Apiary round up, report of a stung hound, plans for Winter?
00:05
Welcome back to a Beekeeper's Story podcast. Thanks for coming back again. We are on the 2nd of August, 2026, about half past 11. And it is 23 degrees. Don't know if you just hear a Muntjac deer shouting as soon as I started recording then. Quiet!
00:32
So yeah, back, been probably two weeks since my last visit. I was busy extracting honey, jarring honey. I'm roughly up to 140 pounds of honey so far from these two hives, which is not too bad. I've sold it, apart from a few bits I've given away, managed to sell all of it so far.
01:02
So I spent a fair bit of money on equipment this year, more than normal. But I've managed to recoup everything I've spent and I'm now into profit, which is quite good. Which will then pay for next year's equipment, no doubt. So it's never really profit, is it?
01:29
So yeah, I've got looking at the two colonies. Boy oh boy, was praying I didn't need to use any smoke today. The field is bone dry and an absolute tinderbox. So I had no intention of lighting my smoker. So was just praying the bees were well behaved, which they were, thank goodness. But these boxes, they are bone dry. Looking through the brood nests, there's...
01:57
having not been for a couple of weeks I was on my mind to check for back-filling nectar into the brood nest which is always a sign you need to add more space but bone dry in there and a lot of very young eggs and larvae so I think the queen has been off the lay for a bit quite a lot of bees have hatched and emerged and
02:25
feel like she's just come into lay again and both of them to be honest. A lot of when you look at the brood frames you can see you know where in the brood cycle we're at and we're at the beginning of in quite a lot of I didn't go through all the frames I only went through probably three in each box checking for space and eggs and disease and that's that's what I was looking at. Didn't need to go through the rest of the box at this time of year I'm happy with what I've seen.
02:51
And then, yeah, I've got three supers on each box. would say in hive one, top box is ready and hive two top box is ready to go, which I think I'll extract next week. And the second box of each of them is mostly ready, not capped off fully. But not. There's nothing coming in, so I suspect that may as well take that off, although.
03:21
I'm conscious to not, I need to leave at least one super on each of them because there's no nectar coming in. I need to, I don't want to leave them foodless. So I'll make sure that I leave a box for each of them. And then can sort of, I'm already thinking about winter and my varroa treatments, et cetera. And the Ross rounds box that I put on way too late in the year, I'm guessing.
03:48
and way too late after a nick to flow that is just bone dry. It's a of a waiting room for the bees at the moment so that'll come off when I extract the honey next week. There's no point leaving it on, it's just dead space. So yeah, a bit of work to do next week. Conscious to leave them food in this dry period. Generally brood cycles doing what it needs to do.
04:18
can't complain. Swallows are still flying overhead, they've not gone yet. I suspect the swifts will be going soon.
04:29
Barely any butterflies here. I've been out doing some nature hunting last weekend because I wasn't beekeeping and went out hunting for brown hair streaks in a Stafford road in Rice Lipp. It's an open ground there which is managed for natural history. It's fantastic butterfly habitat. We had brown Argus, brown hair streak, right.
04:59
Right in front of me was brilliant common blues, gatekeepers and we had brilliant views of a family of four sparrowhawks. The youngsters were chasing the adults around. They're still begging for food right above us. It was amazing. Never seen anything like that before. Looking across the fields, the farm adjacent.
05:28
He's moving a lot of manure around in his yard over there and it absolutely stinks. It's not appreciated, thank you. And I forgot to mention, last time we were here, we were busy brushing the bees off the frames, so they were all up in the air and the owners of the fields, dog decided now was the time, we wanted to come and...
05:52
play with his ball right in front of the bees so we were trying to get him away from the bees and the owner wanted to get to the dog to collect it but didn't have a bee suit so we were trying to usher the dog out but he got zapped a few times and was doing roly-poly trying to get the bees off him but it's no harm done, the owners are fine.
06:19
and the dog hasn't come to visit this time so maybe he's let his lesson? I don't know. He did still come and say hello when I first arrived though so not holding a grudge. Right, thanks for listening again. I'm going to go and enjoy Sunday afternoon. I shall catch you later.