Bees by the front door

Posted by Jon on Aug 2, 2010 in Swarms & Nests | 0 comments

My third bee adventure last week found me heading out to Tom and Helen who had returned to their second home to find that bees had taken up residence close to their front door. They had been there for a few weeks, entering and leaving by a hole in the rendering.

This bee removal really bought home to me the beauty of my Heath Robinson beevac.

Gite traumas

Posted by Jon on Jul 24, 2010 in Swarms & Nests | 0 comments

Imagine arriving at your holiday gîte only to find the kitchen full of bees and the cooker covered in honey – this was the welcome facing a family due to arrive at Gavin and Jane’s gite later on today! Jane knew something was seriously wrong when her last guests mentioned that there was honey dripping from the cooker extractor fan after they had used the cooker for a couple of nights, and there were dead bees on the kitchen floor each morning. With new guests arriving in only a few days, something needed to be done quickly.

Solar Wax Melter – Part 2!

Posted by Jon on Jul 20, 2010 in Equipment | 0 comments

OK, so the solar wax melter that I built here had a minor design flaw which I found when the sun finally decided to come out. Instead of all my molten wax dripping sedately into my mesh covered ice cream carton, we had a wax landslide. The black inside to the box had done a great job of heating up the metal tray and melting the underside of the lumps of wax comb.

Aarrggh! We’re losing a colony…

Posted by Jon on Jul 16, 2010 in Hive problems | 7 comments

Whilst our other colonies are loving the sunshine and making the most of the ample nectar flow around, one of our colonies has been causing us concern. The big, healthy colonies rumble in this weather with the bees coming and going, and the others fanning to keep the hive cool, but this little one barely manages a murmur. Watching the entrance has revealed that fewer and fewer bees are entering and leaving so we bit the bullet last night and had a look inside.

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.