Thumper Club Forum
Club House => Chatter => Topic started by: guest987 on June 30, 2010, 12:59:31 PM
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Thought this would be of use should Steffan decide to become a Hairdwesser.
Vidal Rob.
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Thought this would be of use should Steffan decide to become a Hairdwesser.
Vidal Rob.
Shouldn't that be Vidal Bob? And I should know!
Boyd
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Beehive, Boyd. ;D
This reminds me. I will have to pop along to see Pancho my stylist. The old barnet needs a trim.
Rob.
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Beehive, Boyd. ;D
This reminds me. I will have to pop along to see Pancho my stylist. The old barnet needs a trim.
Rob.
Are you psychic? I built a hive last weekend and I'm looking at some prospective tenants tomorrow courtesy of our own Beeman.
Boyd
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Aye Boyd,
Look after them well! the past winter and the mite have wiped a lot of stock out. Was speaking with a man who keeps bees, sells honey, and also trades all the associated paraphenalia. From a total of 260 hives last autumn, he started this season with 10! :o
We have no honey bees about the place, no hover flies and smaller numbers of various bumble bee species. Our solitary masonary bee colony didn't hatch as many this year, but they have flown and we will just have to see if they laid many eggs. I think not, as the late frosts may have done for them.
Scottish heather honey will be in short supply this year and the price will be high.
Go canny and adjust your veil! :-*
All the best with the wee beasties, Bill.
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This problem with the bees scares me horribly. Something so humble and its loss will be catastrophic if they continue to die out.
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Its true boyd is going to keep bees, at least they wont get in his hair, He is taking them to his house next week.
Poor old boyd is completly smirtten by keeping bees, having looked into my hives he still thinks it is a good idea.
This year has been a good year for my bees, up to 10 colonies from 3, in april. but 1 good year does not make a recovery I'll wait and see for a couple of years before I'll be happy with the recovery.
beeman
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I keep the back corner of my garden as a pretty wild area, complete with stinging nettles for the ladybirds and lots of other things for whatever lunches in there! There seems a goodly supply of stag beetles emigrating now each year from the piles of wood that all live behind the stick wall.
Any pointers to a particular type of flower that bees would enjoy?
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......not the same sort of bee's as the bee's you "keep".....but we have a thriving & 'developing' nest of Red Tail Bumblebees alongside the bike garage. Started of as little things about the size of a Bluebottle but the 'newer' batch are getting bigger - proper Humble Bee sized "Thumpers".
Don't bother about me & the bikes being outside their back door, but if I go out there after dark they all "thrumm" in unison to see me off.
Adds to the 'patchwork'.....
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My Mothers description of the Duke after being taken shopping on the back. It goes like a "Red Arsed Bumble bee"! :o That was from a 52 year old women, not prone to swearing and who had problems co-ordinating a push bike, but loved going a backie on the AJS 18S or the Duke. Still have the bent wire and pipe cleaner model "Red Arsed Bumble bee"! she bought for the top yoke.
I hope your colony are sucessful 'Sprunghub' and may the bees be fruitful for Beeman and Boyd.
The bumbles going well on the foxgloves, 'Shirley' poppies and verbascum. Still no hover's! :(
As for flowers? Variety is the spice of life for bees, everything from box, lime, ivy, willowherb, buddlea, thyme, beans, peas, onions, heather, clover, stonecrop, carrots, honeysuckle, to nettles, carrots, wallflowers, oil seed rape, raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants and catoneasters. 8)
Home made mead! ;D ;D ;D ;D
Toodle pip, Bill.
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Don't forget Himalayan balsam one of the biggest producers of nectar. Trouble is it is an invasive pest and should be eradicated.
Some parts of the country beekeepers actually take hives to the areas where it is abundant. Many plants that you see bumble bees on cannot be accessed by honey bees such as most large clover varieties.
The small clovers on your lawn do attract bees though. I remember having my bees on a field of clover for seed nothing but a constant, the field was alive with bees and the smell of clover heavy in the air........ honey tasted just like the smell must stop as I am rambling on past times
beeman
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Aye beeman,
Rambling??? ???
No, just waxing lyricaly of times of yor, whilst slumped in a comodious, well beaten, leather armchair with a glass of mead in the mitt.
Himalayan balsam! >:( Old wifey's collecting the seeds and sowing them as it looks 'pretty'! >:( So it may do, but by killing off the native veg, the watercourse banks are left bare in the winter and increasingly prone to erosion >:( Harrumph!
Bee keepers up here move the hives up near 'clearfell' sites when the Rosebay willowherb invades, as it too produces a good nectar, which can be blended with other honeys. Wild thyme and heather smells are one of my favourite combinations, on a hot August afternoon/evening on the hill! ;D
See, all chilled out again! Bill.
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Another intrigued potential beekeeper here as well. Sadly though I don't think I have the right area to keep them, living as I do in a rather residential area. It pleases me to read of others keeping them though.
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boufant = beehive
apt?
(http://ulysses-wa.info/uploads/pow.jpg)
NAH
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Another intrigued potential beekeeper here as well. Sadly though I don't think I have the right area to keep them, living as I do in a rather residential area. It pleases me to read of others keeping them though.
Aye shedbrewed,
On the dreaded Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall programme a wee while ago they tracked down a young loon from Sarf London who had installed multiple hives on his family house flat roof extension and was marketing the honey professionaly from a stall in one of the street markets of the area. They also conducted a 'blind' taste test and his was voted better tasting by all, including Hugh himself. Variety of plant species from which to go and gather nectar was suggested as being the likely reason. Also higher ambient winter temperatures in the city meant better chances of survival and a longer flowering season from which to gather the nectar. ;D ;D ;D
You just don't want the 'flight path' to be through the patio, or next door to lodge a complaint with the carncil that they are 'dangerous'! ???
Toodle pip, Bill.
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Stop it you lot!!
MMMMmmmmmMMMMM Mountain Ash honey..... with just a hint of eucalypt
Sorry Steff
The Blue gum honey from Tassie is exceptional too
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No need to apologise to me mate, I am not from Tasmania (no scar) I just lived there for a while. Mangrove honey, now that is the business!!
Haven't seen it for years
Steff
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Another intrigued potential beekeeper here as well. Sadly though I don't think I have the right area to keep them, living as I do in a rather residential area. It pleases me to read of others keeping them though.
Excellent place to keep them. The productivity (in honey, propolis etc) of urban hives tends to be to the upper end because of all the nice gardens. Met a guy once who kept bees in a tower block with out a balcony or access to the roof. He made a custom hive that essentially mounted on a window frame. bees exited to the world about 10 floors up. Cecking the hive etc used to fill the room with bees though! - he lived alone BTW
R
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Ah no tower block or flat roof here, just an old council estate semi. Meaning I have young kids behind me, and I'm not sure their parents would be so keen when the bees swarmed.
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Aye shedbrewed,
All part of learning about life! ;D
If your looking after the bees you won't let them swarm, 'cos you'll have split the colony to increase your stock afore it gets to big for their hive. ;D
Beeman will now come along and describe 'chapter and verse', whilst kicking me in the shins 'neath the table.
My regards to the Savanah counties, we are now having the customary Glasgae fornight monsoon conditions, interspursed by doses of high UV radiation!
Toodle pip, Bill.
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All the books say a good beekeeper never looses a swarm.
HOHOHO every beekeeper I know says thats a load of bowlocks. I even lost a swarm, one year, on the1st april when the temp rose sharply and before I could look in them at all that year.
Been to boyds house he looks like he is well set up and I find the top bar hive an interesting project. Not for me as I move bees about. I cannot understand why the local beekeepers are so anti/not bothered about giving assistance.
Having read about them they should work but will probably be not so productive as a regular hive. The bullsh*t that some of there supportes give about being kind to the bees is negated by the fact that to get honey from them you need to destroy combs.
Boyds garden is tiny but is suitable for 2 hives. I have kept them in small gardens before and often ask local farmers/ factories if I can use their land with no problems. Towns can give a more varied honey but monculture in rural areas can provide bumper crops if you are willing to move bees. Not moving as in the american way on artics and 1000s mile, but around the local area. I used to take them to the heather but it is too much work and time intensive for me.
You have just got remember as far as bees are concerned they are wild, and the hive you have them in is just a hollow tree as far as they are concerned. They never belong to you you just keep them.
beeman
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Fair enough Shedbrewed - mind a hive or two behind a 6' fence ( simple screening will do) will throw the bees up high on the way out and in. Had a friend with 3 hives in a small suburban back garden. They had them there for about 15 years before a swam got into the neighbors hedge - fresh swarms tend to be fairly docile - and they went round with a bag to collect it. All hell broke loose - petitions from the street, letters to the council etc. Council said a) was nowt to do with them, b) bees were fine things and c) they had been there for so long they were not an issue
Mind considering how nosy the neighbours were one onders whey they did not see a couple goign up the garden in bee suits with smokers once a week.
R