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.

Build your own Solar Wax Melter

Posted by Jon on Jul 14, 2010 in Equipment | 0 comments

(or how to save yourself a small fortune!)

Here in France, some things are really expensive, including solar wax melters (Cérificateur) which start at about 160€ and go up from there. So given the recent spell of hot weather, I decided to make my own from what I had in the barn. I researched possible designs and decided to build a tilted table with a removable tray (with a mesh filter). This is how it turned out…

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.