Since installing the Arnia hive monitors two weeks ago the following reassuring data has come in.
Click it for a close up:
So what does this tell us?
Well it tells me I don’t have to worry just yet. Here’s why: Continue reading Arnia Remote Hive Monitoring Data
After you have fired up your Gateway and Monitors and made sure they are communicating with each other and with the Mother Ship as per the previous article – the very first step is to make sure you have a mobile signal at your intended apiary. If you don’t check this, your carefully assembled set-up may have to be carefully disassembled. Continue reading Arnia Remote Hive Monitors – Installing
An Arnia hive monitoring kit, even at its simplest, consists of several components. The first thing you must do, before you take it to your bees, is fire it up and make sure all the constituent parts are working and that they are speaking to each other.
The set up isn’t difficult, the detailed instructions are clearly written in the User Manual but you wouldn’t want to do it out there in the weather with outraged bees. So here’s what you do. By the way – click any of these photos for a close up: Continue reading Arnia Remote Hive Monitors – Set Up
This question comes up quite often on our Beekeeping Course and it’s quite difficult to answer without making a list. There is much more choice of equipment available now with bargains to be had, but even then – it’s not cheap so be warned.
However something else to throw into the equation is that if you do take up beekeeping there should eventually be a payback in terms of honey which you can then either consume yourself or you can sell it. So an interesting way to consider the cost of starting up beekeeping is in jars of honey instead of euro.
The results of this exercise for 2009 and 2016 are shown in the table below where: Continue reading How much does it cost to start beekeeping?
A scale hive is a great way of keeping an eye on how much nectar the bees bring in during the day, how much water is evaporated off during the night or how many bees and how much honey left with that swarm you just saw leaving!
It can be an expensive addition to the apiary hardware if you want to go electronic. However, it is quite easy to make one from wood with some cunningly placed mirrors and a bathroom scales.
Here’s how… Continue reading Make Your Own Scale Hive
Bee feeders come in all shapes and sizes, a variety of materials, complexity, price, feed capacity, bee capacity and feed speed; some you can make yourself and some you shouldn’t even try!
So which feeder? Continue reading Bee Basics – Which Feeder?
If you’re looking at taking your honey off you’ll be looking at clearing the bees. If you’re in a hurry and you like a fight you can always shake them or brush them off the frames. Or if you are Gadget Man and don’t care about young bees being blown all over the landscape you can get yourself a bee blower. But if you favour something slower, more gentle and less brutal you’re looking at a clearer board. Continue reading Porter Bee Escape
A Cloake board is an essential piece of kit for anyone considering rearing their own queens. The method utilises a queen-right colony ensuring the best quality queens.
Click here for a timetable for the Cloake board system Continue reading Cloake Board Method of Queen Rearing
Here’s how to set up your Jenter kit. It’s how I did mine and that’s now working well.
By the way, be warned – the bees won’t like it when it’s new and the queen will be reluctant to lay into it. So get it set up and into a strong colony to get it drawn out and smelling beeish before you trot the queen into it. Continue reading How to set up your Jenter Kit
