Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
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...
Morgan and I had a nice little walk through the dunes earlier. We were actually wandering across to the beach to check out what was happening with the RSPB Shear Madness. Unfortunately there wasn’t anyone there so we couldn’t find out more about the Manx Shearwaters or let them know that I often see them when...
The trouble with bees is that you just never know quite what to expect! Our last inspection was pretty good, all four colonies in all four hives were looking up with queens, eggs and larvae in all of them, no signs of swarming and they were beginning to draw out empty frames and start building...
As mentioned in our latest beekeeping update, our apiary that started out with two hives currently has an additional third hive and a nuc box in it. We’re not plnning on keeping them all with full colonies in them and will probably merge them into two colonies before the end of the summer but at the moment...
We made our weekly hive inspections on Wednesday afternoon and there was some progress. The bees are still acting a little strangely though. Both the colony in the Clettwr hive and the colony in the triple nuc box (a caught swarm from Clettwr) are very active. They are up and busy from first light until...
Some good news on the bee front at last. The first of our colonies to swarm was the one from the hive we have called Leri. We lost the swarm so the queen from this hive disappeared over the horizon along with half the colony, leaving us with depleted numbers in the hive, no queen...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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