Honeybees are reducing colony size and consolidating honey stores for overwinter survival, feeding from buddleia and ivy the workers are also evicting male drone bees from the colonies, the drones will die but it is nature’s way of conserving stores, the drones consume honey and do not forage, new drones […]
Bee Watch September – The Start of the End
September, great Honey Fair in Conwy, reasonable weather and the seasons final major source of forage is starting to open – Ivy. Ivy attracts many pollinators, there is even an Ivy Bee, a solitary bee emerging currently, my photo of the Ivy bee happens to be on Tamarix, but that’s […]
Bee Watch – August Swarms
Honey bees swarm in a natural propagation process, creating two or more colonies from one by colony division; usually this takes place early in the summer / late spring giving both parts of the divided colony time to recover and fill their honey reserves before winter. But I had an […]
Bee Watch – Honey and Wax – End of July
We have meandered through bee related events since Easter, tracking the seasonal forage and varied diet of honey bees and which forage is shared with bumble bees, other solitary bees, hover flies and other pollinators; all making the continuous presence of diverse seasonal food sources (forage) very important for bees, […]
Bee Watch – What’s Happening in July
So over the weeks of this season we have looked at forage for bees and pollinating insects, the development of the honey bee colony from around 10,000 bees that overwinter in a hive by consuming the stores of pollen and honey set up during the previous summer; to now as […]
Bee Watch – End of June – Dearth and Parasites
June is sometimes a month of some dearth for bees between the main forage times of fruit trees and summer flowers. This month so far bees have been foraging on early blackberry, more cotoneaster, and clover is just starting and various garden flowers, including my tomatoes. In St Mary’s Towyn […]
Bee Watch – June Starts and It’s Here
Several events have occurred in the interval since our last item; 1. Bees continue to forage on a diverse and changing range of plant flowers. 2. We have taken an interim honey harvest. 3. I am trying to raise some queens. 4. Conwy Beekeepers Apiary meetings. 1. Bees continue to […]
Mid May Bee Watch – Swarming & Cotoneaster Horizontalis
If there are bees and pollinating insects in your garden they will find Cotoneaster if you have one. The photos taken in my garden early May 2019 are a few minutes snapshot of how attractive this plant is to bees and other insects during the period of spring flowering after […]