Recently on the Apiary...

On Thursday 23^rd Feb. I saw my first Peacock and Red Admiral butterflies. Numerous Bumble bees are to be seen engaged in searching for nest sites. Presumably they’re finding enough nectar nearby to keep fuelled up for their nest building. Our honey bees are collecting plenty of pollen and presumably nectar from somewhere.  The bees have been fed with fondant, at the end of January, and look to be in good shape for the coming season, (I’m touching wood as I write).  Last Monday I spotted a couple of Blue-tits investigating one of the newly cleaned bird-boxes.  Crocuses of various colours are in full bloom, the yellow varieties have been out for a couple of weeks now. They make quite a show and the bees really appreciate the pollen. Talking of early flowers popular with the bees, the Hellebore has been in bloom for a couple months and still has buds on it. It seems even more popular than crocus.   This year plenty of bulbs have gone in, we should have an excellent display this year but an even better next year.     Colin and I have done a little welding and remounted the gates to the apiary. Colin has come up with the idea of cladding them in wood which will look a lot better. I’m making up a few Asian Hornet (Vespa velutina), traps. There’s a plan of how to make an Asian Hornet trap on the BBKA website which I’ve followed with one slight mod. If you want to see how they’re made there’ll be a couple hung up around the Apiary soon. I fancy that it’s possible that the south east counties will see the Hornet first in the UK and the obvious time to trap them is before last year’s queens establish new colonies in the spring.  When Colin and I were in Nepal we saw a goat slaughtered as part of a festival occasion. Within two or three minutes of the animal being butchered Hornets were feeding on the meat, so I shall be baiting the traps with raw meat. On the 1^st May we placed Varroa counting sticky sheets on the Varroa trays of hives 1,2,3&4 and I removed them on the 2^nd. There was one Varroa mite between the four hives! That's what I call a result.

Barry