Holiday first week or still summer

My holiday started at the first of September. For one year I was waiting for this.
I have something to do for my bees and then I’ll go fishing.
A bad thing happened: my queen from Alpine hive was missing in mating flight so I have to give up to this hive I’ll united it with another.
I'll come with news next week.

Last 3 weeks with friends & enemies

I did not write for some time in my blog.
I had a lot of work to do before going to my holiday.
I did spent my time to my apiary with some old frind.
First of all the Alpine hive make problems. The bees decided to superseded the queen .

So now I have in the hive a brand new queen but last weekend she was unmated. I’ll see if she is mated if not I have to give up working with the Alpine hive.
One of my enemy.

My friend call him "the bees wolf". Do you recognize him









Please look to one of my friends .

I’ll spend my holidays to my apiary getting the bees for winter.

See you soon.

Beekeeping Symposium

I’m really happy that I can tell to you who read this little blog about Beekeeping symposium that will bee here in Romania. Between 11-14 September 2008 In Bucharest Romania will be beekeeping symposium "Beekeeping Simple & Clear"
To this link you can read about final program of the symposium:

http://www.apimondiafoundation.org/foundation/symposium/finalprogram.pdf

I think that you’ll find the symposium interesting .

WHY

WHY
A lot of why questions last week.
From Tuesday last week started the rain. As you probably know in the in the nord of our country there are floods and the bad thing human lives were killed. You’ll say" it’s the Nature" . No, it’s the Man. For 10 years the climate is changing and the future in my opinion does look good. But we keep going this way. It’s our choice.
Around here a lot of rain and storm. On Wednesday the storm brake down 2 hives. One of them lost their queen. I have to unite this hive because I don’t think that a good time to rear queens. No nectar is available in nature and the weather in not a good one for rearing queens.
Surprisingly the small hive Alpine was not tern down by the storm.
I did check half of my hives. I did mark the queens and clipped. I did feed a small nuc. I intended to winter this nuc(in Langstroth hive) using the experiment done by Canadian beekeeper Pedersen.
Why I’m doing all this?
As you can see in this little film the the queen in Alpine hive I clipped and marked the queen and for moment everything is OK.

Killer or How to spend The Weekends

Arrived to my apiary wet (the temperature was about 32 degrees) but happy because I’m free for 3 days and I can work my bees.
Sunday morning I start working my second Alpine hive (or Warre). One day I’ll try to explain why I’m interested to this type of hive.

As you can see in the little film the first Alpine hive looks OK and hope that I’ll have a strong family next spring.

By noon on Sunday I did looking to my tomatoes. I did get mad when I did see a mole start big up just right in the middle of my tomatoes bad. The tomatoes are special for me because they are not Dutch they are old Romanian tomatoes and I want to make a lot of tomatoes for seeds. That bastard named mole start to dig and destroy. See the film what happened.

Work in Apiary

I’ll begin this post saying "Thanks Jorn". I did use calciumcarbid to get rid of that bastards named moles. At the beginning I was lucky but after 2 weeks they start make more hills about ~ 50 meters away. Well I’ll repeat the lethal calciumcarbid next week to see what happen.

On Wednesday as soon as I arrived to my beeyard I did start to clean up the apiary. A lot of work to do but at the end I make a big fire and burn the misery.

Saturday wake up by 7:30. Make preparation to move a small swarm in to warre(Alpine) hive. All my insistences let me down. Only two man help me David J. Heaf and Ilmārs B.. So at the moment I don’t know the management of Alpine hive but for sure I’ll find out before give up beekeeping. You can see my first step on Alpine hive.
Success George!

Toftman or Beekeeper

The little political situation in the beeyard named "Happy Apiary".Well, it's what I want to write ,it's a kind balance and do believe me I don't like to write a thing like this.Now, let's start.For me it's time to harvest. It's time to be happy. To be sincerely I'm not so happy. The average from 6 hive it's 12 kg/colony. I don't know that

it's a good average it's not but for me who visit in spring my beeyard for 10 times and I can't work my bees because of the weather only 4 time. Anyway I have honey for my and my friend and don't forget there are still honey flow: lime, and perhaps honey dew.I had 4 hive that swarmed in last month 3 of them become feral colonies and I cached one(using lemongrass oil paste).After the hives swarmed I had 4 new unmated queens. Now I have now 3 mated queens and one missing in action, I mean lost in mating flight.Only one thing make me a little bit happy : my fruit trees.