My spaghetti hive…

Posted by Jon on Jul 12, 2010 in Beekeeping, Hive management, Swarms & Nests | 6 comments

When cutting out colonies, one of the difficulties is how to suspend the comb in the new hive so that the bees can use it and not lose their stores, wax and brood. Having brought the colony home, time is of the essences to get the whole lot back inside a hive and set up in their new environment. As I tend to cut out colonies in the evening (as it’s cooler and the foragers have hopefully returned), it is often very late by the time I get home so I wanted to find a quick way of doing this which can be done by one person if there is no-one else to help.

Combined hives – 2 weeks on

Posted by Jon on Jul 3, 2010 in Beekeeping, Hive management | 0 comments

I’ve been watching the hive entrance of the new hive I created by combining two poor colonies a couple of weeks ago and have been pleased with the amount of activity I’ve seen. One colony had no queen but was large in numbers and the other had had a healthy queen but very few workers so I hoped the combination would lead to a healthy colony.

Much as I don’t like disturbing our bees, it was time for an inspection

Keeping hives cool

Posted by Jon on Jun 30, 2010 in Beekeeping, Hive management, Hive problems | 1 comment

We’ve hit a patch of warm weather with the thermometer hitting 35°C so we’re thinking about how to help our bees keep cool – the less energy they spend keeping cool, the more honey they can make! Bee colonies have lots of strategies to keep the temperature in the hive regulated – these range from sending bees out of the hive foraging, workers fanning the comb with their wings and dispersing water droplets through the hive, and an increase in water foraging.