The forager has much less hair on her thorax and is darker than the right bee. Hairs rub off during the life of a bee, and most hairs are yellowish in colour, so a darker bee is often an older bee. Bees become foragers about 3 weeks after emerging, and continue in that role until they die. Nurse bees stay fluffy and lighter for a week or two, so that receiving bee is several weeks younger than her older sibling.
Really fantastic photo, thank you. Bees are so amazing, and this photo shows so much of their biology and life cycle.
A short video of my Apiary, all my 9 colonies have survived.
This year will do video blogâs on:
queen rearing using the Nicot system,
preparing for spring,
FlowHive Supering and harvesting.
Removing FlowHives super and allowing the bees to clean them before storing up for winter.
Winter feeding.
Creating backup nucleus colonies for the following year.
I look forward in receiving your constructive feedback on my videos, this will just be a personal Blog to learn from mistakes in the future or record things that work.
How wonderful that all of your colonies have survived, @Paras!! Iâm so happy to see those bees at each of the entrances So far, so good with my two colonies also!
Canât recall if you already discussed it but how did you handle mite management over the course of last year, since Iâm assuming theyâre an issue where you are in Essex?
Yes always good to see your colonies survive and thrive each year.
Mites is always an issue and I canât go year without treating, I did 4 treated in September to allow the colony to raise healthy winter bees.
I have been checking the bottom board and saw in December the mite drops were high, decided to another 3 treatments and they really dropped. The reason why my colonies have high mite load is because I have allowed my colonies to build natural comb and the bees have done about 20% drone combs and raise at least 2 frames of drone brood.
I am have chosen to use vapourise treatment for the bees as I do not need to open the hive for treatment.
Thatâs good, I should probably also check the bottom board on my one colony that has this type. The other colony has a solid bottom, but I think if I did see a lot of mites on the other one Iâd probably treat both. Thereâll be some much warmer days here in the next week, so vapor would be a good option. Also a good time to get a jump on mites before brood rearing starts! Thanks for the tip
I usually treat few weeks before I put the supper on as well, my reasoning for these is when I raise new queens I like having as little mites in the hive.
Every year there is new things I am learning with my beekeeping skills. Itâs keeps you on your toes.
Video Blogs are great, this is a nice taste of whatâs to come.