(no subject)
Have been down the apiary today applying oxalic acid to the bees. We all watched as the experienced beekeepers showed us how to measure the warmed acid and sugar syrup solution and apply it using a syringe. You literally lift up the crown board and trickle it all over the bees. It is used to kill off all the varroa mites living on the bees.
None of us bothered putting on our bee suits, with snow on the ground the bees were wisely huddling up warm in their hives. One particularly alert lady woke up and started circling our heads, but soon gave up. We got to my hive and I was excited to see them for the first time in months, five frames worth of bonny bees. Sadly someone else's bees hadn't made it, we found them all frozen to the frames.
Afterwards about twenty of us stood about in the snow drinking tea and eating cake. Beekeepers are hardcore, those old men feel no pain. My feet paid for it on the way home in the bus though, for some reason wellies always freeze my feet off.
I'm reading Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and loving it.
None of us bothered putting on our bee suits, with snow on the ground the bees were wisely huddling up warm in their hives. One particularly alert lady woke up and started circling our heads, but soon gave up. We got to my hive and I was excited to see them for the first time in months, five frames worth of bonny bees. Sadly someone else's bees hadn't made it, we found them all frozen to the frames.
Afterwards about twenty of us stood about in the snow drinking tea and eating cake. Beekeepers are hardcore, those old men feel no pain. My feet paid for it on the way home in the bus though, for some reason wellies always freeze my feet off.
I'm reading Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and loving it.