Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
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...
We had hoped that after catching and re-housing a swarm from one of our hives that things in the apiary would settle down. The colony in the strongest hive had now been split into three: A colony in the original hive with a queen cell An ‘artificially swarmed’ colony with queen cells in a nuc...
Another day and yet more beekeeping. Hopefully that’s all the intervention they’ll need for today though. After catching the swarm from Clettwr yesterday it was housed in a temporary plastic nuc box overnight. We have run out of suitable equipment to accommodate any more colonies so borrowed a triple nuc box contraption from Ann. Essentially...
Clettwr, the hive that I performed an artificial swarm on last week in an attempt to prevent them from swarming has – you’ve guessed it – swarmed today. So much for the artificial swarm, I obviously didn’t do it right. Our neighbours phoned me just after 10am to say the bees were out and about...
Well, our inexperience with beekeeping has been shown once again. I was hoping for a nice easy inspection today. We inspected last week and reported that all was well in Clettwr but the bees in Leri had swarmed. Today I had hoped to have a quick check in Clettwr to make sure there were no...
No, I’m not talking about the ‘mile-high club’, I’m refer to the mating flight of queen bees. Today looks set to be a nice day weather-wise and I’m fairly certain that if all is going well our virgin queen bee should have emerged on Saturday and should therefore be ready to take her first mating...
That was nice, a hive inspection without any surprises. I’ve just been out to inspect both hives and the bees were particularly well behaved. Anna was at work and Morgan at school but we needed to check on the hives so I did it on my own today. Maybe having just one person inspect them...
After some pretty poor weather for the bees last week, Friday was a scorcher – 25ºC and wall to wall sunshine and it was our normal day to do a hive inspection, exactly 7 days after the last one. We were hoping the bees would be out and about all day in the sunshine and...
After the late spring onslaught it looks as though the weather may have settled down for a day or two. Summer officially started on June 1st and as I write this at 7:40am on June 2nd, it is already 15.2ºC out there, the sun is shining and there isn’t a puff of wind. Usually the latter fact...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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