Bee is for blog

I asked if I might link, but I haven’t had a reply yet, so I’ll put the link in and take it out again if they say no. The bee blog is Al’s final descent into the baleful influence of his mother. He may kick, he may scream, but he has become a blogger. Heh heh heh.

9 comments on “Bee is for blog

  1. Dandelion

    Oh z, look at his lovely outfit! I can practically feel his joy coming through the screen. Warms the heart, so it does. Makes me feel quite broody.

    Reply
  2. Blue Witch

    Could you ask Al to enable Witch-Friendly commenting please z?

    In the meantime, here is what I tried to say. Luckily I remembered to copy it before attempting to post…

    ***********

    Nice to see you blogging Al, and on such a worthy subject šŸ™‚

    That looks suspiciously like a National hive. I’ll bet you bought it because it looked like a proper traditional (WBC) beehive ? šŸ˜‰

    Is that what others around you use?

    If you have as much rape as we do early in the season, you could live to regret it… they will quickly run out of brood space and will consequently be swarming every 5 minutes. But it’s (reasonably) easy to make the national box into 12″ x 14″ ones, using a brood box adaptor kit from Thorne’s, and getting larger frames.

    Good to see you using Hoffman frames for the brood. In case you haven’t already bought them, I’d recommend Manley frames for the supers (they’re much quicker and easier to uncap come extracting) and metal castellations for the sides of the super boxes (9s – fewer frames to extract then, the bees will draw them out to bee-space between, so you’ll actually get more honey per box).

    I’d never recommend that beginners start with only one hive. You’ve got no scope for sorting out the problems that will arise then. 2 or 3 is really no more work. Are you getting more?

    Is your queen marked?

    Good luck!

    Reply
  3. Z

    I’ve left your comment on his blog, BW – but I think he has Open ID, isn’t that available to you?

    I believe his bee society recommended that sort of hive, and no, we don’t have rape immediately around here on the edge of the village, fortunately. I don’t know if his queen is marked. He is planning to have two hives with a third for an emergency, but doesn’t want more than that for now. Mind you, his honey supplier said that to begin with and now has 150.

    Reply
  4. Z

    He is very happy, Dandelion. They spent all last summer on a beekeeping course, and all he wanted for Christmas was a beehive and equipment.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Z Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.