Good morning Happy Hibee,
thank you for welcoming me!
I have not been on Facebook for over 10 years hence me not following the UK Flow Hive on Facebook.
Was hoping there would be alternative platforms to connect and communicate but will look into it again.
Thank you for your advise and I appreciate that in regards an all round knowledgeable and friendlier bee community. As mentioned I’m very new to these platforms and trying to navigate my way through all the information and chats out there.
So I got a swarm with the help of my local beekeeper (who has now moved away) around the middle of May’20 just as we had gone into lockdown. I am a member of the the Suffolk Bee Association and was meant to start my beginners course when covit shout everything down.
As I got my swarm so late in the season I didn’t have a chance to harvest. So when it came to the end of the season I had a very low Varroa count and left all the full capped honey frames for the bee’s to winter on and only added some vitta feed patty at the beginning of December as I got a bit concerned. I checked back on the bees last week and the patty was still there and only partly eaten. I personally feel that properly wasn’t necessary.
All my knowledge so far has come from books and online courses. I’m surrounded by a lot of bee keepers due to my sightly rural location however Covit has really made it difficult to build up a good community around me with the right support and possibly mentoring. To my knowadge no one uses Langstroth systems and everyone uses National Hives systems.
The closest Flow Hive users are in Essex which is Paras but further up the A12 it seems to only me.
So I have 1 x Flow Hive 2 and have just prepped 1 x Flow Hybrid 3 frames for the start of spring as I’m aiming to do a split.
My general concern at the moment is that I feel my Hive is not as weather proof as it should have been and therefor feels a to more damp then it should.
My 2nd concern is that I worried that they haven’t got enough food stores and I would need to feed granulated sugar as we heading into another cold spell in the coming weeks.
If you have any thoughts are welcome …