"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2012-06-21 21:08:58 +0100, "Christina Websell"
said:


"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2012-06-19 23:22:20 +0100, "Christina Websell"
said:


"David in Normandy" wrote in message
r...
On 19/06/2012 20:16, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Tue, 19 Jun 2012 19:30:32 +0200, David in Normandy
wrote:

While sitting outside this afternoon my attention was caught by an
intense buzzing sound. Looking up I saw a cloud around 50 feet
diameter
and twenty feet off the ground move close to our house then drift
off
over the lawn then it moved off into the distance across a field.
The
cloud must have consisted of thousands of buzzing individuals. I
couldn't see what insect it was - it was literally a huge buzzing
cloud
of dots. Bees or what? I've never seen anything like it in my life
in
all my years of rural living. I didn't think bees made such huge
swarm
clouds?

Sounds like a large primary swarm of bees. Bear in mind that June is
the month when bees are most likely to swarm, and a large colony may
contain some 50,000 bees half of which may debunk in the first
(primary) swarm.


So it was bees then! I wouldn't have liked to be in the middle of that
cloud, it looked quite intimidating!

Do you know the rhyme "A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay,
a
swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon, a swarm of bees in July
isn't
worth a fly" ?
Keeping bees is very hard work - stopping them swarming needs the hive
examining often for queen cells. IIRC.
As I am not that fond of honey, I prefer to buy mine..

Tina

I have to disagree that keeping bees is hard work. Inspecting a hive
every two weeks for three months really isn't that arduous. If you see
queen cells forming, you knock them off. If anyone is interested in
keeping bees - and heaven knows we need them in the world - find a local
bee keeping course and go for it! I cannot think of another food
producing, plant pollinanting and therefore human food production
creature
that requires less human intervention.
--

And feeding them during the winter? I have no experience with them, but
my
German friend keeps them, and they seemed very labour-intensive to me
when I
was over there.
I could very well be wrong.
I spent my first day there jarring up honey. For hours, and when she was
visiting me, she was always e-mailing home about the bees. This and that
needed to be done with them.

Tina

It may be different in Germany with a colder climate. But IF my bees
needed feeding, which happened rarely, because the honey was taken off in
mid-July, giving them the whole of the rest of the warm weather to forage
for their winter larder, they were given a sugar and water syrup mix, from
what I recall. I don't remember that happening more than once, possibly
twice, in the 15 or more years we had them. Climate must make a
difference, I feel sure but this not labour intensive. Taking off the
honey, which is what you helped to do probably took about two days in
total. In one particularly successful year, I got 80lbs of honey from one
colony and the least I ever got was 25lbs. Whatever it took, that was an
amazing reward.
--
It is probably different there but it was hard work and I don't plan to have
bees any time soon ;-)
Also hornets were there, preying on the bees. It seemed a constant thing to
make sure the bees were OK.

1 jar of honey will last me a year. I use it for mustard/honey glaze and
for reviving bumble bees.

Tina