Today and yesterday saw the critical parts of our queen rearing procedure taking place. Or to my mind the scariest parts. For the morning session we had myself, Tony, John, Dianna and Ian in attendance. The plan was to rearrange the colony to make the bottom brood box (full of young bees after last week’s …
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that we were about to embark at long last on a foray into rearing our own queens. Unfortunately the superb weather of April has been replaced by a somewhat more familiar icy blast and we had to delay our plans. However this week it was decided that if …
On Saturday last Allison Laws and Viv Hill went to the ‘Mayfayre’ to represent Moray Beekeepers at the Steiner School. It was an extremely blustery day with several of the tents blowing over – many tent pegs used thereafter! The Steiner school is privately owned and their MayFayre represented the school’s enjoyment of the Spring …
The Weather in Elgin, this morning, is +16C and blowing a hooley from the north-west with intermittent blustery showers too. Graham went to our apiary to walk the dogs with a view to my meeting him there at 10.30 to remove the nucleus bees (from yesterday) into a brood box. Arriving on time there was …
Having come through the winter successfully with our 4 colonies, guess what – we are now 8!! The hive, in the middle of Elgin, which had swarmed two weeks ago now has again. After our experience last year we have been super vigilant re signs of swarming but, quite clearly, not vigilant enough. Anyway, we …
Alasdair Joyce’s Apiary at Dallas Dhu 15th May After a morning of poor weather more than 40 people arrived at Alasdair and Mary’s delightful home and garden to find that the weather was kind and the rainy drizzle had stopped. The bees are situated about 100 yards away from his house through a woodland garden …
For the second time in almost as many weeks it has been necessary to drive – ‘lickety spit’ – to Donna and Ronnie Clark’s home in Lhanbryde. Why? Her bees are swarming!! Donna, who is the Treasurer of Moray Beekeepers Association has to go to work to keep her bees in the manner to which …
We’ve been planning to embark on a queen rearing programme here at MBA for some time now and this weekend, at last, we’re going to start in earnest! The method we are going to use is good for small scale queen rearing but can be adapted for greater numbers. It’s called the Cook Method and …