Agri Vehicles Insurance from Greenlands

Author Topic: Check all your hives  (Read 2864 times)

cloddopper

  • Joined Jun 2013
  • South Wales .Carmarthenshire. SA18
Check all your hives
« on: February 06, 2016, 02:40:56 am »
If you haven't already done it check all your hives and feed the bees a couple of pints of room temp home made preservative free syrup at a pound of sugar totally dissolved to a pint of boiling water syrup .

 The hives are really starting to set down brood so will be using up stores  like mad.


 One of my novice keeper  friends has reported that all her hives have all come through winter successfully  and that she'd fed 2 pints to each the hive the day before we talked about it . 
She said  she was surprised at the amount of activity and brood present .  So it seems like her  feeding regime that started at the end of August  last year has been successful


 You don't have to take the hive fully apart & disturb the bees , so you can do it when its windy or raining if your quick and have everything needed ready to hand  before you start.
Strong belief , triggers the mind to find the way ... Dyslexia just makes it that bit more amusing & interesting

DavidandCollette

  • Joined Dec 2012
Re: Check all your hives
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2016, 09:58:47 am »
Done that :thumbsup: they really seem to be goingfor it this year :fc:

Sudanpan

  • Joined Jan 2009
  • West Cornwall
    • Movement is Life
Re: Check all your hives
« Reply #2 on: February 07, 2016, 01:03:51 pm »
Ours are still hunkered down - temps are relatively mild but you need scuba gear and weight belts to move around outside given the amount of rain and gale force winds!

cloddopper

  • Joined Jun 2013
  • South Wales .Carmarthenshire. SA18
Re: Check all your hives
« Reply #3 on: February 07, 2016, 09:46:15 pm »
Ours are still hunkered down - temps are relatively mild but you need scuba gear and weight belts to move around outside given the amount of rain and gale force winds!

LIke it I like it.

 That's one good reason to chose you hive sites very very  carefully .

 One guy I use to know set up an enclosure of five foot high  hit & miss fence panels slotted down " H " section concreted in reinforced 9 foot long concrete posts. the floor inside was paving slabs .. he started doing it in the erly seventies because he lived in a new town development and he didn't want to give the moaners any cause to complain .
 He even dyed his white bee suit black so it didn't stick out like th proverbial sore thumb .

He was able to look at his bees at almost anytime of the year under almost any conditions .  His preference was to  go out in his bee suit during darkness with a red filter on his head lamp ..  He reckoned that with darkness the hives would be full of bees trying to keep warm thus less likely to attack and so it was far easier to see the state of the hive . plus the red l,ight was far less noticeable to the locals than a moving white light would be .  Bees are far les prone to fly at a dark red light at night than a bright white one

 I tried it and found it marginally better than giving a hive a rainy / windy day examination .

 Later in my keeping  I found it very very useful as follows .

It's good if your securing the bees in their hives in just floored & lidded brood boxes carrying the empty supers separately  then loading up the hives up for travelling over night to do fee paying  bee pollination or going for the premium priced heather honey or any other high provenance honey such as lime  or second cut clover etc. 


It allows you to condense and secure the floored & lidded brood boxes along with one drawn super in good day light .. at night the whole hive gets filled .
You then load the empty drawn supers at say two more per hive in day light & sheet them down .
 Come the night  two of you hump all the prepped hives on the lorry stuffing the entrances with a strip of soft foam sponge immediately to loading 

When prepping the hives for traveling like this I had two 20 mm ratchet straps per hive , a vent screen that also held up the roof , a crown board feeder , the brood box & first super & the base. Plus two 6x6 x 24 inch sections of  sawn treated  pine to sit the each hive on at the ground .

 At the drop off site the hive was set on the 6x6's in groups of four with the entrances facing different ways ,  the foam removed . The next two supers added  then the crown board feeder which was then given a gallon of 1:1 syrup & finally the travelling screen and the lid  .  These were then ratchet strapped together with one strap per hive . The rest of the straps being used to hold the block of four hives  together .  By then it was time to lay flat on your back to look at the stars , get up , have a cup of coffee and a sarny or three then make the journey back home .

 I did this for seven years , travelling from PE134BJ to the top end of the Peak district to a small farm that had a lovely area of light forestry that had fabulous roads/drives through it .  It was always a well worth exercise despite having to hire a tail lift truck , pay for the fuel and paying bee site rentals to the farmer .
Strong belief , triggers the mind to find the way ... Dyslexia just makes it that bit more amusing & interesting

 

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