Please be patient: This is a large page and may take a minute or more to load
A Beekeeper's Diary
<< Previous Page October 10th to 14th, 2001 Next Page >>
|
Sunday October 14th, 2001
Saturday October 13th, 2001 I spent the day writing an article to BEE-L and went to the Delia Fall Fair with Joe and Oene.
Friday October 12th, 2001
We wound up with 309 drums which figures out to be 93.3 pounds per hive. That's not toooo bad, but not toooo good either. We'll be claiming on our crop insurance and that will help with the bills, I guess. At any rate, we're not too badly off for present, but we'll have to take a good careful look at expenses next year. Fortunately, we will have some syrup left over for spring and most of the bees are looking good. We are planning to use the individual wraps so that we can get at the hives early, but still have them wrapped into May. Next week we wrap. Our goal is to do 200 per day. P-Ss came for supper. I had bought some pre-prepared Chinese food at Costco in hopes of having a great meal. It was awful.
Thursday October 11th, 2001 This morning, Ellen looked at the drop boards from Osgothorpes and Beckwiths and saw as many as 120 mites. The yards in question had been treated last fall, and not in the spring. There is a very large difference in mite loads from those we treated this year. The guys worked around the yard changing oil, cleaning up and storing away the supers. I got a call from the plastic company saying that the plastic for our wraps is ready several days early, so I rushed off to Calgary to get it. I spent the evening shopping and returned home late.
Wednesday October 10th, 2001 Paulo and Matt finished removing the last of the supers, returning at about 8 PM in the dark. Morale has been excellent and they have been pushing hard to get finished. I went feeding and am now satisfied that all the yards are heavy enough. We still have 2-1/2 tanks (1250 Imperial gallons each) left. We used, in total, about one load of feed, which is about in line with our expectations based on years before pollination. While on pollination, we used a lot more fall feed. Some hives are a bit light, especially those which were in singles. At the end of the season, we add a second brood chamber. If it is not added by the end of August, it must go on the bottom. Even then, the bees do not always enter it well or fill it with feed. Ellen worked at getting Gene set up to make wraps. We've decided that the individual style are the best by far, since they can stay on longer in the spring and don't inhibit work on the hives at that time. I guess the only downside is that occasionally lids come off, even with two bricks weighing 8 lbs each placed carefully on top. Sometimes the cattle knock them and other times, the wind is able to take them off. We are thinking seriously about putting up some wind fences.
<< Previous Page Next Page >>
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Today we worked around the yard, cleaned out the trucks, organized the trucks
with supplies for wrapping, started cutting out the new wraps, completed
extracting, cleaned out the tank and pump, etc. etc.
