2011-12-24 Christmas in Baghdad.

Over at Edis' for Kucios, the Lithuanian Christmas Eve thing....

Trouble keeps an eye on things.

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I saw what looked like a native resin bee, lurking around, on the side of the house.

This one was ducking in and out of a nail hole.

About the same size as the Apis Mellifera

.....is this a type of bee?

2011-12-16 From compost bin to country side: the story of how Katrina's swarm became Albina's hive (guest blogger: Jazmina)

Jonas makes sure Albina gets started on the right path to successful beekeeping

The starter pack includes a super with frames, queen excluder, beekeeping suit (on loan), hand illustrated notes (which Albina is so impressed with she plans to frame them) and the obligatory tube of Stingose

One of the city girls farewells Katrina's swarm as they exchange their inner urban lodgings....

...for the rolling hills and wide open spaces of  St Helier (Albina's house is the red speck among  the trees)

Jazmina's Bee Delivery Service, unloading Katrina's swarm from the XM coupe. Late at night after all the girls had gone to bed, I (Jazmina) stuffed an old tee shirt into the hive door, then taped it securely in place with packaging tape. First thing the following morning I loaded the girls into the back seat and set off for the country. My trusty assistant, Trouble, sat up front with me.

Following Jonas' comprehensive instructions, Albina makes sure the hive has the correct forward slope in its new home. You may remember Albina (my mum) from an earlier blog. She helped Jonas out with a Metropolis bee check about a year ago.

Unleashing the bees, who entered the hive for the last time as Katrina's swarm...

...and emerge for the first time as Albina's hive. Very relaxed, all things considered.

View of the girls' new back yard...

...and their new front yard

Trouble performs a security check of the girls' new  surrounds and gives the all clear

A country cousin hard at work

The neighbours come over to welcome the girls...

...and enjoy a morning tea of pears and carrots

The girls' new workplace. Let's see if they can increase productivity.

Krupnikas, the Barnevelder who has also made the journey from Northcote to St Helier. He began his life as a chick called Honolulu in the inner city but once his testosterone (and crowing) manifested itself  the search began for a rooster-friendly home. He had a short stint at Nada's place in Castlemaine, where he was renamed Lou...and brutalised by the four resident roosters, before Albina offered him sanctuary on her block. He is doing splendidly, and so far has managed to evade the fox (unlike the rest of the flock...)

The new beekeeper's residence (i.e. Albina's house)

Albina checks on the girls at the end of the day. They seem to have settled in nicely. Job done!  Guest blogger Jazmina signing off. 

2011-12-10 Northcote check

A quick look into the Northcote hives to see what has gone on since the harvest 2 weeks ago.

Turns out, not much.

 The "other" first, this one still had brood up in the top, I had moved the queen down 2 weeks ago, and these had still had not hatched. 24 days is the time it takes them to hatch from being laid (maximum, for drones, workers more like 21), so this brood should all be hatched in the next 10 days

 Middle box, maybe quarter full.

 Down in the bottom box, lots of brood...

 ...and grubs, so the queen is down there and has been busy.

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Over to metropolis.

I reckon this particular frame looks exactly the same every time I open it up.

 Patchy brood,

 ...but grubs and so on.

 A drone is born.

Too many drones in here for my liking.

 Lots of little dangly burr comb on the bottom frames, too.

 A frame with lots of drone brood. Not a good sign.

Overall, it seems The other is sorting itself out , while Metropolis is not really moving, just lots of drones and not much honey. probably should re-queen, but this is peak honey collection time, and re-queening will disrupt everything for a while. Still, probably worth doing, as I'm not going to get any honey out of it at this rate.

Thankfully, the girls were very peaceful this time, almost serene after the carnage and chaos of 2 weeks ago.

Whew.

2011-12-08 Bee Photographs by Rose-Lynn Fischer

My dad Edis gave me a book tonight, called

BEE: Photographs by Rose-Lynn Fisher.

The most amazing  photos of bees, seen through a scanning electron microscope.

Enjoy a few samples, scanned from the book:

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An Antenna 

130x

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.The base of the antenna 

150x

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Hello handsome.

15x

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The stinger.

37x

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Dang, got a bit of pollen in my eye.

190x

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" The top edge of the hind wing has hooks called humuli which catch on the fold at the bottom edge of the fore-wing; this interaction allows the two wigs to function as one during flight. At rest the humuli slip out, and the wings disconnect, each folding separately over the back"

x86

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...loads more amazing photos in this book....

2011-12-07 Katrinas bees move house

A beautiful evening after work, still 27 degrees at about 7, so did a  job I'd been meaning to do for a while - transfer Katrina's swarm into Albina's bee box.  These bees are going up to St. Hellier (Near Phillip Island), so I wanted to get them into the box Albina left me, instead of keeping them in my spare box.

Sookie and Cordelia enjoying the late afternoon rays...

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First a quick look into The queen-less hive, this one is now finally bee-less. It took 10 weeks for this to go from being a swarm, to dying out due to not having a queen on board. Last week there were still a few hundred bees, not there were about 4.

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..and unfortunately, a whole lot of hive-moths and earwigs had taken residence, and trashed the place.

I had been hoping that they would just be empty, then I could drop the box on top of Katrina's swarm, but this is a bit too over=run with other bugs for my liking. Shows how when a hive is weak, that;s when other critters and diseases take hold. I'll probably melt down these frames.

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Now, into Katrina's (I think it will need re-naming soon.....)

A bit of burr-comb under the lid. I put a hive-mat in there after I finished.

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Loads of brood

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.Loads or grubs

A couple of supersedure cells. No big deal.

One of the 2 uncapped supersedure cells.

Overall, there were about 4 full frames of brood, not much honey, some nectar. I guess they had been too bust re-populating to have time to fetch excess honey. They'll get there.

The other thing, these are very placid bees, I could have done the whole thing without a suit, I reckon. Probably because the conditions were ideal.

2011-11-27 Baghdad Payday

Up to Castlemaine for a break over the weekend, but we got back early enough on Sunday for me to do a bee check. As it turns out, good thing I did, these boxes are filling up!

The bees are busy suckin down the nectar in the front yard...

...while out the back they are filing it away....Katrinas swarm on the left, looking very busy, the queenless swarm on the right.

Sooky looks on

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That's Jazmina belowin full regalia, doing some gardening.

You can't be too carefull...

Inside the queenless hive, they are slowly dying out...loads of Drones.

This drone has seen better days, shabby wings..

The very first frame I took out of "The Other".....chockers. There's gonna be some spinning...

One small supersedure cell in there...

But what's this below, brood in the top box?

Dang, I thought the queen was in the bottom, turns out she's in the top.

I shuffled the boxes around, still not 100% sure where the queen is, as I didn't see her..

Bee on lens..

Got 3 frames out of the Other, some frames in the top box had lots of honey, but with brood mixed in, so I left them. Come back in a month.

Metropolis below, a bit quiet, but I got 1 full frame out of there....

Over in Alphington a bit later that day, I hadn't checked Baghdad for ages...

Edis was ready to collect.

Under the hive mat, pretty calm. Little did we know....

Heaps of honey in the top box.

Of the 8 frames, there were only the outside 2 that were not fully capped, so I grabbed the 6 and 2 from below, that were not technically capped, but were crazy  free-stylin comb that had not been hanging straight, and the girls had filled in the gaps with weird comb-shapes.

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Edis pretty happy, at last the they were coughing up the rent.

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Next day Adrian came over and we spun the honey out. Big night, very sticky.

here's  the wax we got out while we were at it, a layer over an inch thick. Not sure what to do with it all, maybe candles. Not sure I could be bothered...

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The collection bucket was almost full....

20 litres all up, out of 12 frames, mostly into the three 5-litre buckets, and a whole lot of baby-food jars  and sundry other jars (Adrian has had a few other things on lately...)

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what I didn't mention in here is that over 3  days I got absolutely hammered with stings, the girls are not happy to let you grab their honey, At ALL.

I reckon at least 15 stings on 3 separate occasions, due to being under-dressed, bees getting under the gusset of my suit, under my gloves, and just stinging me through the suit, generally. I need to get wise about this, the pain is not good. Edis got stung too, through his cord pants and via his pockets. Ouch.

++++++++++++++ ooooooooooooo ++++++++++++++

STING TALLY: this season

Jonas : 30 

Adrian : 1

Edis : 6

Jazmina : 3

++++++++++++++ ooooooooooooo ++++++++++++++

HONEY TALLY:

2010/11: 34 litres

20011/12: 31 Litres so far.