Not had an update for a while as I'm working on a couple of bee related projects that I'll making a larger post about in the near future. August is really the time to harvest honey and start mite treatments, but as it's remained warm and the bees have still been flying I've left the supers on and plan to remove them next week, in early September. The deep national super is really heavy and the shallow super on Hive2 is about half full. This week I noticed that the bees in Hive1 have largely ignored the box of used wax I put below the roof whilst those of Hive2 have almost emptied theirs. The queens are still laying eggs in both hives and the bees haven't been trying to make queen cells so I guess they're happy at the moment. There's a lot of stored food in both hives, in fact Hive2 has 2 complete frames of nothing but honey all ready for the winter.
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| National Deep Frame full of Honey |
This evening, in the garden, I saw what appeared to be a cross between a horsefly and a hoverfly on steroids. Eventually it took off and from it's flight it was evidently some kind of big (ugly) hoverfly. A Google search later and I'd identified it as a
Hornet Mimic Hoverfly or
Volucella Zonaria. Apparently their larvae live in wasp nests alongside the wasps and eat the detritus found in them. They're common in the South of England but not the North East. I've certainly never seen one before so I'm going to go ahead make an uneducated assumption it's the result of climate change and/or this year's bumper wasp population boom. Really ugly thing but quite harmless. I didn't get a picture of it but here's one of a wasp investigating the outside of Hive1.
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| Vespula Vulgaris investigating Hive1 |
Actually during this weeks hive inspection I noticed a wasp fly into Hive1 whilst it was open and a bumble bee checking out Hive2 when that was open. Cheeky buggers. I also found small spider in the roof space of each of the hives.
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