Squatter

I found this in one of my empty hive deeps when i was getting ready for my bee extraction. Needless to say i killed it , but goes to show , be carefull when going into empty bee boxes

First Swarm / Cut out

Did my first swarm and cut out in a water meter today, I have never seen so many bee's crammed into such a small space. I used my bee vac , wasn't allowed to take pictures on site but i did when i got home.

Studying

I'm up to 83 on the online falconry test, i remember why Nealy 25 years ago although i love biology and taking my biology A level why i hated studying it. I was diagnosed with dyslexia at 18, pathetic really as it was by then to late to do anything, through natural selection i had learnt to live with it. Part of the test they did at that time was memory , i have short term memory. by example i can remember peoples faces but tell you there name and i struggle. Spelling is out the window and it is one of the reasons i like to read and write. Fantasy books or action adventure for reading and blogging for writing, the main reason to try to remember words , for along time the spelling of straight and start seemed the same by way of another example. It probably one of the reasons i ended up in IT and programming. You don't need to spell to remember functions just remember the function name which is often an abbreviation.

studying for this falconry exam has brought allot of that back and i seem to be back where i was 25 years ago cramming for this exam. The only way i remember stuff is by constant repetition. Writing down the same thing over and over again, reading a sentence and then writing it down.

I am hoping to take the exam in June the wife is away in may with the national guard so no chance before then. Then it will only be a few more months until trapping season. I feel so UN prepared and a bit over whelmed with what have i let myself in for but.... there is this nagging urge to do this. I drove by the field Steve and i go to in denison and i was wishing i was out there walking the field and flushing the game

2nd inspection

Well its been 10 days since my last inspection. I wanted to replace the division board feeders with hive top feeders. My bee's from last year where not using theres and i was getting some drowning in the new hives. I also didnt want to have to open them up every time i want to feed them. So i took the division board feeders out and put a new deep frame in instead. Placed the hive top feeder on top and away we went.

My bee's from last year have not started moving up into the second deep but i think everything is very slow this year, even the clover is slow to bloom this year.

I picked up some second hand hive bodies and medium supers on saturday, 4 deeps, 8 suppers and some migratory lids. There old and passed there sell by date but will act as some good spares for this and next year for swarms. I burdned all the wodern frames most had rotted and gone moldy, and disposed of the plastic frames. I thin scourced the insides of all the boxes witha propaine tourch to kill of a bacteria or dieases. They all need paiting but i have also been thinking about treating then with some wood preservitive.

I finished paiting some other boxes and my queen castle tonight. so the queen castle will be ready for use in the next day or two.

All in all is been a very busy time of it on the bee front, i ahve some 9 frame spacers on order and some plastic front feeders that i cant wait to get hold of this week. I like the hive top feeders but there expensive at $18 a pop. So all in all i am in pretty good shape for the season.

The plan for the next few weeks is to keep feeding and to build up all hives , Im either looking to raise some of my own queens or to ship 5 queens in in the next month. 3 to go in the queen castle for the year and 2 to use on my splits.

First Inspection

Its been 5 Days since i installed the bee's the weather has been none stop rain. so during a break in the clouds and when the temp had risen to 65 i wanted to get teh queen cages out and to see if any egg's had been laid. Both packages are doing well drawing out and repairing the comb i had already in there and a great rate of knots, they had gone through all the sugar water so time to put some more on.

New Bee's Video

Well Wednesday i got some more bee's and this is a short video of how the installation went !









We hope you like it.

My giant hood is coming along i have now 2 coats of varnish on it and i think i may need 4, the wood seems to just soak it up anyway here are some pictures. Its not quite finished as i need a door lock and some vent holes. I've made it very very light weight but it has still retained it's strength.

Bee Vac

Well i have extended my bee yard and have been promising some pictures of the bee vac so here are pictures of both. Cant wait till tomorrow when i get my package bee's

New Bee's

As well as the two hves that i am going to split in a few weeks, i have two new packages arriving on wednesday.

I got the site all ready for them and will be taking some video of me installing them roll on wednesday afternoon !