Pruning Trees and looking at old cuts

Old Cut after a couple of years

Stump sticking out

I've started pruning the trees this year in the cold and wet windy weather. The winter pruning is to increase vigour in the tree and to encoruage it to grow in the direction you want it to. While pruning I was admiring some of the work that been done previously. 

The trees have been sealing and growing over the cuts. To me that make attactive scars on the barl escpcially after a couple of years and the work has grown around it.

Old Pruning healing

Old cut with some new cuts

One of the hives had fallen over

On Christmas Eve last year I had topped up the hives with  12.5 kgs block of  fondant. One of the hives had toppled over when I checked the orchard on the 16th January. Its been very windy and lots of rain. 

I checked on the hives the other day and the bees were coming and going.  I'm very pleased the bees are ok.

I've started winter pruning should have all the apple trees done by mid Feb.

Update report

Line of Apple Trees

Cobnuts

Its been a while since I have done an update. However the orchard doesn't stop. It continues and the cycle of life goes on.

Its been a very successful year in the orchard. I still hear hundreds of grasshoppers, and see loads of moths and butterfly's, that's this week the 1st week of September. Fruit wise we have had a bumper crop, we have had cherries they are all gone, we still have plums and apples and pears. The cobnuts are plentiful and we have had some almonds.

Almonds

I haven't had a very successful year at bee keeping. I lost my weakest colony to wasps a couple of weeks ago. That was very disappointing. I was away for a weekend and over that 2 week period I wasn't able to carry out my weekly checks and lost the colony. Upon my return I found the hive contained no bees but hundreds of  wasps, that was scary. I have had problems with queens this year getting them mated and had a drone layer.

The wasps I see this week have started suck up the sugars from decaying fruit.

Apple tree with Fruit

Multiple eggs on a Frame.

Frames with cells with multiple eggs

Brood 

On my routine inspection of the hives I found a frame which had multiple eggs in a number of cells. This is really strange as the queen has been laying well for the last couple of weeks and she is about a year old. This normally happen when you have laying workers or its a new queen and she is still learning, how to lay eggs.

Bees on the Frame

I also noted a couple of bees with K wing over the previous weeks. As a result I have applied MAQ Stripes to all the hives. I want ensure that the varroa mites are are low levels.

Bees from all the hives have now started to produce Drones as well as traditional workers. I have not seen any Queen cells yet, although I found a single play cup which I think is new. It looks like the swarming season will be upon us soon.

The orchard is now alive and murmuring with life. Every thing from bumbles bee's collecting pollen and the cherry trees coming into blossom alone with some of the Pear trees. The Almond trees have almost finished flowering. We are well into spring and Summer is just weeks away. I still have to start cutting the grass and that should start to get underway in the next week or so.

Bumble Bee Collecting Pollen

2015 Spring Convention

I attended the British Bee Keepers Association (BBKA) Spring Convention held at Harper Adams University. I attended a number of lectures and also attended the trade show.

Biology, diagnosis and control of SHB Peter Neumann
This is was an interesting lecture. Peter Neuman a Swiss expert who has travelled the world and given advice to various governments on various Bee diseases gave a lecture on the SHB.

How lucky we are; bees and the public Adam Hart
In this lecture professor Adam Hart spoken how bee keepers act with the public and how bee keeping can encourage people get interested with bees, bee keeping and science.

Honey bees surviving varroa without control Peter Neumann
Another intesresting lecture about the life cycle of varroa and its effects with honeybees. He also highlighted Breeding for Varroa tolerant bees

Thinking super-organismally: how evolutionary biology can make us better beekeepers Keith Delaplane
I enjoyed Keith's lectures enourmously so much so that I also attended the second lecture the following day. This was on what makes the Honey bee a super organism, and how they would behave and in the wild, and how some of those points could improve bee keeping in general.

How thinking super-organismally can improve honey bee breeding Keith Delaplane
This was a continuation of the lecture from the day before. However this lecture was sponsored by Bee Craft. He also mentioned lots of research that had been carried out here in the UK on bee breeding and how with the aid of artifical insemination he had been able to breed bees to be good at specifc traits. It was an intresting lecture.

I have made notes in most of these lectures and will get them written up and also upload them as a blog/diary entry.

St Andrews Botanic Garden

Picture of Peace Garden St Andrews Botanic Garden

Orchard at St Andrews Botanic Gardens

I visited the small orchard at the St Andrews Botanic Garden whist on a trip to Scotland.

Lichen

Hives at St Andrews Botanic Gardens

The Gardens are nice and if you are in or near St Andrews its worth a visit. The garden has a small orchard with various fruit trees, but this time of the year they are still relatively dormant. They have small trees not sure what root stock but I can see they have little space left to add more. I did see trees that looked like they were going to plant elsewhere and they have an area in which they grow rootstock for future trees before grafting. The air in St Andrews is very clean and lichen is growing on many of the trees, I saw at least 4 different varieties. Lichen on trees is a very good indicator of air quality.

Picture of the orchard

Picture of the orchard

The gardens also have a number of bee hives. The hives are not really for public viewing, they aren't visible to the public, you need to know where they are, as they are in the staff only area. I spoke to one of the gardeners and he said I could go and visit the hives. He pointed me in the right direction and I was off. They have a good number of hives. I wanted to see Smiths Hives but I didn't see any Smith Hives. Smiths Hives have traditionally been popular in Scotland, they hold around 50,000 bees, they are smaller than British National Hives and much smaller than Langstroth's.

Bees Buds and Blossom

First Blossom

Bumble Bee

Honey Bees

Spring is finally here.

The buds are getting bigger and the blossom is starting to bloom. That's obvious as the pictures show. The ground is still a bit wet and the muddy in places.

The grass is also looking brown as some of the older grass is had dried and died out. The young shoots are coming up.

On the down side a couple of horses have been in and had a wander round.


The pictures also show the bees all the hives in the orchard have done well. On a couple I have seen 5/6 frames of bees s they have done very well. I can also see the eggs and the larvae coming through. I will have the supers on the hives by the end of the week. I want to get them on sooner so as to deter them from swarming.

The bumble bees have also started appearing.

At the moments its just the queens that are rearing the next generation.