Different honeys

[Andy Hall]

So how? Smoke up the chimney?

.andy

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[Andy Hall]

These seem to be the common threads throughout Nature.

(SWMBO made me say that)

.andy

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[Mary Fisher]

It wouldn't have occurred to me that you could have thought it up by yourself ...

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

A swarm is a wonderful phenomenon and swarming must be seen as reproduction of the species. The old queen and about half the original colony fly off to find a new site and found a new colony. The rest of the bees and a potential queen (she will emerge from her cell the next day usually) stay in the original hive and continue as though nothing has happened.

A swarm is looking for a cavity of the right size to set up the new colony. It would preferably have some kind of cover which is why chimneys are pretty rare sites for swarms to land.

If you provide a better 'ole they'll go to it.

Bees walk upwards.

If you put a container of a desirable size with other desirable qualities over the swarm, wherever it is, the bees will walk up into that container. It can be a straw skep, a small wooden box, a whisky carton, almost anything as long as it's dark, big enough and there's something for the bees to cling to. And which is convenient for the beekeeper too, especially if using a ladder. The ideal for most circumstances, we found, was a straw skep (the old-fashioned beehive) which had had bees living in it. The legacy of past bees seems to be irresistable to honeybees.

You don't need to smoke them, you don't need to find the queen. You DO need time, an understanding of bee behaviour and a plan of action.

Mary

[Andy Hall]

That's interesting. I would have expected the old queen to stay behind and the new one to go off with her friends.

Are there territorial battles over who gets to be queen?

So you were on top of the house with a container?

.andy

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[Andy Hall]

Wouldn't be allowed, Mary.

BTW. You mentioned that you have a web site about your various activities. Where is that?

.andy

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[John Rouse]

In article , Mary Fisher writes

By far the best way to start. Someone turns up with a swarm, you borrow a couple of boxes and a few frames and you're on your way. If you thought about it, you'd never do it.

Joining a local bee-keepers' society is essential though - put two beekeepers together and you have three opinions, but many of them have been doing it for donkey's years and know all the tricks - most of which involve leaving the bees to get on with it. Bees have been doing it themselves for 60 million years, so its quite difficult to put them off.

J.

[Mary Fisher]

Mary

[T i m]

That's ok Mary. I was only trying to defend those that can't speak. ;-)

I'm

And what about those (non social) suicidal ants that must be made of magnesium or summat? Whenever I tried to look at them in the summer with a magnifying glass they would spontaneously combust?

All the best ..

T i m (just had a shandy ..)

[Andy Hall]

Very nice site, Mary, and an interesting set of products.

Have you thought about adding some pictures?

.andy

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[Grunff]

I'd definitely go along with that. While I appreciate the "keep it simple, keep it fast" sentiment, sometimes it's nice to see what's on offer.

[Rob Graham]

Another beekeeeper joining on this one. Can't fault anything you have said, Mary. My only quibble is your enthusiasm for wasps which, while I am told do a lot of good, I've never actually seen it, but what I have seen is the damage that wasps can do to a hive in the autumn. They are stronger than bees and can sting continuously whereas the bee can only sting the once leaving part of its abdomen with the sting to carry on pumping the venom into you - hence bees are somewhat less enthusiastic to sting you than wasps are. But wasps will rob out a weaker hive very quickly in the autumn if steps aren't taken to protect it.

Where abouts are you - I'm just west of Edinburgh. As you talk of an apiary, I take it that you have a significant number of hives; I think in my enthusiastic youth I got up to 8 at one stage but 3 or 4 is quite enough now.

Out of interest just how did you get bees out of a chimney - I faced this once and ended up using greenhouse smoke bombs to drive them out as I couldn't safely get to the chimney itself.

The only disaster I've had with swarms was having re-hived one, it then decided to flit again but did so as another hive swarmed so the 2 combined and went across the road into the neighbour's house - unfortunately they had just moved in and the bees had found a cavity high in the stone wall. The local authority had to called in to exterminate them - I wasn't there at that time but would have been interested to see how the guy did it as the access was very difficult. Relations with those neighbours never really took off !!.

Rob

[Mary Fisher]

I've seen them take huge numbers of what Man calls 'pests'.

So have I. To my own hives.

- er - that assumes that bees know that they're going to lose their sting mechanism and therefore die when they sting. I don't subscribe to that theory.

Yes - but a weak tree will fall to a strong wind. It could be called Nature's culling ... will the weak colony survive without help through the winter?

Last week I dismantled equipment which was occupied by a swarm last July. the colony had died, I found a small cluster which obviously couldn't travel across the comb to access the large quantities of honey. It was, I'm sorry to say, convenient for me that the bees died but it could be said that if they were strong enough to survive they would have done. There was one wasp in the pile, dead. That's meaningless!

Inner city Leeds. I'm just west of Edinburgh.

No, I don't think we ever had more than fifteen but more than two would have been too many to keep in our garden with unsympathetic neighbours. A friend who has an organic goat farm wanted bees on her land and invited us to put them there. It was idyllic. But I've developed arthritis and because sometimes my fingers are too weak to turn the page of a magazine I know that it would be dangerous for me to handle frames. I sold or gave away almost all my equipment and some of my books, the bees themselves went to an enthusiastic and intelligent man I met on a newsgroup.

I've seen too many old beekeepers neglect their bees through infirmity, it does no-one any good (including the bees) and I was determined that it wouldn't happen to me.

The above mentioned swarm went into a pile of boxes left for cleaning while we were away. They'd been taped but the bees were determined. You can imagine the potential mess inside. As it happened there was some fabulous comb honey and I have some dripped honey too which is delicious. But it will definitely be the last, the frames will be used as kindling for my bread oven and the boxes used to grow potatoes.

Story elsewhere.

I'm always sorry about killing bees. It might have been possible to get them out with a one-way escape and a small nucleus with queen and brood next to the wall. It does take a lot of time though, we've done it once.

There are some difficult places and we have some great stories - but all beekeepers do!

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

I disagree. I think that to be a responsible beekeeper you need to know at least the basics before you start. Honeybees are animals and need good husbandry like all stock.

I agree. And attend as many lectures, conferences and courses as you can.

- put two

Oh no they don't. They just think they do.

Longer ...

But it's easy for bees not to thrive in the artificial situation we put them into. If we want to manage them - or any animal or process - we should do it with the best knoweldge possible.

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

Often. But there's no real need. It's a specialised market, not a site which is of any interest to people who don't know what the stuff is all about, those who do know what it's about know what things look like :-)

I'm very happy to send e-pictures to anyone at any time. What would you like to see?

:-)

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

I doubt that you'd want any of it though, what's the point in cluttering it just for the sake of aesthetics? Although I offer pictures and have almost everything ready to send I'm very rarely asked - except, curiously, by museums because they don't really know what they're talking about.

What pictures would you like to see? Nåhlbindning needles? Tablets? An inkle loom? They're yours for the asking.

Mary

[Dave Liquorice]

A picture paints a thousand words.

And for web use they needn't slow things down, I use a nominal 320x240 image size for photographs on my website compressed so that each is just over 20k. Even ones with lots of detail and thus hefty compression to get the size down don't show it on screen.

[Grunff]

I know exactly what you're saying, and agree in many ways. But people are very visual - they like to look at pretty pics. A lump of wax next to the description of the wax will work wonders.

Please trust me on this one - getting people to buy something from a website (either online or by picking up the phone) is what I do for a living. A few pics can really make a difference to people's perception of the product and the supplier.

No idea what any of these things are, but I bet they're pretty!

[Mary Fisher]

Not when people know what the wax is like - the re-enactment world is very small and most of the people know us and our products from coming to our tent at events.

Hmm, I think you're right too for most cases. But there's something you don't reliase, which is that we don't WANT to be selling any more than we do. I keep telling magazines who try to sell us advertising space that any more would mean that we couldn't keep pace without giving up something else. We're playing at it, it keeps us off the streets, that's all :-)

That's my point. The people who do want them do know exactly what they're like. Those who might like to see them wouldn't know what to do with them! We're not catering for the curious.

Not really. They're functional, that's all. A nåhlbindning needle is simply a fat bodkin made from bone - real bone. A tablet is a square piece of plywood with a hole at each corner and one in the middle. An inkle loom is a slab of timber with dowels sticking out of it. They're beautiful only in that they work, like an S bend under a sink :-)))))))))))

Mary

[Grunff]

And that's a special case - I almost metioned it in my last post, but didn't. If you're fulfilling the needs of your particular market, and have no desire to expand, then just keep doing what you're doing. :-)

My instincts say "but the curious have money and run web searches!" - but given what you've already said, it makes perfect sense.

They still *sound* pretty.