Tuesday 17 December 2019

Winter planning...

Hello readers,

Winter has come but still a small:

Weather Report:  

It has been several days, no weeks, now that the mercury didn't go above 10°C.  But not so today.  Temperatures rose to 12°C from 10:00 and didn't drop under that till 17:00!

Hive Report: 

Apiary one:

This hive report will only cover this apiary.  Since I didn't have the time to visit the others.  And I won't divide the report into separate hives this time.
5 out of 6 hives showed activity. 
In the AC3 2019 I could see orientation flights, so there must have been brood in there that didn't come out yet until now.  It was a rather modest group of bees, not like the heaps you see orientating in spring or summer.  But it warmed my heart.  It is still winter and even though there was a struggling bee in front of the AC4 2019 that was the only one I saw there, I brushed her out and got no response from inside.  This hive might have collapsed...

Proud writer

If you look at my blog, two posts back, I wrote about my visit to Pardubice (Tsjechië) here with some pictures to give you a feel of what happened there.  I translated most of it to Dutch and sent it to the KonVIB as an article for their paper.  I got word back and am proud to say I got published!


One of my fellow classmates of my second beekeeping course in Roeselare congratulated me and really liked the article.

Winter Planning

Winterjobs - material

For my winter planning I have yet to clean some used fames.  My friend Ives is building some more equipment for me and has some bottom boards in the making:


I already collected some boxes and 5 roofs.

The owner of the land where my 2nd apiary is works as a lumberjack, he cut down a massive tree that was hollow.  I received the hollow part of the log and I hope to make some adjustments to it so I can keep bees in there!

Winterjobs - apiary instead of aviary

Apart from the materials I'm also working on plans to change my apiary 1.  It's in my backyard so I want to transform the aviary I have there now into my apiary.  Sadly I can't say goodbye to my birds just yet so I'm pushing the date forward.  The hives that are there will have to be moved about 4 meters, but if I can do that during late winter - without knocking them to much about - I should be able to minimise losses.  That is if the bees make it through winter!
They'll be better off, since now they sometimes work their way in with the birds through the wires and have trouble getting back out.

Winterjobs - More apiaries

To expand the amount of beehives I have I also needed another location to put my bees and I've found a place in Kruisem!  They grow herbs there and I'm really happy with the place I can put my bees at!

A friend of mine also connected me with somebody from Wakken, but I'm not sure if I'm going to undertake that endeavour there.  The place is only accessible when she's home, and if she's not home a guard dog (that does it's job) is in the yard I need to go through to get to the place where she wants the bees.
If I go there I'll probably put a log hive up, with an experimental rooftop to put jars in, hoping the bees will build in there.  The downside of that is that she'll have swarms for as long as the hive survives and I'm not sure she's up for that...  I would like to put bees in Wakken as that would close the 'circle' of apiaries around my house.  The more Ideal place would be the provincial domain BaliekouterMaybe I need to contact the authorities to see if they would allow me to put up beehives there.  But that's not for today....  First lets find out how many hives make it through winter.

Reading

I heard winter is also the time for reading up on your beekeeping knowledge, so I bought myself the book by Jürgen Tautz - The Buzz about bees.  It's waiting for me under the Christmas tree...

That's all folks

Bob Out

Sites to visit - Nine Lectures on Bees - lecture one.

Hello readers, Today I'm having a look on another site that was gathering dust in my 'must browse here later' list. Today thi...