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Getting the Apideas ready
So we started getting the Apideas ready this year for Queen rearing, here is some of the work to get them ready. This is your basic apidea, we number these for our hive records Taking the Floats out, these help the Bees feed Taking the Frames out Removing the ventaltion screen remove the door […]
Opening the hives
We’re starting to open the hives again this year Getting suited and booted Getting the Smoker ready Opening the hives Some Brood (top) and some frames with out brood (bottom) Checking the frames We have a queen, you can spot her with the yellow mark Plenty of Bees in the hives The hive on […]
Apimondia 2011 Argentina technical tour Wax plant
We also went to Panales Arroyo wax plant where they make foundation Below is the heater for first grade of wax to come in to the plant, its all melted down here to two different grades Below are the second grade baths, this is of a higher grade wax. From above it heads to the […]
Apimondia 2011 Argentina technical tour
We’ve been at Apimondia 2011 Argentina, and we took a tour to Buenos Aries province. The bee apiary was located in Azul in Buenos Aries state. This beekeeper has over 2000+ hives Opening the hives With many many beekeepers around there was lots and lots of questions, from all the different nationalities. […]
Extracting the honey
We’ve stated to extract the honey, the extraction process is where you use a extractor to spin the honey frames from the hives around in a circle. Below shows a picture of the empty extractor. The bits you see in the extractor is wax capings from the frames. The centrifugal force, forces out the honey […]
The first frame of honey
We’ve just taken off the first frames of honey. We’ve got a new machine for uncapping the wax from the frame so we can get the honey out. You can see it below, it works like a nail press. You put the frame in and then press down the lever a few times and hey […]
The honey harvest begins
The clear boards have gone on, these boards make the bees go down to the brood chamber so that we can remove the honey crop from the supers (the supers are the boxes that contain the honey). Above shows a clearer board before it goes on the hive and in the background you can see […]
Honey flow
The honey is still comming in as you can see in the Pictuers below Himalayan Balsam is the current nectar provider at the moment.
Supersedure
Supersedure is the process by which an old queen bee is replaced by a new queen. Supersedure may be initiated due to old age of a queen or a diseased or failing queen. As the queen ages her pheromone output diminishes. We had a Supersedure cell when we inspectied hives, you can see this in […]
Queen Catching
Trying to catch queens is all ways a difficult task, here is one of the techniques that we use. its best to keep the queen in the lower brood chamber of the hive, we do this using a queen excluder, shown below The queen should be marked, but a handy way of trapping the queen […]
Apidea maiting hives
The Apidea is regarded by some as the best mini nucleus mating hive. It is used to mate virgin queens with a minimum amount of bees A frame from the Apidea mini nucleus mating hive. The Apidea mini nucleus mating hive only uses a small amount of bees. We use these to breed our queens. […]
Swarm
We had a swarm today, have a look at the images. what is a swarm? Swarming is the natural means of reproduction of honey bee colonies. A new honey bee colony is formed when the queen bee leaves the colony with a large group of worker bees, a process called swarming.
Honey flow is on the way
The honey is comming, and the plants are supplying some of them are pictured below Some oil seed rape in Ballynoe Some grass seeds in ballynoe
Jarring the honey
Well the last of last years crop of honey is gone, we used our new jarring machine. While the traditional simple way of jarring is opening and closing a valve. Our new machine makes life a little easer using a gear pump to give an exact measurement of honey. The machine itself came all the […]
More qeen rearing
The results of the queen rearing are bearing fruit, we had our first queen today above is the queen cells from grafted lava. A close up of the queen cell Placing the queen cell into the holder The queen cells ready for putting in to the incubator above the queen cells in the incubator keep […]
Queen rearing
Its the season for queen rearing, we’ve been using a number of methods to do queen rearing the main one was grafting. we took the queen out of the hive, and put in the cell bar in with the grafts long side a frame of pollen and a frame of young bees. Then we added […]
Checking the hives
Hives were opened on the 23rd of April, Images can be seen below Above you can see the Bees ariving win with Pollen looking for larvae, that is young Bees