This article was originally published in 2015
Everybody needs to look over the fence once in a while, especially beekeepers. Something that caught my eye recently was a study looking at weeds and glyphosate resistance, a study which itself took a glance over the palings at antibiotic resistance in hospitals. Resistance is not a phenomenon unique to beekeeping, it is universal and, at its simplest, just about how organisms adapt and evolve in their environment.
From our po
The bacterial brood disease American Foul Brood (AFB) occurs worldwide and leads to significant losses of honey bee colonies every year. In several countries, as in New Zealand, AFB is a notifiable disease and infected bee colonies have to be burned to contain the disease. Although it has been under investigation now for more than a century, the underlying characteristics of the host–pathogen interactions on larval level remain elusive. An effective treatment of AFB does still not exist, partly
Checked both hives.
The split hive was fed syrup for the past week to encourage comb-drawing, which has worked very well - the checkerboarded top box has a good amount of uncapped syrup on freshly drawn comb and the queen is busily laying in the middle - no queen cups / cells. Sugar shake tested for varroa from brood frames, no mites fell on the plate. Removed varroa strips and the top feeder, added a honey super above QE. Happier about the stores situation now than I was last week -
Hives
Went through the hive with the old (failing) queen and the new prolific one. The queens are separated with a QE so I know what's happening with each one. Hive is doing really well in terms of numbers of bees & brood.
In the failing queen FD, the bees had made a supersedure cell from one of the playcups - it had been capped during the week. No swarm cells anywhere - just the one supersedure. My guess is that the nurse bees in that part of the hive couldn't smell
Both hives checked.
The 2-queened hive is really pumping - having one queen in each FD and placing a QE in between was a great tip, as now I can better see what's going on.
The new queen is laying up a storm - the old one is still laying but not as well. The hive is full of bees and the bees are 'holding hands' big time - they are even hanging below the hivedoctor base. Despite this, there is still space to lay and to store honey. Hopefully checkerboarding emptier frames
Have you ever wondered about honey, what it is and why it’s like it is? What about quality and honey, what should beekeepers know?
Honey comes from Nectar
Nectar is a solution produced by plants that animals collect for food. Plants have special structures that make this solution usually from water and sap flowing in the plant. Often these are found in flowers and attract animals that pollinate the plant, but that is not always the case, and they can sometimes be found on
The number of kiwifruit blocks covered by a canopy is increasing. These canopies consist of a hail netting supported on rammed posts, and can cover a considerable area, thousands of square meters. Many, but not all, are fully enclosed with netting down to ground level along the sides. From a grower's perspective these provide some substantial benefits. Obviously, given the name, one is protection from hail. Even unnoticed hail damage can cause a significant fall in the return a grower gets for t
The bees' continued attempts to make the beekeeper understand their behaviour still have no effect - the beekeeper still doesn't understand what on earth the bees are doing.
To recap:
03/06/2017 - capped queen cell - decided to keep it in the hive and see what happens
13/08/2017 - unmarked queen found with plenty of brood; figured a successful mid-winter supersedure had taken place
31/08/2017 - spotted a marked queen in the same hive. Hive is super busy and flowing ove
As Honey bee workers mature they undergo a behavioural development scientists call “temporal polyethism”, more commonly referred to as an age-related (not age-dependant!) division of labour. Younger bees for the first two to three weeks of adult life work inside the hive at tasks such as brood care and hive maintenance, and older individuals work outside the hive as foragers. The transition to foraging involves changes that cause many thousands of alterations in gene activity in the brain affect
A quick AFB matchstick test for one of the hives - no symptoms but wanting to be sure.
Further inspections stopped by rain...followed by hail. Thanks Auckland.
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