Category: France

Garden

It is currently warm and dry. The grass is growing more slowly; which is good.

We are working on the wild flower development with some small success. More seeding done after grass removal with the expectation that we will achieve some flowering success.

There are some flowers out that the insects like.

Swarm

So last week, the evening before we were due to leave for a week the bees swarmed. Only three days after they arrived. I was happily sitting in the garden when I heard a lot of bee noise and then realised that there were thousands of them close by.

Why they swarmed is not clear. Stress from the travel? Too long in nuc and overcrowding? Did not like the new hive? There were no clear queen cells that I saw before the swarm, but that does not mean that they were not there!

Fortunately they went to a low branch in a tree in the garden.

I quickly read my bee manual to find out what to do and they behaved well and were a textbook case.

I shook the swarm into the box, turned it upside down and the rest of he bees walked in so that they could find the queen.

The process was completed when I then transferred them back to the nuc.

It was certainly a steep learning curve.

A week on and the swarm in the nuc are active and I think that I have seen the queen. In the original hive the remainers are there and active. Too early to see a new queen? Next week will be instructive.

Bees are here

The arrival of bees at long last. It has only been in gestation for about three years. I did my learners course at Ealing Beekeepers about 4 years ago and I had the input from Johann at the allotment.

I ordered the bees in January and they arrived 2 days ago. They are Buckfast which are meant to be a more mild mannered breed. The queen is 2025 so the colony is small and relatively immature.

The colony arrived in the polystyrene ‘nuc’ after another hour in the car. I think the bees were somewhat stressed.

I followed the advice of the man in shop and bought and used an insulated frame to help conserve heat as the colony only takes up half of the ruche. I also have used feed – glucose sirop – to give them a boost and because it is a low time currently for availability of pollen and nectar.

They do seem to have come to life a bit today. The weather has been warmer and maybe the bees are more settled.

I have been concerned as some bees have congregated under la ruche today. Are they stressed? Are they disoriented because they left the nuc first and then cannot find the opening? I did lift some up to the landing strip and they did wobble slowly inside.

I rechecked la ruche today. The bees are feeding from the nourisseur and I think I saw the queen. There seemed to be a lot of activity. Some maybe all ok really. On verra.

Hornets

Time to take the traps down as early May and with that more risk of catching the native European hornets.

I found 24 in two of the bottles- which I think all arrived in the hotter days. learnings- put traps in the trees.

Trapping

Yellow legged Hornets are making the news in UK but are a more wide spread problem in France since they arrived in 2004.

It is advised to set traps early in the year to reduce the number of females that awake from hibernation to set up new nests.

My fresh trap- one of three. This has a mixture of beer and blackcurrant juice- should be white wine too!

Checked traps today and two culprits in one of them:

Source

I am awaiting the arrival of my nuc in June.

The container has landed

The shipping container with the items we sent back from NZ arrived in Rotterdam about two weeks ago and turned up at the house yesterday in a big lorry. Not so much stuff, bit still, along with beds and memory boxes, the kitchen table which has been back and forth over the last 20 plus years in back in place.

Shaz and her serre

Shaz’s dream has been constructed. A high quality item made in Finistère which is more robust than the ones in the garden centre type places. After reading the insructions and watch the videos lots of times, she put it up with great success.

Sky time

This week the night sky is in the news as seven planets are due to align and are visible – not all with the naked eye. However some are easy to see. The above shows Venus after sunset but before proper darkness. A little later when Venus was close to the horizon Neptune and Mars were easily visible. Along with other stars. A clear night.Great.