173. Keeping bees (ie hanging onto them) is not so easy . . .

Having all sorts of problems with our bees. It all went well for about a month, the Queen laying well and the colony growing in size. But then I found some Queen cells (new Queens being developed) which meant that a swarm was likely.

Mistake 1: I squashed the Queen cells (I should have split the colony into two parts (as the bees were trying to do) and have 2 colonies. I thought it was the right thing to do but the bees then did swarm (Sarah saw them go) which meant we lost the Queen and half the bees.

Mistake 2: I squashed the remaining Queen cells as I did not want any more swarms. A VERY bad mistake as I now had a colony without a Queen and without the chance of a new Queen being hatched.

Mistake 3: I went away on holiday for 2 weeks. The solution (if I had been quick and not sunning myself on hol) was to introduce a new mated Queen (bought from another beekeeper). But I was not, so when I got back from holiday I had the problem of laying workers. Some of the worker bees had realised (through pheromones) that there was no Queen present so had started laying eggs, but because they are not mated they can only lay drones (males). I phoned an experienced bee-keeper and he told me the colony was doomed!

The situation now
I did some research and a possible (if v unlikely) solution is to dump all the bees at the end of the garden, and hope that the laying workers do not make it back to the hive. Then introduce a new mated Queen (which I bought on-line and was sent through the post!).



That was ten days ago; today I am going to open them up and see if the Queen (green spot and with No 19 on her back) is alive and laying.

According to one post on the internet I am a bee-squirter, not a bee-keeper.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

285. Been thinking about my last blog . . .

Image
. . . even if no-one else has. One of the implications of much of an apple's goodness (minerals and vitamins) being in its seeds is that to benefit they have to be eaten. And not just eaten but chewed up as apple seeds tend simply to be passed. I then remembered something about apple pips containing cyanide. I began to look into all this . . . There are hundreds and hundreds of web snippets on the benefits of eating apples, an apple a day keeps the doctor away and all that. But quite difficult to shore it up with trusted sources. A medium-sized apple weighs 150g - 200g and contains half that number of calories. 80% is water, 10% is carbohydrate, 0.5% protein and 4% minerals and vitamins. Half the minerals and vitamins and fibre are in the peel and the core. Apple pips contain amygdalin which can release cyanide when coming contact with digestive enzymes. According to the http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/contact-us/about-us/  (Cambridge University group) about
Read more

319. We've got a dog!

Image
I know, I know . . . but I've kind of always wanted one . . . . . . from when I was very young, before I joined the Job, when I was thinking about joining the Job. I had a dream (I must have been 13 or 14, and I had lots of posters of dogs on my bedroom walls) about becoming a bearded-batchelor police dog-handler. In my dream I called the dog Wolfram . And guess what? We've called our dog  Wolfram ! He's so cute. He is, of course, an Alsatian and a good guard-dog. Which will be good because this is a big place and Sarah's away a lot. (The door-bell went off in the middle of the night last week, no-one there, turned out it was half-pressed in, but it didn't half freak me out.) Anyway, Wolfram is a new type of dog. Specially bred for people like me. He's a veggie. Eats like a horse of course, but and this is the point, he eats just like a horse. CRUCIALLY, he shits like a horse too. So, no smelly piles all around the garden but just the sweet
Read more

73. Stuck for something to read?

Try a William Boyd novel. They hook you from the start, have interesting and original plots and are not overly long. What's more there are lots of them, and relatively easy to find in second-hand bookshops. Perfect for a holiday read, if you are stuck on a difficult novel or just want something a bit different. His books sometimes feel like he has written them with the aid of a special book-kaleidoscope: twist it again, 10 bizarre plot-lines fall out and Boyd glues them together in 300 pages. Try one!
Read more