Happy Birthday to Me!

Just a very quick post to say that it was my birthday in the last week. Below I've included a photo of the cake my beautiful wife made for me. She was super sneaky in making it, coming home from work in her dinner break to make it and clearing all the evidence. I'm not going to say how old I am but there is a good chance you'll be able to guess!

Wakefield and Pontefract Beekeepers: January Meeting

This Monday just gone was the first meeting we had of 2013 and the guest speaker was a guy called Gerry Collins. I think this was the 3rd time we have had him as a guest speaker and, as one of the times before, his talk was on swarming which included various methods of prevention including the Demaree method. I will be trying this method out on my Bees in the near future so won't go into any details here. If you are interested you can either google Demaree or try this link to Barnsley Beekeepers site that explains it very well.

The talk was fascinating and also very long; the usual meeting are scheduled to finish at 21.00, they were still talking at 21.45 when I had to leave to go to work as I was on the night shift. There was a short break in the middle where I got talking to people as usual and also in this time I picked up something I had ordered from a fellow Beekeeper who had organised a bulk order with Paynes Bee Farm. The item I'd ordered was a poly nuc which is basically a nucleus hive made, surprisingly, of polystyrene; not the kind of polystyrene you get goods packed in but a much denser type that is a lot more resilient and weighs more. Below are the photos of it.

The poly nuc

This screws onto the entrance giving you option of open, closed with or without ventilation and with mouse guard included

It came with 2 plastic inserts that you put next to the hive body and the feeder compartment. This one is a Queen excluder.

The hive from above showing the feeder area and the screened bottom.

The other plastic insert completely blocks off the feeder.

In this photo you can see the light reflecting from the clear cover, with this you can look into the hive with the lid off without disturbing the brood chamber too much.

All in all it looks and feels like a quality product. I can't say anything about the operating of it yet but will be able to later in the season but I am very hopeful that it will help me. Also everyone I talked to has said how good they are for creating nuc colonies. Next time you see this hive it should have a happy colony of Bees in it!