October/November 2005
The mild weather this Autumn meant all our bees were still actively producing honey quite late this year - it was October before we started extracting the honey from the gathered Supers.
Paul fed the hives at Flaxton with their Winter feed of sugar syrup in
early October, but it wasn't until later in the month that we began extracting
the honey from these supers.
Feeding Flaxton Bees Oct 7th
One problem that we found while setting the Flaxton bees up for Winter was Waxmoth in colony that had failed. We bundled the boxes up in black bags and took them home to Pauls house. It was only then we saw the extent of damage that wax moth can cause! The offending boxes were sterilised with blowtorches and the frames boiled to kill off any waxmoth eggs and catapillars.
A waxmoth and some cocoons (Oct 9th)
This is the sort of damege they do to frames
The only option is to boil the frames
Although we have quite a lot of honey this year we were rather late extracting it, and so some of the honey was starting to granulate in the comb. We shall have to keep this honey to be used as a Spring feed
.
Supers stored ready for extracting 23rd October
A break for a cuppa
Still lots to do!
November 9th saw a late, surprise success. On the 8th of November we discoverd
that the show was to be on the 9th. We had thought the date local honey
show at Murton near York was to be 16th, so we only had one day to prepare
our entry!
Imagine our surprise when we came 2nd over all and we won a trophy for
the best block of bees wax on show!!
Our final duty for 2005 was the mouseguards:
John ready with mouseguards 26th November
No mouse will overwinter here!