Trihyc2

@ElmTreeBees Is demand strong in the UK? €3.50/kg across the channel for osr

COMB TO STONE This is exactly what we DO NOT NEED A pulse of fine weather when the rape seed is in full bloom and the cold weather comes & sets our comb to stone before we can extract it.

@ElmTreeBees Forgot about clipping queens. Have never ever done that!

@trihyc2 I've demareed them down the bottom but they are unstable. But who cares? if she flops she flops, the bees come back. In which case leave 1 cell. Simple

I'm engineering some whopping great colonies by process of eliminating naff queens and combining. If Summer comes good I'll be on a very healthy yield average. Already it's been decent (20kg avg so far?) It's HIGHLY likely it'll be over even earlier than last year (late June).

@ElmTreeBees Italians mainly now, with some buckfast. Worked with carnies fine also. It's a long time since I'd blacks

@trihyc2 What type of bees are you using?

If there is ANY chance our bees can make another queen they will cast. Ok, unless there is 0 flying bees but even then they might go with 5 bees leaving a tiny emergency queen to head the colony. I've heard the Wainwright method you can pull a few frames, add a cell almost immediately and that queen will hatch and duff up the other cells. This has to be a genetic danish buckfast trait. If so then this is another reason to switch over to buckfasts. Am I interpreting this correctly, or am I missing something here?

@ElmTreeBees He who watches the wind will not sow and he who watches the clouds will not reap

Since BORAGE is typically drilled around now in the South-East BUT It's bone dry It probably won't grow. Does anyone know the situation. I'm mentally preparing writing it off which will bring great relief as it's a lot of hard work.

@ElmTreeBees You've lots of low hanging fruit for efficiency I would think. No sites less than 20-24 for starters. If you could work more as a team instead of multiple separate beekeepers out of a shed, there would be more gains before even changing hive management

Alright big spender!! My point is costs are going up 4% a year and honey price in nomonal terms is not moving. At this rate, honey will be practically worthless in a decade without upwards movement on price. Fine if you're at retirement age, not if you're younger and wondering what to do.

diesel pushing £1.80... I wouldn't be suprised to see £2 / litre. Unless your bees are in your garden it'll have a material impact on cost of production. I've dropped distant aparies, reducing site visits. Borage may have to go. Also the trucks are due for replacement (80k - 130k miles). Bought at 16 now at 30k. I was even looking what we penned in for extraction costs in 2019... £8.50/hr!!!

@ElmTreeBees @GlenHeathrHoney Your thinking is too rigid on how to change your management. It shouldn't just be a case of doing the same thing with an increased rotation length. With a bit of creativity, you could get more hives done per day on average for less overall effort

Extending beyond a 12 day rotation means you really need danish buckfast type bee & there's resistance there (not from me) Not worried about the frames. We lob them on the fire now. Don't bother to render them down now. Boxes save and its useful to be box heavy. Can pick up numbers again should circumstance allow.

I don't think I'm going to do any splits this year. Last year I went from 450 down to 300 & this year I start on 350 but would like to trim that to 300. The main problem; we're having problems finding beekeepers. If you're not feeling optimism then cut the reproduction rate.

@GlenHeathrHoney @ElmTreeBees Where? I shouldn't be dumping mine so!

@ElmTreeBees Worth a fortune.

Howard is doing a fantastic job of servicing the extract line. Look at how much propolis the uncapper gearing has picked up!

@calluna4u @ElmTreeBees There's usually 10-11 months of drone brood in se Ireland with prolific bees. More of a curse than of benefit

@ElmTreeBees So you had drone brood in January? Better forget OA liquid treatment, looks like those bees have no window for it.

Some new drones on the biggest and genuine nectar coming in on early spots. Around 10% need S1

@ElmTreeBees ebay.co.uk/b/bn_55196551 Sell the unimog and buy a hovercraft!

Very very wet. Many sites inaccessible. Bees are starting to get light so prospect of walking boxes/fondant inescapable.

@ElmTreeBees All the investments in equipment are relatively small so it doesn't really affect things to have it all yourself bar you're trying to aggressively expand. In which case it's not in neighbours interest to support you most likely

Economies of scale I've always wondered why bee farmers - sometimes within a radius of 20mi all have their own extract lines, jarring setups etc As the demand for high price honey stagnates it's inevitable efficiency will play a major part on who survives & who doesn't.

@GwenynGruffydd Can they eat through the anel boxes? If you want it to get really bad, leave it sitting on a pallet and rodents will dig through the walls searching for larvae

Wax moth strikes again! The poly had zero defence against them! I’ve even seen them eat through wood!! #waxmoth #beekeeping #beekeeper

@ElmTreeBees Largely a waste of time I'd imagine after Christmas if you're on the same timeline as se Ireland. The 10 days before Christmas is the best shot. Lots will have started laying again by that time

Finding around 10-20% still have brood. It's no wonder a single 'Winter' treatment of OA is not very effective.

@ElmTreeBees A tiny bit of thymol in the syrup would prevent that

The arduous task of feed bucket cleaning! Now we're using sugar rather than invert = more mold to deal with. I can't think of a more efficient way of doing it other than a scrubbing brush!

@ElmTreeBees Did you melt it out? To produce good quality ivy honey in Ireland it was essential to have very new wax, older wax would taint it. Maybe it's just English ivy tastes like ass though!

Roughly what we got at the Welsh heather (only big strong colonies in good areas did much) The difference; heather tastes great & Ivy tastes like ditch runoff (& has various issues like setting to a stone & separating)

10 buckets of Ivy honey It WAS a good Ivy year Around 1/3 of the speculative (supers above crownboard) filled Is it worth delaying treatment? Almost certainly not

@calluna4u @ElmTreeBees I think the soda boil is probably something that I should do. I think there probably wouldn't be much extra time involved vs giving a scrape plus the sterilisation benefits

@trihyc2 @ElmTreeBees But you have wired frames..as do I...methods that leave the wires intact are economically critical to it being viable. Chris does not have that type of frames. Also..this is an EFB risk area...as is Chris's. The sterilising that comes with the soda boil is important.

Question for everyone but I'm thinking of @calluna4u specifically here. Old frames. Melt down & reframe or buy new &/or waxed. If melt down/reframe what equipment do you use?

@calluna4u @ElmTreeBees That's just steamed. I just give the frames a scrape after and don't boil. Not sure how much time that would add. For me the steamer is better than chopping

@trihyc2 @ElmTreeBees Our steamers lie redundant in the attic now....we found there was still a lot of work after that point...a lot of scraping off of coccoons etc. Then still had to go through the soda boil to properly sterilise and get rid of the propolis. Doubt that there is a single perfect way.