When left to their own devices and given a hollow tree, honey bees create a colony that is round in cross section and oval in long view – egg shaped in other words. But our hives are all square.
Are we trying to force a round peg into a square hole?
A straw sun hive, allows honey bees to be themselves and build a warmer egg-shaped home. Here’s how to make one.
Tools will be provided but bring scissors, and a bodkin if you have one.
Ashford & District Beekeepers are having a Honey Festival:
Éanna Ní Lamhna will give a talk on Biodiversity and the Importance of Pollinators.
There will also be a skep making demonstration – that’s me, that is.
Map here:
The straw skep is a familiar part of the beekeeper’s equipment. Nowadays they are used primarily to gather summer swarms and winter cobwebs but in the past, skeps were used to hive bees all year round. Continue reading Skeps and Skep Beekeeping
Christmas is one of the four quarter days which mark the changing of the seasons.
The four quarter days are:
They all approximately coincide with either an equinox or a solstice.
If, like me, you went to the recent BIBBA conference on the Isle of Man you must also have noticed the horse drawn trams but did you know they too are threatened with extinction?
Personally I was charmed and delighted by these lovely Clydesdales trotting along the promenade on hairy great feet with their ears all pricked and eager. In fact I was so charmed and delighted by them I looked them up on the Blithering Internet when I got home and was incredulous to discover that the Powers-That-Be in Douglas are planning to scrap them!
Click the photo above for a close up, look at that lovely, lovely horse and ask yourself how on earth can that be? Continue reading Isle of Man Horse Power
Learn how to make your own straw bee skep this autumn and never lose another swarm!
One day either November 19 or 20th, 2016 to learn the techniques and make a small demonstration piece.
or
Both days to make a full size skep.
Tools and materials supplied.
Use the contact form below for further information.
By now we are all familiar with the mesh floor aka Varroa floor as part of our Integrated Pest Management. There are obvious benefits to these but there are also a few snags and an unexpected flaw: Continue reading Varroa Floor Flaw
At this time of the year (spring) remote hive monitoring really comes into its own. I have an Arnia Hive Scale at one of my apiaries and it gives me a good idea what is happening not only in the monitored hive but also a rough idea of what is happening over there.
Since I installed it 2 months ago, apart from a sudden vertical jump when I put a super on to accommodate the growing population, it had been recording a steady decrease in weight but for the last 3 days it began to register an increase!
Here, have a look at this… Continue reading Useful Arnia Hive Scale Data
Installing a remote hive monitoring system should give the armchair beekeeper some measure of comfort – especially in a cold spring when opening hives is out of the question. However, it ain’t necessarily so! Continue reading Remote hive monitoring in action
