SNAFU

In summary - belting hot weather, strong signs of swarming, artificial 'shook swarm,' heavens open...

SNAFU.

A swarm in May is worth a load of hay

I ordered a new hive two weeks ago, ready for possible swarms... and it has not arrived. The excuse?

"Thank you for your order. This is an assembled hive and this department is
extremely busy. It should be despatched in two or three days."

Curious how they focus on their issues rather than their customers' requests. "Sorry" would have helped.

Of course the moral of this story is... order your hives in good time.

Murdering beekeeper gets caught out by honey trap

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/murdering-beekeeper-gets-caught-out-by-honey-trap-1654289.html

Now work that one out!

My two WBC hives stand in the same apiary, around 2m apart, facing the same way, with bees split* from the same original colony in May 2008.

Hive Alpha (the original) has a brood/half, and four supers. Two supers are full and capped, and the other two are about half full each.

Hive Beta has exactly the same layout. No supers are full, and there are fewer bees than in Alpha - at a guess, half the number - and the bees are smaller.

Now work that one out!


*I avoid the 'artificial swarm' term. It was more like 'incompetent jumbling.' See entry

“Incompetence - When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do.”

Plight of the bumblebee

In the garden this afternoon, I noticed that on a single plant there were six bumblebees. On a nearby flowering redcurrant, ditto.

Though these were not the big fat fellers, they were definitely bees of the bumble kind, and plenty of them.

No honeybees, though.

Apitherapy

Found this on http://www.apitherapy.biz/home.html :

"The law requires that we make no health claims, whether true, supported by scientific research or not, for the remedies we make and sell. Supporting scientific research is available elsewhere on the internet and we are always happy to answer your queries or problems either by email or on the telephone. This is a free advisory service."

And on the same page, this:

"Royal Jelly - nature’s rejuvenator may help in the relief of symptoms of ailments such as PMT and arthritis, may encourage healthy skin, hair and nails and may help with the promotion of overall wellbeing. This product is shipped in a cold pack to ensure maximum freshness on receipt."

By the way, Royal Jelly retails at £10 per 50g (that's £200/kg, or about £50/lb).

Why become a beekeeper?

Small section of an article in http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=2468 about Tony Spacey, ex-paratrooper now beekeeper:


‘I got into bee farming because my hands won’t fit up their arse,’ Tony tells me by way of introduction. ‘I come from a farming background in southern Africa. When I was four I saw my grandfather’s arm well and truly buried in an uncomfortable place in a cow and the old boy turned and smiled at me and said, “One day, you can do this.” From then on I decided to become a soldier.’ He spent 18 years as a paratrooper, leading bayonet charges in Angola, winning several medals and generally being ‘not really a pacifist’.

Find Littleover Apiaries at http://www.littleoverapiaries.com/

The site is full of cobblers about 'active honey' and general pseduoscience, but Tony S is obviously a successful and (I guess) very good beekeeper.

Yet another excellent bee blog

Try out http://muratakin26.blogspot.com/

I am embarrassed even more than usual to say that the language is entirely foreign to me; I'm guessing at Turkish...

I often intend to post explanatory pictures about the techniques of beekeeping, but the pictures on http://muratakin26.blogspot.com are waaaay better than I could hope to produce.

C'mon, Colin

Disappointingly, Colin (who commented on my rude remarks about pseudoscience at www.yourhealthfoodstore.co.uk) has not yet sent me the research that backs his claims about the antibacterial and other properties of propolis.

Dettol, I understand, is antibacterial, but you won't catch me drinking it. Ditto propolis.

Top-bar hive: diary of a novice beekeeper

I particularly like this blog, for its incompetent sub-text... "So I have built the top bar hive to his design + a few deliberate changes and few inadvertant modifications."

Visit http://novice-beekeeper.blogspot.com/

Great photos, and here's an example: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V_Ri-waWrlg/Sf28RUB6n0I/AAAAAAAAAEQ/s2AVeEtd-Aw/s1600-h/IMG_7107.JPG