We are in the last week of June and today (22nd) we’ve had cold wind and rain coming from the east – whatever happened to ‘blazing June’?
Despite the atrocious weather we did have a well attended Moray Beekeepers meeting and Andrew Tassell gave an informative talk on varroa and then demonstrated the various methods of treating the mite. There are quite a few newcomers looking for bees but none of us has collected a swarm this season and many of the ‘wild’ colonies died out over the winter.
I managed to harvest about 80lb of honey from the Oil seed rape which is below average but I’m not complaining as at least I’ve still got bees.
Because of the lack of swarms I have been experimenting with Queen rearing but without much success as yet. The sealed Queen cells I placed in the 8 mini nucs in May resulted in just 1 mated Queen so the remaining 7 were united to make 4 nucs and again given a sealed Queen cell. I will be having a look at them next week to see if we have any success.
After the swarming attempts at the rape I have ended up with 8 colonies of differing strengths and each has been given a gallon of syrup to help them through the ‘June gap’
My plan is to help them to build up and then select 6 of the strongest for moving to the heather at the end of July.
If I am successful with the mini nucs I intend giving them to new beekeepers as well as not so new beekeepers who lost their bees over the winter.
I really must get to grips with my digital camera becuase this site is really boring without any photos!
