Adrian reported that up at Buxton he was having problems with bees feeding
on his almost-ready-to-harvest grape crop.
The Utter Hive and the Other Hive were up on the hill,
overlooking the river and the valley were the grapes were.
Mid January we had checked both of these, and they each had at least one full box and looked like filling up the next.
A couple of weeks later, a casual "lift the box" check had revealed that the boxes seemed a bit light, despite the Peppermints flowering at about this time.
More recently, another lift check showed that the boxes were very light, meaning almost empty.
The bees had to move.
So, last night we went up there to grab the boxes, one to take to Mt. Evelyn, one for Northcote.
Beekeeping by the reversing light on Adrians ute.
The bees in the Other Hive went nuts when we taped up the door with an old sock and some duct tape.
Didn't help when the tape snapped and the sock went flying.
The Utter Hive had a proper door you could shut. Nice.
A long night.
------
Since then , Adrian said that there were still loads of bees on his grapes, so that means there are lots of feral bees up there, probably. Unlikely that any of the neighbours keep bees, there are none close enough.
Last year it was wasps.
No comments:
Post a Comment