This Years Runt!
The smallest swarm I have ever caught! It’s going to be interesting to see if I can build this colony up and the overwinter them. #teenytinyswarm2019
Traps set!
Thirty plus trap hives all waxed up and set. With an unusual ten-day golden week coming up, it’s looking like I’ll be camping at the apiary catching swarms.
Bees Wax 4 Sale
Summer 2019 Our hives do not use ready made foundations making 100% of the wax produced by the our honeybees, there is zero chance of the wax being contaminated with paraffin or soy wax . We do use chemicals in our hives, thus making our wax chemical free. Our wax processed via two methods, Solar in the months of July and August, and steam in in the other months. Two grades are available for purchase, Apiarist and Cosmetic. Apiarist This wax is suitable for use in beehives and products such as leather or wood polish. The wax is deep yellow in colour with some impurities. This wax could used in […]
And it starts…
With the warm winter, I expected spring to arrive early. Sakura trees are budded and ready to explode, but will boom later than last year and this years predicted forecast. Queen cells are already built in the stronger hives and drone brood looks good… Trap boxes are waxed up and counting down the days. Counting down the days.
Floored
And it two years is all it took to get the floor started; winter is the only time I can work on the apiaries maintenance. I still need to add a door and make some of the spaces smaller so the ferrets and monkeys can’t get in. Bugs I can live with, ferret poo I can not.
Hebo Matsuri – The Edible Wasp Festival
Landlocked Gifu prefecture is well known for insect delicacies from soy sauce boiled locusts to the more evil hornet larvae.
Friends hives, Un-friendly have
Last year my friend’s beehives were ravaged by hornets, so whenever I have the chance I like to check on them for him during hornet season. Now, This year’s weather has been pretty much disastrous (lucky us) for the hornets on Awaji Island, torrential rain in spring to hinder the nest building followed by a couple of huge typhoons in late summer which drove the final nail into the coffin for the underground dwelling species. As for the hornets who build up high and dry, well…. Even that practice was no match against the tree uprooting wind and the bucket loads of endless rain The Japanese giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia […]
Catching swarms, Camping out!
Golden Week 2018 consisted of me camping out, catching swarms and playing with my tello. Overall and great golden week.
Kicked Out!
Last year around April the owner of the land my Ayuya apiary lives on decided to kick me off her land. What sucks sorry disappoints me the most is the time I lost developing the apiary, money aside I probably lost close to 1,000 hours of work over three years and only got to harvest one hive. In 2016 I was lucky enough to overwinter six hives which were due to be harvested the early summer of 2017, But because I was kicked out I needed to move them to a new apiary. Sadly three of the hives did not take to the new area, and two were stolen, yes stolen […]
Holy honey
Capping honey is the final stage of honey production for the bee. After hours and hours of to and fro flight, visiting an untold number of flowers and the uncountable bee hours of fanning the honey the bee essentially does what the beekeeper does when they bottle the honey, they put a neat little lid on the cell. Autumn is normally my best haul of the year, spring pales in comparison. So after bumper spring haul, great weather and and amazing comb grow I was expecting great numbers for this Autumn…. I could not have been more wrong. On this warm autumn, Sunday afternoon I set the goal of ten […]