Bee Keeping

The original phrase does not require that the experience or the knowledge has to have anything to do with engineering. Which is exactly what makes this forum interesting and useful.

And maybe sometimes further confuse non-English spearers

Ian S C

Is that spearing of or by non-english persons?

Neil

Speakers.

Ian S C

Clive,

Your bees have been correct in their winter weather prediction!

Snow for the first time I can remember this time of the year here in South Norfolk.

Geoff - Work on the Austin Seven delayed.

Often wondered how you capture a swarm. Interesting video here showing how to use technology to manage it. And none of that poncy clothing.

Clive - how do you capture yours? You seem to do this before breakfast most days although I've never even set eyes on a swarm myself.

.

That looks like a game for suckers.

MichaelG.

Oh dear. This means that vacuuming wasps and spiders up probably doesn't do them in

I usually catch Spiders using a small plastic tub and piece of thin cardboard, then put it (the spider) out into the garden.

Individual Wasps seem to go out of an opened window of their own accord anyway.

Edited By V8Eng on 16/07/2016 23:38:51

The bee video was interesting, nice calm brown bees. My black bees would have taken revenge on that bee keeper long before they had swarmed - vicious little girls.
BobH

My bees usually swarm close to the hives and get into a Holly tree where I just cut the branch off and take it to my catching box and then take the whole lot to the Nuc. box. and walk them in onto 5 combs of foundation I have pics. that I will resize later. Other times they get right into the Brambles and it takes me a while to cut through to them, but the same procedure each time as I cut stems and place in the box.

Sometimes I am lucky and get a free hanging swarm on a branch of a fruit tree and just bang them down into the box. Pics. of a good one later when I load into my .album.

Clive

Thats why it's good to use a bagged vacuum, you can always pummel it a few times just to make sure and deal them a goodly thrashing before discarding of it. It can get a bit dusty though.

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 17/07/2016 07:55:48

Anyone know anything about bumble bees? I always thought they were solitary, but from the numbers coming and going through a ventilator in one of my garages there must be a nest somewhere among the junk. They seem quite friendly and they're quite welcome to stay, but will they die off in the winter?

Hi Mike,

Type bumble bees in the search bar on youtube, watched it couple weeks ago , very interesting .....b

the video i saw was about 30 min running time.

Edited By bodge on 17/07/2016 08:27:52

Mike, just leave the Bumble bees to get on with it as they will die out about end Sept. The nest will have about 25 to 40 bees in it and in general quite harmless. They may make a loud buzz and if threatened have a defence pose where they lift one foreleg up.

In general they are beneficial as they pollinate a lot better than honey bees. You cannot re-locate them as any loss of members drags the colony down.

In Sept. the new Queens vacate the nest and mate and then hibernate until Jan or so depending on the temperature. I have seen them working on Xmas day on a little white flower in my garden.

They are protected under the Wildlife act and we should never kill them. They are in decline due to suffering all the same problems as honey bees.

I have one locally that has colonised a face figure on a wall and they use the mouth to access the nest.

Clive Any questions welcome.

I have now put 3 photos in my album of swarms.

Clive

Just to clarify, I was joking in my earlier post, i don't enjoy beating bees. Quite the opposite, i love them and hope they continue to prosper and i always think of them as the engineering/maker insect family, i had a family of bumbles live in an area of sod (cut turf) they made holes in there and left a strange whitish substance behind along with their cocooned babies.

We didn't touch them as we welcomed their presence and didn't clear it until they left and moved on. You can actually stroke them if you're gentle/weird like me. They're attracted and mesmerized to these purple flowers.  

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 17/07/2016 10:51:26

With wasps, I catch them in a jar that has a little bit of Carberil(?spelling) powder in it, shake the wasp around until covered in powder, then let it go, it heads off home and poisons the nest. Hint from a local bee keeper.

Ian S C

Insects have declined hugely since the 1980s.

My drive up to Aviemore and back in summer always involved stopping halfway on each leg to scrub off the windscreen and refill the empty scoosher bottle

Did the same sort of trip last week on a sunny day and didn't even need to use the scoosher once, up and back and barely a splat

So think carefully before you squish a bug, there aint that many left anymore

This lack of bugs would certainly help to explain why wild bird populations have crashed over the same period