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from Jacqui and me to this record of our experiences as new beekeepers in The Marches.





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Monday 8 February 2010

low mite count and other things

Yesterday (Sunday) carried out 7 day mite drop count - 38 making an average of just over 5 per day. There were two cluster busting days on Thursday and Friday with quite a lot of activity so the lower count is encouraging.
Attended L&DBKA AGM on Saturday when there was a solid attendance. Culain's quiz based on identifying Bees, Wasps, Flies, and lookalikes was not only good fun but very revealing. The winning score was excellent but that was the exception, the general ability to identify our local flying insects is not that good even amongst experienced beekeepers. By no means everybody spotted the Honeybee Drone!! Culain has created a permanent display collection for reference by Assocn members.
On Friday we saw what at first looked like lumps of residual snow in the plants around the garden pond. Closer inspection revealed a whitish jelly some of which was clean but other clumps had clearly been through some creature's digestive tract! Some lumps were found in the water about 2 inches below the surface. "Frogspawn" was my first reaction but closer examintion did not reveal the tiny black dots or egglike structure. 2 dead frogs were, however, found in the water. The Heron has been around this last week, would he have tried the spawn? Could the jelly have been some kind of algae? On the whole I am inclined to stick to my original view but maybe the spawn is unfertilised or has been frosted. A small sample has been taken from the water and put in a container in a cool corner to see if any development takes place.

1 comment:

  1. Can more than one treatment with oxalic be given in this period before the queen starts laying again ? I'm new to this, and need all the advice available from the experts !
    Culain.

    ReplyDelete