What did you do in your Apiary/Bee yard today?

[Lesgold]

I went to move a bucket of honey from the warming unit and the handle broke at the housing. A shed floor covered in honey was the result. Scraped most of it up and put it outside on large tub lids for the bees to clean up. Mopped the floor and closed the shed door as the bees were becoming interested in my sweet offerings. Threw the shovel outside and the bees cleaned it up in about 20 minutes. As I had to clean up the mess in bare feet, I also got stung in between my toes when walking back to the house after completing the job. Knew I should have stayed in bed today.

[Michael Bush]

I know what that's like.  A few weeks ago my son tripped and fell onto a bucket of honey.  It had a spout and was quite old and brittle, it turns out, because it shattered when he fell on it and five gallons ran onto the floor.  Unbelievable mess.

[Terri Yaki]

Ouch! That hurts all the way over here.

[BeeMaster2]

We had 25 gallons of honey in the settling/bottling tank on a little table by the door. One day the dog came flying in the door and bumped the bottling lever, wide open. Big mess and a loss of a lot of honey.
Jim Altmiller

[Terri Yaki]

I find it amazing at how far a little bit of liquid can go, I can't imagine...

[Michael Bush]

>I find it amazing at how far a little bit of liquid can go, I can't imagine...

Exactly.  It pretty much covered the entire floor...

[Salvo]

Terri,

A *little bit of liquid*.

Great Molasses Flood, disaster in Boston that occurred after a storage tank collapsed on January 15, 1919, sending more than two million gallons (eight million litres) of molasses flowing through the city?s North End. The deluge caused extensive damage and killed 21 people.

Sal

[max2]

I went to move a bucket of honey from the warming unit and the handle broke at the housing. A shed floor covered in honey was the result. Scraped most of it up and put it outside on large tub lids for the bees to clean up. Mopped the floor and closed the shed door as the bees were becoming interested in my sweet offerings. Threw the shovel outside and the bees cleaned it up in about 20 minutes. As I had to clean up the mess in bare feet, I also got stung in between my toes when walking back to the house after completing the job. Knew I should have stayed in bed today.

What a mes, so sorry to hear.
We all had it happen  at some time.
Some months ago we had our stall just about set up - but the pins not in place to keep the marquee steady - when a strong gust blew the marquee over....hitting the table with all the jars of honey...these falling on the ground.
Cleaning up the broken glass mixed with honey at a market was an experince i will not forget.
It just about made us change to plastic jars.

[The15thMember]

I noticed some dysentery and a lot of dead bees in front of one of my hives today, so I did a quick nosema test on them.  I don't think I saw any spores under the microscope and I certainly didn't see many.  It's not quite warm enough to inspect yet, so I'll just keep an eye on them for now.  I had another hive so low on food that I put another box on them with some partial honey frames I had stored from last year.  Based on the amount of debris on the bottom boards, I'd say we're really brood rearing now. 

[Bill Murray]

Member, are you feeding them?

[The15thMember]

Member, are you feeding them?

The hive with the dysentery?  Yes, they have been eating sugar balls since December. 

[NigelP]

Nice cold day here in the UK. Ideal to clean the wax off my heather super frames. For those that don't extract heather honey you need to cut the super out of the frame to press the honey out, leaving empty frames  covered in wax etc, so to reuse you need to remove all this residual wax.
Bought a wonderful bit of kit a couple of years ago, an old Polish Potato Boiler. Takes a couple of hours to get to a boil (large volume of water). But cleaned 26 supers worth of frames  of all residual wax in around 2 hours. My old method of scrape and scrape took around 10 days at 2 hours per day. Also cleans queen excluders in seconds....

[The15thMember]

I did my first inspections of the year today!  It was 67F, sunny, with a light breeze, perfect beekeeping weather.  I checked 4 hives out of my 7.  One looked so good, it's like they never had winter!  Wall to wall brood on 8 frames and still 4.5 frames of honey.  I obviously gave them another box, and I donated one of their frames with eggs to a hive whose queen came up a drone layer.  I have walking drones in all hives.  I saw a few beetles in each colony too, which isn't typical for me at this point in the season, so I'm probably going to put some traps in some of the hives.   

[little john]

Nice cold day here in the UK. Ideal to clean the wax off my heather super frames. For those that don't extract heather honey you need to cut the super out of the frame to press the honey out [...]

No heather in this locale (which is a great pity), but whatever the bees bring in often produces a thick honey which then sets solid on standing:



If left over 12 months it can set brick-hard. No taste of OSR, which is the obvious candidate.

For our State-side friends - conditions in the UK have fluctuated wildly thus far this Winter from shirt-sleeve weather to some rather nasty frosts and a few days of snow - the only constant being RAIN - and plenty of that ! (UK farmers are around 4 weeks behind because of flooding)

Yesterday saw me checking on the small jars of fondant I place over the Crown Board holes as 'fuel gauge' indicators of remaining stores, which experience has shown they only wolf-down when stores are low - they just pick at it otherwise.
3 were empty, all the others were ok. On good days there's pollen coming in, so the season's set to start anytime soon ...
LJ

[NigelP]

I don't think you have OSR honey there as OSR sets white and looks a like a bucket full of lard. Also when remelted you get a froth on top of the honey which needs to be cleared with cling film.

[Ben Framed]

Pardon my not knowing, what is OSR?

Phillip

[Michael Bush]

Oil Seed Rape.  aka Canola.

[Ben Framed]

Pardon my not knowing, what is OSR?

Phillip

Oil Seed Rape.  aka Canola.

Thanks

[Bill Murray]

Being as In sitting here waiting for some wax to render and the bees to start flying. I am knee deep in swarm control mode. Ive gotten most of my bait supers on, about 1/2 of my 8 frame supers aired out, have every DSBB I own on.  All in all its started out as a good year so far.

[little john]

I don't think you have OSR honey there as OSR sets white and looks a like a bucket full of lard.

For sure.  It's taste reminds me of Plasticine (for the younger generation - that was a kind of Blue-Tack modelling clay - came in several colours, which always became a dull grey with continued use).  I thought that honey possibly might contain a fair percentage of OSR, as there are precious few other crops in this area which produce useful amounts of nectar - it's very much 'Cabbage and Potato' country.
LJ