Today marks the end of the varroa treatment time period, so I took out the strips. Only remembered after topping up the feeder so it was harder than necessary! A wood pigeon was stamping around beside me as I must have been in stealth mode or he was sneaking up on me very badly.
00:06
Welcome back to a beekeepers diary podcast. We are a week later, around 20ish of September. I never know what the date is, it's around the 20th of September and it really feels quite autumnal today, there's a little chill in the air.
00:29
just as the jumbo jet flies over. I was just standing here listening to goldcrests singing in the trees above me. could hear two calling to each other. Right above me as I stand in this little hedge line looking at the bees. Very pleasant. I've had red kites flying overhead, magpies and crows shouting about the place.
00:57
Relatively quick visit today. um I made up five litres of sugar syrup for the bees in the two to one ratio, so five kilos of sugar to two and a half litres of water. Just boiled water then poured it into the pot, mixed it around. I've added a product called Hive Alive to it as well, which is a thymol based product. I can hear a pheasant fluttering about.
01:27
not the quietest of flutterers. Yeah, so some hive Alive went in there and it's got thymol in it, which stops the sugar syrup from going mouldy. Sometimes if the bees, once it gets a bit colder, it takes longer for the bees to drink all the sugar syrup down. It can sit there for a while. It can go mouldy, but the thymol
01:52
however you choose to pronounce it, prevents that from happening and apparently there's some good nutrients in the mixture as well to help the bees. I mainly use it for the thymol aspect. was, you know, quite a while ago you used to have to mix your own emulsification involving sort of leucythin and thymol capsules and all that sort of stuff but this makes life a lot easier.
02:21
noisy plane going over.
02:27
Yes, so I've added that in. It's got a certain smell as well, so know when you've hives have got that in the syrup. So I fill that right up. So that's a nice feed that'll take them up to 15 kilos in total. And the hive hefted, I felt the weight of it hefted much heavier. So I'm pleased with that and that's going in. And today marked the end of varroa treatment. So.
03:05
There's a pigeon right beside me. I can see you, Mr. Pigeon. What are doing there?
03:14
It's right beside me thinking I can't see it. um
03:22
Yes, so stupidly. I was supposed to take the empty feeder off, then take out my varroa treatment, put the feeder back on and top it up. I got that completely backwards, so I topped the feeder up. Then remember that I had to take the strips out, so I had to take a heavy feeder off the top, then take the strips out. I was trying to do it quickly because the bees really don't like the hive opening at this time of year because it's cold and obviously they're quite defensive of their stores, so that was fun.
03:52
um Yeah so I managed to get those out, put the lid on. I've had a good look for wasps, nothing happening. But the bees have done something new this year. um The entrance block that I put in, they've decided they don't think it's wide enough so they've nibbled my polyhive all across the top of the hive entrance and made a long narrow strip.
04:18
all the way across the top of the entrance block that they can just about clamber in and out. So that completely defeats the object of me putting this entrance reducer in that I can help them defend the hive by reducing the entrance from the wasps. And then they've made a massive entrance that I can't help them with, which makes it easier for the wasps. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that. I'll just let them, if they want to, they'll propolis it up and I'll have to do some repairs in the spring.
04:48
honestly you try and help them and they do the opposite of what you were trying to achieve. But there we go, so, varroa treatment finished, feedings going on, bees are making the entrance really big for no apparent reason. I guess they wanted more space. They don't look to be struggling to get through the entrance, you know, oh well. m
05:12
So it was good. Yeah. Thanks for listening. Another week. I've changed the host of my website. So if you click on beekeepersdiarypodcast.com it's over on a Buzzsprout site now. So I worked out I was paying for two like a podcast host and a website when I can do it all in one place. So I've transferred it over to all in Buzzsprout. So it looks a bit different.
05:35
And if you're looking how to find the podcast, other than searching it in your own personal podcast provider, there's a follow button. that if you click that, it opens up all the links to all the podcast providers. So that makes it easy just to click through if you're looking and I'll be putting some clips on Beekeepers diary podcast account on Instagram. I've taken a little bit of video. You can see some amusing footage of a bee trying to sting my microphone. uh
06:05
Right have a good one, I shall see you next week. The pigeon's still wandering around beside me. I can still see you, you're not hiding. See you later.