Protecting your home

Posted by Jon on May 5, 2011 in Beekeeping, Swarms & Nests | 1 comment

The unseasonably warm weather that we have been experiencing has meant that the  phone has been constantly ringing over the past month. I wish I could say that I was out, happily picking up swarms hanging from branches in trees but not so. In fact, I’ve only had one external pick up, the rest of the calls have been from home owners with bees where they don’t want them.

Wild plums

Posted by Jon on Mar 30, 2011 in Beekeeping, Moths & Butterflies, Wild bees | 0 comments

Our wild plums have been fantastic this year – the great weather has meant that we have had a full 3 weeks of sequential blooms getting the bees off to a flying start.

Spring is in the air…

Posted by Jon on Mar 7, 2011 in Beekeeping, Wild bees | 0 comments

We’ve been enjoying some fantastic weather here – days full of sunshine and temperatures rising rapidly. The honey bees have been out in force, making the most of the flowering box (Buxus sempervirens) which we have in large quantities all around the garden. They’ve already been busy with the early flowering willow on warm days through January and February but the volume of pollen entering the hives now is much larger – the sunshine and the box must be to their liking!

Mild weather brings out the bees

Posted by Jon on Jan 27, 2011 in Bee behaviour | 0 comments

Apologies for my recent silence – when the bees are in their quiet season, I get to start my long list of things that don’t get done during bee season. However, I was very pleased to see that in the recent mild weather, all our hives showed some activity as the bees came out to stretch their wings in the sunshine.

The double-whammy

Posted by Beekeeper on Nov 7, 2010 in Asian Hornets, Hive problems | 8 comments

This is the photo that ruined my weekend – the sort of sight that strikes fear into any beekeepers heart.

Not only are the bees being picked off as they leave or return to the hive by the huge Asian hornets and torn limb from limb, but this one also has a varroa mite – you can see the mite falling off the bee (the brown blob between the bee’s legs) as the hornet gets to work.

The bees fight back

Posted by Beekeeper on Nov 1, 2010 in Asian Hornets, Bee behaviour, Hive problems, Hornets | 1 comment

Asian hornets are still preying on our bees, settling on the landing board and waiting for one to leave or picking off the guard bees who come out to defend the hive – the hornets tap along the landing board to encourage the bees to stick their heads out of the hive, no doubt frustrated that the hornet guards are keeping them out. Many of the bees are too slow to escape as the cooler weather has settled in and as it’s late in the season, the Asian hornets are the new queens getting ready to overwinter – huge beasts, several times the size of the bees.