Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
I’ve just retuned from the garden and a little bit of beekeeping. As well as closing all entrances down to the smallest settings on the hives I also put some mouse guards across them. A nice warm hive with loads of honey is quite an attrractive place for a mouse over the winter and they...
Saturday brought with it glorious sunshine and the 2011 Aberystwyth and District Beekeepers Association Honey Show. The show was held in Llanfach Hall in Taliesin and thankfully for us was a fairly informal affair. I’m not really into all of the intricacies and nit-picking of showing things so the relaxed atmosphere was nice to see....
During the recent winds you’d have been forgiven for thinking that there were no bees at all in the hives at the bottom of the garden. Wind, rain and bees don’t really mix so they were all hiding away in their hives and sitting out the storm. As soon as the winds drop though they...
Morgan and I were quite successful in the recent Aberystwyth and District Beekeepers Association (ABKA) Photographic Competition. It was a fairly informal affair and just for fun, although there were prizes up for grabs. There were three categories: Other Bees (Not Honey Bees) Inside the Hive Beekeepers You were allowed to enter one photo per...
Now that we’ve taken the honey off our bees, it’s time to give something back. I guess we’ve been giving lots back to the bees all along simply by having them and trying to nurture them in our back garden, but the aim now is to get them built up with enough stores to get...
Hooray, We’ve got honey from our bees! We knew we wouldn’t get much and weren’t really expecting to get any in our first year, but one of the hives (Leri) had a super with about four frames of honey in it so we decided to extract it so that we could see what it tasted...
In addition to our recent Nosema test and checks for Varroa in our bee hives, we also had Helen, our Mentor, pop around for a quick inspection of the hives so that she could give us her opinion on their strength, or weakness. 3 colonies or 2? We were fairly confident that Leri, the stronger...
As well as our recent test for Nosema in our bee colonies, another important aspect of beekeepeing at this time of year is to assess the levels of Varroa infestation in the hives. Varroa Varroa Mites are a very common, almost universal parasite of Honey Bees. The mite itself, Varroa destructor, attaches itself to the body...
It seems a shame to be thinking about winter already, but it isn’t far off and in order to make sure our bees are happy and healthy going into winter we need to start taking action now. At this time of year the beekeeper should be removing any honey that he/she can, checking the bees...
Despite our best efforts to prevent it, a couple of our hives looked as though they were being robbed of their stores. In fact, ever since I caught a swarm from Clettwr and re-housed it nearby there seem to have been bees happily drifting between the two hives. Recent inspections have shown both hives to...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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