Apiary Diary February 2021

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Sailabee

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It's time for 'Apiary Diary February 2021' as the third is rapidly galloping in

Here is your opportunity to tell us (and remind yourself) about what is going on in your hives during the month of January 2021. The idea is you can look back and see when you placed treatments, what hives were strong, what were weak, when you re-queened, split, added boxes, what flows were on etc.

If you have a specific problem, concern or topic you want to discuss about your hives, please start a new topic and if you have general chit chat, please direct it to a new post in the Members Only section. You may make a selective quote and copy it to the new topic for reference.

 
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81EE4706-75D7-4F85-B8CA-0B4F58EEB792.jpeg

Busy as bees .... spinning honey.... it comes out nicely in the 26c heat

It's a beautiful brew ..... West Coast Kamahi without the quintinia bitters, so probably has a crossover with some Lotus and Rata.
 
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Been an interesting day .
An early start to cross the Divide with a truck load of empties and bring home a load of fulls.
The Mighty MAN had issues with the airbags and one side of the back suspension collapsed .... on account of the fact that the bag actuators had got snagged and bent ..... not a good look with half a load onboard and more to put on.
We found a window of connection and rang the Pensky helpline..... who were very good . We jacked the back end of the truck up with the Palfnger stabiliser leg and the actuator arm relocated with the wonderfull sound of air filling the airbags ..... no early finish for the day.
Not too many grumbles from the crew about picking up kids and entertaining partners.
The Men came home in the fast truck, and I pottered on back and called in at the boozer to rehydrate ..... where I got the joke of the day from Al ..... He's from Ireland.

"What happened when the blonde got stuck in the fridge with the cucumber ..... the cucumber got lipstick on it .......!

Oooops. Sorry Grant !
 
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Saturday is fix it day around here ..... so I crawled around under the Mighty Man .... the hydraulic pump that runs the Palfinger crane had sprung a leak and was spewing oil in the last yard on Thursday , but there was more ..... somewhere in the rocky rough riverbeds of the Coast with the Most we had sheered off the bolts that hold the spring damper on the back axle to the chassis, which explains why the Mighty woMAN had a lopsided look as if she had imbibed too much of me old mate Uncle Kens WaakaChangi.

Meanwhile, the willows have a yellowish tinge, the sun has dropped in the sky and we are into the downward swing of the season ..... the dog days of February when we decide how to play our cards .... pull the clover honey and run more bees over to the Rata for a final fling, or pull the pin and dump them up on the Dew to fatten up for the winter.

Me old Mate BRS taught me years ago you can never chase a flow ..... so while the heart sings that the Rata is sweet and beautiful, and the sound of the Jake Brake on the hills is music to the ears..... the slow and steady Dew may well win the day.

Time will tell.
 
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Meanwhile I equlize the hives especially because after moving them to the end of the paddock they gone in all different hives.
The big work is not over as the land owner is not happy with his son's decision so now I have to move the bees again 40+m. Of course the terrain is not flat and I have to level the soil first(for the pallets). This season is getting longer and longer.
 
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kaihoka

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The weather is perfect and the bees are all busy.
There is heaps of white rata flowering and lots of lotus and clover.
Even late kanuka . I saw a bee working the flowers at 6pm .
But nights have been cooler this summer and tomatoes really late to ripen out doors .
 
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Uh Huh .... another stunning day ..... like I said in the spring "Go west young man" ..... Canterbury Clover had the potential but seems to have stalled due to the crappy low cloud and drizzle. The West has performed, with another truck load of boxes put out today to catch the last of the last.
I did have a chuckle on the way over. Some irate landowner had dumped a truck load of Granite boulders at the entrance to a bee site ..... or maybe the bee man thought his crop so valuable he wanted to deter prospective thieves. Sorry, no photo as it might be politically incorrect.

Big chuckle chuckle ......
 
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About bees.. I lost one more colony ( varroa result..). There are couple more of which I am not optimistic, but overall better than expected.. These days we have minus temps, so I am not looking into hives.. Gave 1st fondants weekend before. On Wednesday roads were full with frogs with heavy rain, on Thursday minus temps.. Nature went mad.. lot of frogs died I believe.. I am sorry for them..
 
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Dear dairy... the wasps are beginning to harvest protein, the vespex tub has arrived in the post.. time to get stuck in to the filthy little critters..
stonemasonry tools all dusted off and cleaned up ready to make up for what has been a not too bad honey flow considering the weather.. all be it a couple of months too late.
 
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bit of a crap day today.
rain, covid check points. and then the spin float bearings fail.
3-4 month old spin float and bearings already ??
lad off to aucks to get parts. at least the roads where quieter.
peter generously loaned us the assembly tools which made the job a lot easier.
get it all back together, pick up some shopping from the almost empty grocery store and cruise on home in the rain.
 
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Had to shoot back up the road to Timaru on friday as wifey took a bad fall and broke her elbow and her ankle. Spent a day cooking a pile of meals for her and making sure the chooks and assorted moochers had plenty of food. Went for a look at the 2 hives I have left on the home place. My monster hive that went nuts early season was in a bit of strife. It had a huge population early spring and I harvested 2 supers off it in November. It has another 3 nearly capped. But when I went for a poke around the brood box, all I found was maybe a dozen brood left to hatch and a solitary queen cell, opened, on a frame near the edge. Still a big population of foragers. In the past this would have thrown me into a panic and had me searching online for a new queen. I went to the other hive and pulled out two frames with eggs, grubs and capped brood and popped them in. I notched a few of the likely looking cells I will have a look this weekend when I am back up and see what they have done with it. Worst case I will merge it with the othre one, which was a split but has a nice, fat young qiueen in it.
Wifey insisted that I head back south to work this week and assured me that the in laws will sort her out during the week. In case anybody is thinking I am a meanie for leaving her alone. She is spewing as she had been up on the roof waterblasting and on a ladder doing a spot of painting, but tripped walking the dogs, and doesn't even have a cool story to explain her injuries.
 
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