Sailabee

There were whole lines of poplars that died of some lergy around here, used to drive past them most days, and watched from start to dropping to the ground over several years, and the same has happened to pines and macrocarpas - each with a different disease killing them.

At least the sugar should be cheap, as it is grown in Queensland.

If I am reading correctly, the heating unit is in the queen excluder, and as heat rises, this would mean that the honey box would get more heating than the brood box, while the varroa are mainly in the brood box.

Many of the children starting school today are a far cry from those who used to start school. Totally un-house trained, very little verbal language range which is within bounds, and often have parents who have put very little effort into helping their children develop these basic skills. Financial background of the parents determines whether they have been sat in from of a TV all day, or using a handheld device all day. Many of these parents absolutely refuse to hear their children's reading at home. Have done several one day seminars on Biological farming - another incarnation of regenerative farming, and is usually phased in over five or so years, and once achieved the savings are considerable, mostly in fertiliser and veterinary costs. For one thing, the move away from the rye/clover diet to broader ranges of seeds planted. I hope that over the coming decade that Covid 19 will have sped up the rate of these types of practices as the land and water will benefit hugely, as well as the farming families.

Totally agree Mummzie, as a hobby beek, I was very not prepared to give it a go, as I saw so many very experienced commercials shot down if they posted anything but glowing praise, and suspected there were more hiding behind the battlements so with just a few hives decided it was not worth the grief and risk to the bees. I think that there are other substrates to use which do not involve sewing Gib tape which would - like plastic strips provide a substrate which can be pulled intact, saving the bees all the work of carting it around the hive to dispose of it. The jute strip may well be that product as someone who has tried it has found - and while it is used in the horticultural industry, it is also used in the upholstery industry.

I think it more about being 'out of season' as most have chosen and used their autumn treatments, so thread will probably fire up in spring. Recent posts have been more forthcoming about problems and discrepancies which is a plus. Previously, anyone whose comments were perceived to not follow the needed marketing line were hammered which did restrict a number of posts considerably.

If there is space, you could create a heat sink by having sealed bottles of water always in the bottom of the incubator, so when power clapped out, would slow the cooling. Somewhere I have the formula as to how to slow the emergence of queens by slight cooling so could perhaps just land up with a longer time in the cells if cooled for just a short amount of time.

Can also use a wetex type dish sponge in ziplock bag with a 5 cm slit in with 60 mils in it, sitting on the topbars of standard Langstroth hive, with 60 mils at 65%, as the vapour is heavy, it flows down the frames, and even with professional training, not worth the grief particularly as it really hammers the bees - often worst hit is the queen, just as Crabee describes. Also beggers galv roofs and nails.

As I see it, the major disadvantage of bees at or on the Beehive would be that an even bigger raft of people would read about it and by next spring decide to get a hive and line up to 'save the bees' and they often make appalling beekeepers - all enthusiasm, very little real knowledge, or interest in learning, and most of their hives die out in the first season - particularly those who won't use conventional strips to treat the varroa mites. I say that as someone involved with hobby beekeeping for over ten years. Nationwide, we need to reduce the total number of hives by at least a third to achieve sane stocking levels - a problem pretty much only faced in NZ. The Town Hall hives in Auckland were originally managed by the then president of the Auckland Bee Club, and were a real pig to manage - access was a very narrow steep two flights of stairs up to the balcony, and getting full honey boxes down was a real pain. Were removed when balcony was being repainted, and not sure they were replaced afterwards as it seemed a good idea, but really impractical for the beekeeper doing the work. I would suggest that until you find a group of beekeepers prepared to do the hard yakka, it will all be at a standstill, other than writing letters. I would see wind and heavy salt spray as a real possible problem also up on the roof.

Don't see how the bath system would fit with and NP 1 and for that amount of honey, would think that that would be important. Perhaps a bigger commercial would have space in a hot room - if it's still running, to empty buckets into 200 lt drums, so a drum heater could be used to liquefy. If any crystalised honey remains, creaming will not stop it crystalising again as I understand it.

Thanks Kaihoka, perhaps I should give it another go, as I love the plants in mass plantings. I didn't even get a particularly good germination rate, so may have to splash out on another packet of seeds, and a few hail Marys.

I tried to grow them from seed, and the few that did germinate did not grow beyond 40 cms high before loosing the will to live - think it was the cruddy yellow clay.

When I first made my observation hive, put small styrene wedges bottom centre of the frme up to, so it didn't wobble intransit - first show, the bees manageed to split off a couple of beads and spent the two days trapsing around both sides of frame on display, with everybody who looked telling us about it, so removed and replaced with wodd for next year after thoroughly luxing out all visible beads, but the managed to find at least one bead for the next four uses, can't imagine where they were stashed out of sight, but felt like they were haunting me.

I think that as the Beehive is so close to an international shipping port, it would be smart to set it up as a sentinel hive - one which is monitored for new incursions across the border from overseas of new pests and diseases. There was on in the Rose Gardens in Parnell and one on the Town Hall balcony in Auck for exactly that reason, and would help strengthen awareness of that problem.

There were also people using cut to size blocks of the underfloor styrene to reduce brood boxes to nuc size - I think most painted the styrene with water based paints so they did not remove it a pellet at a time in spring.