Catch-up of Doom 5: Real Life 2: The bees
On a happier note, even though it was a long winter, bad spring and weird summer, my bees appear to be thriving. I have two colonies again, one fully-fledged one (grown from the swarm I got last year) and one fledgling one ( Read more... )
EDIT: But I'm relieved that you might be expecting a September harvest, too! Over here, everyone seems to be all "If you don't harvest in August, you can't harvest at all" even in this funky year.
My biggest fear about the fledgling was whether it would be queen-right, because it was such a bad spring. I was convinced that I'd have to return them to the mothership (motherskep, haha), so to say, because when I first checked them after three weeks - no brood. Look back after four weeks - no brood. Went on vacation for a week, came back convinced that they would've died out or started the emergency drone breeding program - but no: suddenly, everything was full of fine worker brood. Probably the poor baby queen just had to wait a while before she could take off on her wedding flight...
There are different strategies here, too, but the one that's officially promoted ATM is using lactic in spring/ with fledgling colonies before there is any brood, formic in late summer/early fall (after harvesting honey) and oxalic in winter. The theory being that lactic is so mild that it wouldn't get through to the brood (where most of the mites would be hiding), but you can spray on a lot of it without harming the bees (so it's fine for use in summer when they're all spread out and all over the place); oxalic wouldn't get through to the brood either, but it's a lot more aggressive so you should use as little as possible, which is more effective when there aren't that many bees anyway and they're all huddled together against the cold. Formic is good for summer use because it reaches the mites that are hiding in the brood, too - as soon as you don't plan on harvesting any more honey (because it would seep into the honey too, of course, and German honey laws are pretty strict). Some older beekeepers also use and recommend thymol, but that can strictly speaking be interpreted as "blending" honey (like, trying to fake thyme honey), so it's not entirely kosher; unlike formic, it also seeps into the wax, so it'll spoil your honey even a year later.
No clue how well the theory holds up to reality! That's just what I've been told.
Yes, sometimes it seems foregoing the smoke is actually easier than using it, because they're all fine and going about their business when I look in! But I don't currently dare to go in entirely without smoke. (In my first two beekeeping years, I often used no smoke at all.)
Who knows? Cats seem to think that feet smell of moggy in heat! Maybe to bees, they smell of alaaaaarm!
I haven't reached the point yet where I can differentiate between different sounds. To me, it all sounds like "slightly disgruntled". >_>
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