Cheapest is not always best

Whilst reviewing some of our old blogs (you can still find them here) and figuring out which, if any, to copy across to our new site, we came across this picture of a lovely colony of Ligustica bees that we removed from a window space.

Nearly a year on and the bees are doing fine in their new home but it reminded us of the state of the first new home we tried to move them into and on digging out that particular brood box this month, it looks even sorrier!

We bought 3 or 4 of these Dadant brood boxes as part of a 'special offer' deal from a supplier we no longer use and the old adage of getting what you pay for seems to ring true in this case. Purists will notice that the box is built with nails rather than tenon joints and from pine rather than age-old cedar, but those options make hives very, very expensive.  We hoped we had found a cheaper compromise between quality and price but some of the boxes now need some remedial work - after only one summer.

What you can see on the outside of the box is resin which seeped out of the wood, underneath the hive paint which was supposed to offer some protection. Evidently the wood wasn't as seasoned as it should have been, the sun was stronger than I think anyone anticipated here in the Charente last summer and lastly, the 'protection' in the hive paint wasn't up to coping with the previous two points!

After a winter in our storage room, the resin is solid and will have to be sanded off with some heavy duty disks or paper.  Then, I think we will leave this box along with it's offending partner, in a dry place and let it season for the whole of 2019 before re-painting ready for use in 2020.

So, we won't be looking for the cheapest pine hives we can find from now on. But neither will we be paying the exorbitant prices some 'craftsmen' charge for hives which are not sufficiently superior to justify the premium asked.  It's mid-market, high-review-score products for us from now on.  Although, the leaking pine resin did smell lovely :-)

We know many people make their own hives and if we had the time and the precision woodworking equipment, we'd probably do that too but it's just as effective (for us) to buy Dadant equipment ready-made.  That said, we will be building a bespoke Layens hive later this year ourselves and will share pictures as we go along...

Asiatic Hornets - to Trap or not to Trap?

According to the information available on Asiatic Hornet life-cycles - plus a large dose of observation over the past several years - over-wintered AH queens have been out on the wing looking for carbohydrate-heavy forage since the end of February.

Now this knowledge gives us a tough choice...

We try not to kill any creatures and to let nature sort out the balance between the various species who share our home with us.  But... we know that each queen can go on to build nests that will house thousands of adult hornets, each capable of eating up to 50 honeybees per day during the summer.  So any queens we can stop during the Spring could mean saving entire colonies later in the year.

Trapped Asiatic Hornet queens from the garden

Whilst our choice won't be for everyone, we have decided to trap queens now and have weighed this up as the lesser of several evils (certainly not a choice we wanted to make).  Consequently, we have been experimenting with various types of traps and, more importantly it would seem, the lures/bait to go inside them.  There are many, many types of trap available and a quick Google search will reveal lots of interesting and entrepreneurial ideas from beekeeping suppliers and beekeepers alike from all over Europe.

Some are very simple - make a trap out of a fizzy drink bottle, for example.  And some are ingenious but in our view, to be truly successful at protecting honeybees,