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00:07
Welcome back to a beekeepers diary podcast.
00:12
We are now, we're into September aren't we?
00:17
looking across the fields and pleased to still be able to see and hear a gang of swallows tearing up the sky chatting about what route they're going to take.
00:35
back to Africa. They've got full enough bellies. Everyone had a wee before they go. Got the Haribo in, maybe barley sugars. Planning a stop off at the Little Chef on the way.
00:55
They're going to play I Spy out the window.
01:00
Nice to think about that. I've been listening to Sean Ron Ains podcast, the Sean Chorus, if you're into nature podcasts, he's an incredible naturalist and recorder of natural history sounds. He was just saying that he's looking at the swifts and swallows, or the swifts have gone, the swallows at this time of year thinking is today the last day I'm going to see them and trying to drink it in before they go.
01:30
very much doing that at the moment this time of year. In fact it's all gone quiet now, have they just gone?
01:40
Anyway, back to beekeeping. So I've got my two hives. They're in a funny situation really. I'm trying to reduce them down into their winter configuration. So hive two has now got the brood box. I've still got a queen excluder on top and then a super of stores to get them through. What I will generally do maybe next month.
02:09
is put that super underneath the brood box to elevate them a bit more off the floor and they can configure themselves for winter. Normally when I come back in the spring they've eaten that box empty and I can just take it off and put it back on top and start the process again. But at the moment I had
02:29
My failed attempt at making Ross rounds and cut comb which I put on way too late in the year when there was no flow so I've got the bees out of that now and that's in the back of the car. All they've done is eat my foundation really and not much else so I've grabbed those bees out of there got them back in the brood box and
02:51
hive is all strapped up. It's got, we're into week two of Varroa treatment with the Apivar which stays on for eight weeks. I haven't put a Varroa counting board on this one because it's not one of the vapour type treatments that you need to trap in and it's a slow steady release so you might not get that big Varroa drop but I will put a board in at some stage to have a look.
03:19
sticky board to catch the variety see what if any are dropping off. Hive one that had two supers on top I've just put a clearer board between the two or one way valve so the bees will come down from the top one and the door closes behind them effectively to some extent although they do find the way back up again if they can be bothered but it just leaves a couple of small exits.
03:43
the bees and they're less inclined to go back up so when I come back next week there'll be far fewer bees in there that I can just hoik that box off. I will take out the heaviest combs out of both two supers and put the heaviest into the box that I'm going to leave on top of those bees and take the light ones away and spin them out for next year really but I won't use any of that honey anywhere because it will not be food safe because of the varroa treatment.
04:13
Last week I came and looked at both colonies. Hive 2, both I think have been on a quite a long brood break. Both were queen right, so I can see the queens there. Both had eggs being laid. Hive 2 was only over four or five frames really reduced when it was the whole box was wall to wall brood. Four or five frames of brood.
04:41
not great out of 11 but they were doing it. Oh can you hear the starlings?
04:54
some linets. Linets, starlings, swallows, how lovely. The psss, psss is the linets and the Twitter means the swallows and the starlings have gone by already. Ah, fantastic. Starlings, another migratory bird that start flocking at this time of year. Yeah, so hive two not great, hive one virtually zero brood.
05:24
but polished cells, a few eggs being laid. I think that queen, I mean, my goodness, I'm leaving them alone this week. Next week, I'm going to have a good rummage, see if they are expanding for winter. If not, I'm already thinking, do I need to combine them into one hive to get them through winter? Will they even be big enough?
05:46
For a whole hive, well I need to put them into a new, smaller box to get them through winter, but I am suspicious currently of hive one. They are prime candidates for getting taken out by wasps as well. I mean, there's shed loads of bees in there, absolutely bursting at the seams, but no brood. And as those summer bees die off, they could be very tiny colony. So that one's got a big question mark over it at the moment.
06:17
Hopefully just the extreme weather we'd had and you know nothing to forage on for weeks. They've just sort of shut down and maybe, maybe they'll rev back up again. We'll see but I'm not, yeah I'm not sure. So yeah both hives, varroa treatment on, moving into winter configuration, they've both got stores, they've both got queens of some sort.
06:45
I suppose there's also the possibility that when I look, if the bees are worried about the queen in hive one and she has laid eggs they will try and supersede her. Okay I'll have to look out for that as well. I don't know, we'll see. Right I'll stop waffling and oh one other nature spot from today.
07:08
We were lucky at home to have a massive flock of house sparrows which are red listed endangered birds but we're lucky to have some hedges and they absolutely love knocking about our garden. I was getting ready to come out here and I could hear the sparrows alarm calling and it's particular noise they make when there's a predator about and they do it from within the hedge. Normally they're on the outsides of the hedge peering out at the world shouting at each other but this particular noise
07:37
you know when you go and look in the hedge you won't be able to see a single sparrow but they're all hiding, shouting their heads off, warning everyone and Kelly shouts down to me, my wife, there's a sparrow hawk down in the garden and I've put some perches up for the sparrows like bamboo sticks at an angle so you can, so the sparrows can land on them and this cheeky sparrow hawk, female sparrow hawk was sitting on the sparrow perch right by the hedge.
08:07
looking for breakfast. Cheeky sod. It flew off when it sensed our movement so I went outside and it was sitting on top of the hedge but we scared it off. Cheeky sod. Right, I'll let you get on with your day and I'll be back to report on what the hell's going on with my bees next week or the week after. Have a good one.