General Bee Stuff

The Bees
At the risk of this statement coming back to bite me in the bum, they seem to be doing OK.
The autumn varroa treatments have been completed and they are in the middle of their autumn feed of syrup.
Its seems a little odd that some of the colonies quickly slurped up the 2/3 pints of syrup I have given them each yet a few others haven't touched it.
This will go on for a few weeks yet and then I will switch to the fondant that I ordered.

The bees at Ravensden are on the route I take The Boys for their walks so twice a day I just have a quick look in to the copse to see what they are up to.
I do enjoy the regular inspections and its a shame this now won't start again until March/April next year unless something dramatic happens. I won't disturb them just because I fancy a look/see so I will have to content myself with visual checks and its encouraging to see them very busy.
I have no idea where they are getting it from but they are still bringing in yellow pollen so the Queens are still laying.
A little while ago I combined two hives as one of them was struggling and wouldn't have made it through the winter and I pleased to see  a large amount of activity in the combined colony. The down side is that this colony now has two brood boxes [like The Beast] which are a pain to check.
Here's a short video about some of the colonies.

All the supers have been bought back and stacked up and this will be one of the winter jobs to replace/repair broken frames and get foundation put in ready for next year. They also need to be sprayed to prevent parasites setting up shop in the frames.

From time to time I am asked about what I call cut comb but is also called honeycomb or comb honey. Its basically a rectangle of wax cut from the frame with the honey still in it.

Inexplicably a lot of bee keepers consider it a 'premium product'. I consider it 'revolting'.
The frames have to be specially set up to produce it and I did  few and rather to my surprise its proved quite popular so something for next year is to set up more frames.

My main objective for next year is to populate my Top Bar Hive.

I had hoped to get a swarm to put in it but surprisingly it never happened.
I could wait for a swarm next season but rather than muck around I intend buying what is called a package. This is a box of 'loose' bees, usually about 3lb, with a queen in a queen cage. You normally use a package as normal frames don't fit in a TBH.

I don't know anybody locally who sells packages so I might have to get it from a company I know in Sussex. Unfortunately it means I have to drive there to pick it up.

Asian Hornet
Bees can be forgiven for thinking that life, like history, is just one bloody thing after another.
Climate, insecticides, varroa and habitat loss and now Asian Hornets can be added to the list of things they have to put up with.

Widespread in France a single hornet was found in Somerset last year and three days ago a confirmed sighting was made at Woolacomb, North Devon.
Reassuring noises are being made by the authorities but it all sounds a bit Canute like. They spread very quickly in France and will no doubt do so here and bee keepers will have to start thinking about what they can do.
Asian Hornets are nasty things and their favourite snack is a honey bee.

Still out of adversity comes opportunity.
Shortly after the announcement was made one of the more 'stack 'em high, flog 'em cheap' bee keeping supply firms sent out something to all their email subscribers attempting to flog their Hornet trap.
The email had the heading
Asian Hornets sighted in the UK!
They rapidly issued another email to their 'esteemed customers' saying some browsers translated the emoji wrongly and it should have been a grim face emoji not a smiling one which might suggest they were happy with the sales opportunity.
I use Chrome and I checked the email in Explorer and it had the smiling face as well. Perhaps users of more popular browsers didn't have the problem.

It also gave the Independent to go all Daily Mail'ish and run the headline

Originally the Independent showed a picture of the wrong type of wasp

The Express followed with

This despite the National Bee Unit saying

The Asian hornet is smaller than our native hornet and poses no greater risk to human health than a bee.


I understand tomorrows Daily Mirror headline will be:-