Winter?

To day 17/11/2007 7:30 AM arrived to my beeyard. As you can see It’s snowing. OH, I love this white, not only because is white that mean it’s pure and very calming.
Looking at this white I start thinking that there are bees that never see the winter but they are preparing for winter. It’s not interesting? They rush to collect nectar but they never use this nectar (honey).
A lot of reading doing this time from the internet and from the books and forum. Reading in Beemaster Forum I found a sad news: Charles Martin Simon passed away October 23.He was a nice person, answering to all my email and try to explain to me his way to seeing beekeeping. Interesting way of seeing beekeepin is “Principles of Beekeeping Backwards” , 10 Principles truly from another side of beekeeping. He send to me 2 Ormand’s books.R.I.P.

Organic beekeeping or Bio Dynamic beekeeping ?

Organic beekeeping or Bio Dynamic beekeeping ?
Few years ago I start wondering what do mean all this stuff. Well, I know the meaning of the word but I’m asking myself how can you get all this done in a world full of pesticides, fertilizers and FGMO. Looks to me strange to pretend you get organic or biological honey in this environment. Well I agree that you can keep your bees free of chemical, not treat them against Varroa I mean .Don’t take me wrong You can keep bees not treated against Varroa but for sure you can’t keep the bees out of this damaged environment. There are a lot of chemical spread in the air against mosquito there are a lot of pesticides and fertilizers used to get better crop.
Reading all the post in Organicbeekeeping I realized that we can speak about organic beekeeping and biological beekeeping. I’m wrong? No, I don’t think so. The consumers are confused about organic and bio and so the beekeepers. Looking to Romanian beekeeping forum I find out that a lot of beekeepers confused organic and bio beekeeping.As far as I know biological beekeeping is follows the rules of biological agriculture set up by R. Steiner at the beginning of the 20 century.
Please don’t take me wrong. I appreciate the beekeeping working their bees organically, using small cells foundation, and not treat their bees with chemicals. In my opinion the are only organic beekeeper and not biological beekeepers. Even harvest the honey is not biological. The biological beekeepers, as far as I know, harvest their crop next year not in the same year the bees gather the crop. I don’t want to judge the beekeepers using the term biological but all I want is to tell you my opinion. Perhaps I’m wrong. What’s your opinion? You can comment.

Sad News

Sad news Coning back from my beeyard I had read on Beesource 2 sad news: Dr. Eva Crane and George Imirie passed away.
Dr. Eva Crane teach me the The Archeology of Beekeeping, and George Imirie teach me to become from BeeHaver a BeeKeeper.

Thank you dr. Eva Crane Thank you George Imirie. R.I.P.

Come Back

Hi All,
It’s about 6 month I did not write in my blog not because I haven’t subjects but because I was to busy with my work. I spend only few hours on the weekends with my bees. Because I did not work my bees I had 3 colonies that swarmed.

Now my apiary looks like in this picture I did not do experience with my bees but I did try a kind of hive used by C.L. Farrar, as far as I know. In the next days I’ll show you my 18 cm hive.
What worried is the weather. My opinion is that the climate is changing.

See you soon!

The theft ?

Hi,
Cloudy weather and temperature at noon not exceeded 14 Celsius degrees.
Arrived at beeyard ad I had the first surprise. Somebody opened one hive and pick up some frames and throw away in front of the hive. I suspect that the intruder (or thief) was a beekeeper because he looked in the middle of the hive that make me think that he looked to see the strength of the family or looking to find the queen. I’m not sure it’s only a supposition.
The spring is here as you can see a lot of spring flowers, and the hazel is in boom. I pray God not to freeze.
By the way it’s not the time to stay in weekend to my apiary so I spend the rest of the weekend on Romanian beekeeping forum. I have an argument with guys about small cell size. I have to admit that I learned something. How to estimated the date of acacia bloom. The acacia will bloom when the average temperatures is 1000 Celsius degrees.
I’m waiting the weekend to go to my apiary. I hpoe it will be a good weather.

Spring around the corner

The forecast for next 5 day said that the temperatures will be around 0 Celsius degrees so I decided on Friday-23 February- to go to visit my bees and to give them patties. Arrived to my beeyard by 2 PM. The outside temperature was 14 Celsius degrees. First look to my hives.
The bees from all the hives, except one, flying. Coming back with load of pollen. I realized that somebody check 2 hive before me. The covers were removed and not put back in place properly. I was real happy anyway. Light a cigarette and watch them. It was a pleasure to t see them in hurry with pollen and perhaps a little bit of nectar. Star dreaming of future harvest. Stop. Check the hives.
As you can see in the photo they are ok. I did not check the dead hive. A think is sure they have plenty of food. I’ll check it next time.
I’ll start feeding from 1 March with sugar syrup 2 times a week. I think that the build up will be faster and the colonies will be ready for acacia flow.
Only one problem: I hope the winter will not come back.
About Romanian beekeeping. As probably you know from the first of January this year Romania joint EU. A lot of misconceptions. It’s not permitted to sell honey here and there. The extraction room must be so and so… The Agricultural Minister will fix the rules till July this year. I hope that the rules will be ok.

New Start, New Situation

Well, I did not write for a long time in my blog for two reasons. First all my Internet connection was off for more that three month because of the systematization of my area and second because I want to give up posting. Why? A lot of beekeepers friends asked me why I’m writing this blog and why I’m writing this in English. Few day ago I decided to write again despite of all incrimination. So let’s start.
First of all let’s talk about weather. The weather is going crazy. Here, it should be winter season, with minus degrees temperatures and snow, but looks like being mid March. Only for few days was real winter with the temperatures around –4,-5 Celsius degrees. We had a few with snow and few days were raining. My opinion there is no doubt that the weather is changing dramatically. We can see everyday on TV news about the global heating and dramatically change of the climate. The worst part of this situation is that mankind is doing nothing or few thing to stop it. I hope we’ll wake up before is too late.
By the reason of the weather changing the bees life is changing too. I did visit my bees in January 18, and the bees were flying like in March. The outside temperature was about 9 Celsius degrees I did give them candy as bonus for being good girls . A friend of mine checks 2 of his hives for brood. He found out that there are more brood as usual. He saw a lot of drones flying. If I remember correctly Steve Taber wrote in one of his articles or in his book that if you look in the hive you can find drones. Does anybody something about this subject? Because the last few days it was very windy I did go to my beeyard to see if there are problems.

I was lucky no problem. I saw snow in my beeyard.
Well, you can look to one thing from different point of view. This happened with Romanian join the European Community. I agree with this, because Romania is part of Europe and we do believe in European values. There are a lot of problems concerning this adherence. I know that in UE there are rules concerning beekeeping and this must be respected. Between Romanian beekeepers start a competition and Romanian authorities ,in my opinion, don’t do as much as we expected. I’ll tell you much more in next post.