A fire near apiary number 2.

Hello readers,

A bit of news today, old news, as I'm running behind on this blog... 

20th december 2018:  a fire broke out in a company that uses chemical substances to produce latex.

Here's the mayor of my town talking about what happened (Dutch)

Several explosions were heard during the fire, barrels with chemical compounds exploded, but the fire was contained and the fire-fighters let the company burn down prohibiting the flames from spreading to nearby structures.
Some latex got spilled into a nearby river with a thin sheet of latex covering the entire waterway as a result.  At first the firefighters tried to build a dam to contain the pollution, but the water building up broke the structure and the latex got spread out.  It is said there is no danger to the public health and no threat to the lands of farmers near the stream...

Now as it happens that river flows near my apiary, thank God it's winter and the bees don't fly out, I can't imagine what they'd have to endure collecting water from that polluted river.  I went to take a look at the damage, expecting some soot on the hives, but the wind blew in another direction, so I was spared that trouble.  Here are some pictures:

Helecopter view of the fire.

Stream to the right of my hives

Stream behind my hives, righthand side.

My hives with the stream in front. The stream is making a left turn)

Stream in front of the hives making a right turn

The pictures may not say much looking at them without knowing how the water normally looks, but I assure you, that white water is not normal.  It looks like a milk-stream instead of a waterway.  It smells of plastic too.  Let's hope most of it is washed away by spring.

That's all for today folks!

Bob Out

23/01/2019 - Confused about Tobacco (and other pants.)

Hello readers,

Today I want to share my confusion, and possibly interact with you about how to interpret the mixed signals I get.

I am reading through Warré's book; Beekeeping for all. (It can be found here in multiple languages)
In there I found a small refrence to melliferous plants where he adds a number of plants to the list that should be avoided: I quote: "On the other hand, the following are never allowed near the apiary: tobacco, belladonna, henbane,hemlock, aquilegia, hellebore, rose-laurel, foxglove, thorn-apple, monkshood, varnish-tree, autumncrocus. These plants are not all harmful to bees, but their alkaloids pass into honey which thenbecomes dangerous."

After reading this I removed the tobacco plants I used to grow from my garden.  I had them to use in the nesting material of my birds (Cockatiels and chickens mostly now).

But as I keep looking around the internet on beekeeping topics I also stumbled upon this article:

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/tobacco-plants-could-help-dying-bumblebees-stay-healthy-10052209.html

It states that bees (bumblebees in the study under lab conditions) could self-medicate if they have plants around that hold the alkaloids Warré said to
ban near the apiary.

Looking into this further was this:

https://www.inverse.com/article/31689-bees-nicotine-tobacco-addiction

The short of it is, that once bees have foraged on Tobacco they become addicted to it with all the negative results combined to it.  I must add that the effects are a result of nicotine dosage, that gets worse after using nicotinoid pesticides...

As a result of all this research I'm a bit divided on what to do.

I want to be treatment free, but I also want to have a good amount of forage for my bees around so they stay healthy on their own.

I'm leaning towards re-introducing the tobacco plant into my garden, since I don't use pesticides.
On the other hand I have sent an email to a podcaster I have been listening to that seems to have a lot of acces to studies and makes it his business to read them and translate the conclusions for the listeners.  I am hoping he'll find enough material to cut through all the clouds and clear my skies.

Thank you Kevin Inglin in advance!  Go here if you want to visit his website and find his podcast.


That's it for now, I know I have to clean up my files and post some more footage, but it's snowing out, and I need to clear the driveway... live does go on beyond this blog...

Bob Out

Out with the old, in with the new

Hello readers,

My friend is infected! (with the bee-loving-virus that is)
He's signed up for a beekeeping course (the same one I'm taking - but I'm taking two this year).  He's working on my hive boxes and I've delivered him some wood to work with.  It's 8 mm ply wood that he'll fix some insulation material to and then work on an outer shell if needed.  We'll see what he comes up with as I have given him one of my Zander hive bodies as an example to work with. (Observation window and all)

But let's not get ahead of ourselves and do first things first:

Weather Report:  

It still hasn't been really winter like I've seen winter before here in Belgium.  At night we had some temperatures touching the 0°C but never long below that. And I must say it's wet weather, but we've had some nice (although cold) days too.

Hive Report:

Making some video clips I posted a YouTube video, so lets put that up first.  Images say more than words.  I did a voice over in this clip on YouTube since the background noise was nothing but cars on the highway, but I don't really have a lot to say, other than: I saw bees!  The clip was shot on november 14th for my first apiary and november 13th (the day before) on my 2nd apiary.

Apiary One:

I do really see a difference between the Simplex Nuc SS 1 2018 (I still haven't picked another name, but I'm working on it making plans for the year to come) and the split I made out of it; The SS 2 2018.  The split hive catches some sun where the mother hive stays in the shade.  It is my belief this is the reason when it is sunny out and the temperature reaches 10°C or thereabouts the bees on the split do go out and the bees in the motherhive don't.

Till today, 09th januari 2019, the buzzbox app tells me both hives are alive.  I dare not disturb them when it's below 10°C.  I don't even look through the windows!

Apiary two:

The video is rather clear on that.  The first hive you see on that stand is the booming 6-frame nuc I got out of the wall in Anzegem.  But I don't know what queen is in there, one they made from my Buckfast bees, or a Carnica?  The second nuc shows some, but not nearly as much activity, and I only saw the one bee leave the TO2 hive at that time.
Allas the situation did not improve for that TO2 hive.  I'm afraid I've lost them...


For now I'll keep it at that, but I'll be back with another winter update, since I have some clips, or should have if I can find them, laying around with a similar look on the hives, but no activity.  I'll wrap it up here since it's past midnight and I'm practicly falling asleep

 Bob Out