Welcome back, I had a few fun edits to start the podcast but have managed to hide them on the cutting room floor somehow. Quick winter update, stores are good, no condensation on the top of the bees, all seems ok. Fingers crossed.
00:05
I'm here with a quick introduction. Well actually, being indoors for once, it seems I cut off the beginning of this podcast so I thought I'd just give a gentle introduction before cutting across to the field. So apologies for the strange start but hope you enjoy the next brief episode. Cheers.
00:31
I've had a look in the beehive as I've still only got one this year, hopefully we'll be back to two when I split these ones in the spring, hopefully, fingers crossed if they make it through. So I've lifted the lid, um well the Celotex bonnet will not open the hive in any way and because I've got a Perspex crown board, the top most bit of the box will keep the bees in.
01:01
I can see through into the bees and they are alive and well, running around. Even though it's quite cold this morning, you know, it's frosty underfoot. I think because of the manner I keep them in, they're nice and warm. So they're not clustered. They're spread out across all the frames of the box, running around quite happily. And I've hefted, I've felt the weight of the hive and it's still nice and heavy, so I don't need to do any supplemental feeding.
01:30
I've also inspected the entrance. I've put my hive tool in the entrance block because sometimes you can have a build-up of dead bees within the hive and it's not warm enough for them to fly to take the bees out. So I've put my hive tool in through the entrance and I've given it a waggle to clear if there were any dead there. I pushed them back and made space but...
01:56
There were a few bees coming out to investigate me anyway and now there's quite a few more came out see what I was up to. They don't like any type of interference at this time of year so that was good to see. So they're having a little conversation on the front of the hive just to check there's not going to be any more intrusion. So that's all good. So everything looks good. I think I just press mute on my mic for a second there.
02:26
The next thing I've done is I have put in four posts around each corner of the hive and slid some sort of garden sort of one inch square plastic fencing around the hive to give like a perimeter so that if green woodpeckers start coming to investigate the box now the ground is uh frozen a bit.
02:55
they can't feed as easily they'll look for easier things to prey on so a nice soft polyhive is easy prey so I've put a garden mesh barrier around it I've taken pictures of all that sort of stuff which I shall put up on my Instagram beekeepers diary podcast Instagram feed so I'll put some pictures up on there and might pop some pictures on the website as well so all is good
03:22
I think I've seen, I've not really seen any migratory birds personally this year, not that I've been out much to look, but I think I saw some either red wings or field fairs flying over those Scandinavian birds that come over for the winter. They weren't calling so I couldn't tell, but they had that, flight that the Thrush family do, the turday, I think it is in Latin.
03:48
birds where they fly high, they flap their wings for two, three beats then glide and flap and glide, flap and glide in a little flock of five or six. So it was definitely a thrush family. Typically our uh resident thrushes don't fly in groups like that so was most probably, I can hear a woodpecker calling as I speak.
04:15
here, greater spotted, don't typically land on our highs but they're about, yeah so I don't think it was our, you know, some thrush, mistlethrush types because they don't cluster like that so hopefully I'll get to see some of those soon. Who knows if it's a good year, we might even get some waxwings, not that I've seen them in this particular area but you know, you never know. Well hope you're all doing well, I hope you are lined up to have a good Christmas.
04:45
I'm not going to work too much. Thank you to all the new listeners and people that listen around the world. I was looking at my stats on the website the other day and I've had listeners from 82 different cities so far, far and wide, which is lovely. think there's people all around listening to my stupid warblings. Anyway, have a good Christmas and a happy new year if I don't speak to you before then. Who knows? Yeah, have a good one.
05:14
Bye.