The Hive

Beehives on the rooftop of the Waldorf-Astoria!

Heading to the Var tomorrow to see the hives, OH says they're looking good, and there are one or two disappointing apiaries, but I'll be able to see for myself from wednesday..I expect to come back with a sting or two, will look great in the hotel, lol;

OH is leaving tomorrow for the Var, to prepare the hives for the season, and start seeoing if we can split any to form new colonies. The season will start early, but it will be a dry one, by all accounts.

I saw the warre, looks adorable, lol, I might get an experiment hive going, we're going bio this year, and I've got a plan for the foundation, a friend does it, pours layer by layer wax onto a sheet of greaseproof paper, lets dry, and cuts to size. Bio foundation is proving hard to get, if left too late.

went out to buy stuff today. ironically the perigordine cooperative agricole where I buy is cheaper than ickowitz's online offer. just after we got home the post arrived with this year's thorne's catalogue. they have a french warre hive on offer for £205 and I am in love immediately but too broke to go for even one! my ladies are as happy as can be and now I am training my OH to do bits and pieces so that I can work inside the hives with my one good hand... love spring and this bit, pesky shoulder!

Know what you mean, and it is changing, and evolving all the time.... wonderful, and confusing at the same time!

but they also acquire (learn) behaviour from those more recently born who carry behaviour as genetic traits. science is pretty mindboggling and I always need half a dozen runs at stuff like this before my head registers it.

still not getting it... the eggs coming out of the new queen are all her offspring... therefore, by introducing a more docile queen, you are ending up with her genes in all offspring, the only thing is the waiting game for the old brood, as you said, to hatch, go through the cycle, and die off.

I'm pretty sure that if we get them out of that old box, they'll be better, just not sure we've time for all that jazz beofre jelly production begins, we have a LOT of prep still left to be done.

no, the eggs are fertile so both our girls and the blokes carry the implanted genes. so drones are thre waiting to be hatched. it seems there is no other way of breaking the chain than what you are doing, waiting for the dilution of old genes and what comes with that. took me 4 years to get one colony sweet, reckons we lives with it, hate doing in entire colonies under any circumstances anyway, have even driven them far away and forced swarming to avoid it.

not necessarily, over sinter, when there are no drones, it should be pretty easy to install a queen, the issue is, the workers "on standby" live right through till summer. Bear in mind, the queen has already been fecondée... the drones have done their bit, and it's the workers that do the stinging, so the other drones left in the hive have no bearing on the mentality of the hive, they sorta just "mince about" with the life-span, the idea is the aggressive bees will die out, and the more docile workers will take their place. We usually let a hive orphan for a day or so, to firstly leave a gap in births/laying, and also because the workers accept their new queen better when they've lost the pheremone of the older one for real.

yes, go for langs too myself, better to work. drones carry the genes that mean colony survival, queens just do the other bit of it, that's the catch. replace queens as often as you like and the boys from the arsenal terraces still there, ooff.

We got an unfertilized queen first, and she obviously met "the bad type" of drones, out in the apiary. her offspring were far from docile, then we changed, and actually got a laying queen specially bred for breeding queens and jelly production, and her offspring were not much better. The hive box is an older dadant hive, and is just "an experiment", because we prefer the langstroths. I find the hive hard to work on because of it's layout, and their propensity to propolise every square milimetre of the hive.

If the hive is draughty, I can understand them. We're possibly going to take that hive out of jelly production this year, and use it for honey. That means changing the queen again... lol Bit of a casse tete.

nah, bloody tv - just like my daughters. but seriously, my guru got us biologists and such speakers in and they taught us that whilst a single genetic line remains in a hive the collective experience retains old things. problem there is new queen therefore needs new drones, in effect an entire new colony instead and let old die off. not a game i like but have done in in desperation a few times, kindof is a haunted box in effect.

hahaha. We have one colony, but I suspect it is the hive box that riles them, but they attack us even when we work on neighbouring hives. We've changed the queen, to no avail... haunted hive box?

snap, except for rowdie colonies who clearly watch too much uk soccer on the mini tv I suspect them of having, hahaha!

I saw that in Vanuatu, where they keep bees "the old fashioned way". inspiring stuff. I'm ok in a tight T-shirt around them, but after a bad allergic reaction last season, I do still cover my face.

yes, hopefully with a few stings, your shoulder will be pain free, and recovering well.

yep, I am asking nicely for volunteers for once my dressings are off and a few stings in the shattered shoulder will help me. soft years and harvesting, well yes, can be chaotic but my teacher even showed us how to make that gentle by placing large garlands of very scented, pollen rich flowers on trees near harvests. apparently the norm in paama and such places in new caledonia where the most protected people might well be the men with their penis gourds! won't go to that extent; suit as ever but the garlands have been fairly effective couple of years I tried... love experimenting anyway, especially traditional methods with a few thousand years head start on me.

I love that, when they're all soft at the start of the year. Honey time is another story, lol. The first year I experienced honey harvest, it was nothing short of brutal, for both the bees, and the keepers. When they get back up off the ground ofter being shot a few hundred yards with a bee blower, they're not happy campers.

The sheer weight of them all on the suit, trying to get in a well placed sting was crippling in the heat. thankfully, not all beekeepers work like the man in question,and I've since learned to become gentle with them, and they are gentle back. Mind you, I do like a sting now and then, for medical purposes.

bee talking to them, having a few on my hand for a look at me. whilst i can't work them i'll let them get my scent into the collective memory so that I can at least enjoy a glove free yearamongst little friends. first skirmishes with other insects on the go already, think by late summer when the frelon asiatique move in seriously they may be really well prepared. fingers crossed anyway.

Hi David, welcome aboard....

Buchfast bees indeed, lovely to work with. We're using mostly caucasians, and another hybrid specially made for royal jelly production. The caucasians rob everytime a hive is opened, so it's complete chaos everytime we visit the apiary.Not very good for honey production, but for jelly it poses less of a problem.

Brian, glad to hear your girls are on top form for the spring!. We're bringing ours up from the south very soon, they're saying they'll have drought very soon down there, and so, they'll get an early start up here in the 74

good on yer... in fact, my ex-OH took it up then had several years on the trot out of UK. she was officially a senior academic in cambridge but the relevant point is that her college's senior porter was the guru of east anglia in his own time. he took a rather reluctant moi over in his group of people learning by helping enough amateur keepers for there to be over 200,000 colonies to work. precious years. anyway, OH and I split amicably because she left uk permanently, etc. when in europe she stays with us a week or so a whirl and works the hives. buckfast queens, nice indeed. just got nice little local black bees who are clearly beginning to cope with the asian hornets and seem to have no varroa issues. found surprising numbers of hornets who had got in by who knows what means, since it should be physically impossible to pass the guards on my entrances. they were ready to be trashed from the looks of them, stored in the bases of hives the cold did for. whatever, but gut instinct says watch bees that are 'new' given the ferocity of the huge predators.

keep calling in, always nice to know how we are all doing.