Ah I thought I’d gone deaf ! Seems I’m not alone ha ha. Glad for the update
Paul.
Ann
From: Oxnatbees
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2018 9:57 PM
To: oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [oxnatbees] Updates and gossip (was: test)
Hi all
yes I was thinking things are v quiet on this mailing list too. My bees are
just happy and doing their thing, no problems, and it seems no one else with
bees has problems. Beats me what they're foraging on, it's dry as a bone out
here and I don't see anything significant in flower. But in previous years when
they've had no forage you could tell because the number of flyers was minimal,
maybe one a minute, whereas this traffic is as busy as any I've seen.
Swarm numbers down 66%? I can believe that, I only collected half what I did
last year (6 not 12) and my own hives only threw out 2 swarms and a cast
between 5 established colonies. Normally by now our mailing list is alive with
questions like "what is up with this cast I hived a month ago" but... I guess
those swarms that were caught, thrived.
Similarly - all 7 feral colonies in my village are going strong but the 8th
appears to have been poisoned by the householder shortly after being
recolonised this year (presumably by a swarm I missed).
We ended swarm season - I think we have to admit it's over now - with several
bee-less members who were top of the list for the next ones; unheard of.
I apologize for not being in your inboxes more and not organising Events. My
life is somewhat disrupted by the addition of my aged in-laws to the household,
after they had a series of serious health problems. We squeezed them in and
for a while had a bed downstairs. I feel there should be a joke here about
merging two colonies... This rather cramps opportunities for meetings here,
though Gareth has kindly offered a visit to his apiary (To Be Arranged).
Perhaps someone else can offer a visit to their place eh? Eh? Eh?
We looked into the Bee Farmer visit but, it Ain't Going to Happen. When we
finally got one on the phone it became clear there is no way they are going to
show strangers where their hives are, especially after the theft of 40 in
Oxfordshire last winter.
One thing coming up is, you may recall former member Helen Jukes - we had
several meetings at her house and viewed her TBH, which Jack took over when she
left Oxford. She has written a book about her recent life and how it was
influenced by her beekeeping experiences, A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings
(Scribner UK) which is due to be released in, gosh, under 2 weeks. Jack and I
have proofread it and I have to say I really liked it. It mentions some of
us... here's an Amazon link, and you can see an extract here.
Andrew recently visited Sutton Courtenay Primary School to show them Bee Things
and a writeup will appear on the blog shortly!
Pip pip!
Paul
On 16 July 2018 at 18:53, Jon Woods <jwoods@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Very quiet !
My bees see happy and busy.
But I never did get a swarm. I read somewhere that swarm numbers were down
66% on last year....
Sent from my iPhone
On 16 Jul 2018, at 17:41, Will H <whanrott@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
perhaps it's just quiet just now?
On 16/07/18 17:35, Ann Welch (Redacted sender ann_welch for DMARC) wrote:
Just testing Paul as have not received anything from the mailing list for
a while.
Ann
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