big, not as fat as a bumble bee but cetainly as long. will look out for them again

How's it going @itsbruce ?
Obviously not much going on this time of year. Did they have plenty of stores going into winter?
I have done some anti-varroa treatment.
http://brixtonsbounty.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/diy-oxalic-acid-vapourisation-for.html

Had a look at my hives today, all were flying. Little vid here
https://twitter.com/WhatTheBeesEat/status/951068938103861249

Healthy hive, so far. Planning space for a second, in the event of a swarm this spring.

Nice one.

Busy time in the beekeeping year. Swarm control! Long read in link. How's everyone (anyone?) else getting on? @itsbruce

http://brixtonsbounty.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/busy-beekeeping-tried-three-new-methods.html

@Olly398 Sadly, it turned out the swarm we took charge of was at the end of its life. The queen stopped laying some time in winter and the hive didn't produce a new queen, so once the warm weather came back they didn't survive a lot longer. So now we're cleaning out the hive and looking for new tenants.

Oh bad luck. It happens... get back on the horse!

Some motivational honey extracting pics and video:
https://brixtonsbounty.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-little-bit-of-honey-extracting.html