Did you know that male bees (also called drones) only have on purpose? They only live to mate with a virgin queen in order to have somewhat of a genetic diversity in hives. This because a virgin queen mates with multiple drones from multiple colonies in what is called a drone congregation area.
Oh, and their penis explodes after mating.
Welcome back to my blog dear reader, in which I shall take you along on my journey, be they in beekeeping, or gaming, or whatever I feel like writing about.
We are in for a treat this week; it’s going to be about 40 degrees Celsius tomorrow and it’s about 34 right now. Meaning that I myself, will be huffing and puffing about being too warm. That being said, if I’m not mistaken most people in Europe will be experiencing this heat wave, so make sure to drink well and keep your pets well hydrated too! People tend to forget that the warmth can kill just as well as the cold.
My beekeeping gear finally arrived on Saturday after having ordered in on Monday. It should have arrived on Wednesday but it didn’t, then on Friday they said they’d deliver it and they didn’t. Even Saturday I thought “It won’t be here today” but it did, although it was quite late.
The plan had been to put a ground layer of paint on the hive on Saturday morning and then the actual paint on Sunday morning. Morning mostly because I really, really don’t want to be outside when it’s too hot. And too hot for me basically means everything above 24 degrees Celsius.
Unfortunately, that plan failed, so I put the first layer on the hive yesterday. The actual painting will probably happen Thursday since it’ll be raining on Wednesday and super hotness today and tomorrow.
But whatever! It’ll get done eventually; I don’t have bees yet so I have some extra time.
Saturday morning was also spent with me and my buddy clearing some space in the field I talked about in my previous post.
We spent roughly three and a half hours cutting away brambles, trees and such to make a little bit of a clearing. And it’s looking mighty fine. I should probably make a few new drone (the controlled flying one, not the male bee) shots there so I can show a comparison, I will probably do that one of these days too.
As I said the plan was to also do some painting etc so we could prepare a bit more but alas. We weren’t even able to test the hive yet because at that point it had not yet arrived. We worked from around 9:00 till 12:30 and the gear only arrived around 19:45.
But oh well, it’s here, the clearing has been made, now to go get some bees!
Another hiccup there. I had reserved a colony and their queen online, but the person I was going to collect them from let me know that the queen had gone missing. Chances are that she had left the building because the box they were in was a bit too tiny. They usually tend to make a new queen and the old one up and disappears. If a new queen hatches it can take up to 3 weeks before she starts laying eggs at a good speed. Which would slow down the whole “getting them ready for winter” bit.
So now I either have to wait for the person to get a new hive ready for me, or find someone else to get me bees. I have contacted a few beekeepers, so we’ll see how that ends.
Stay tuned o7