September 2004
Queen excluder off and a clearer board in its place.
The warm, mild weather at the beginning of September meant that Paul,
John and Dad could remove all the full supers of honey from the hives
on 5th September and any frames that were still partly filled were put
on Hive 3 (the most active colony) for another week for them to fill completely.
The second job of the month was to put some Bayvarol anti-mite strips
in all the colonies to kill any mites in the hives.
Paul
removes full supers
The bees in the swarm that had arrived earlier in the year are becoming
more and more aggressive. Paul was wearing a short-sleeved shirt under
his apiarist's bee-suit and thought he was well protected. But no! The
bees from this hive attacked him mercilessly - he was stung 16 times on
one arm alone through his protective bee-suit!
We must do something about this vicious colony of bees as soon as possible
in Spring!
An
armful of stings Ouch!
On 20th September (a bit late in September) Paul went to Flaxton and recovered
4 supers of honey from Flaxton.
Removing
the Flaxton Supers
The last job of September is to feed all the colonies with sugar syrup
to replace the honey we have taken and to narrow the hive entrances to
reduce the area the guard bees have to patrol during the Winter.
Feeders on and the hive entrance restricted