Author Archives: Ewa&Mikael

English summary: It’s well known that top insulation is key for a great overwinter, but does the bees need bottom ventilation or not? This year’s wintertest will try to answer that since we will put moisture absorber in one mite board, one hive with empty board and one hive with no board and see ifContinue reading “4 oktober – dags för årets vintertest”

English summary: We have now installed the temp and humidity sensors in our hives, and the data show a very consistent internal environmental regardless of external temp and humidity. With insulated hives we expect the curves to stay very similar the whole winter. Nu har vi installerat temp- och fukt-givare i våra kupor och viContinue reading “29 september”

English summary: The last thing we do prior the winter is to add temp sensors on a few colonies, tape around the plastic lid to prevent airgap and add 100 mm of insulation. När de sista skälvande dagarna med sommartemperaturer infaller är det nu dags att sätta punkt för biåret; alla samhällen har sin matContinue reading “24 september – på med isolering”

English summary: Its quite common to experience i kind of “mitebomb” in September – I sudden huge increase of mites. This is quite normal since mites double theri number in 20 days, which means if you have 100 mites in april then that can easily increase to 3000 by end of the season. The bestContinue reading “Kvalsterbomb i september”

English summary: Since food is very scarce in the autumn, robbery is a clear risk and thus we should avoid to open the hive “just for fun”. During summertime we usually want nice wheather when we open the hive, but that is not preferable in the autumn. When good wheather happens in the autumn beesContinue reading “Hösten – stor risk för röveri”

English summary: The year is coming to an end and we can summarize it. We have extracted around 250 kg honey from our 8 production colonies and to that we can add the 250 kg that the bees will keep as winter store. We have thus invested half the crop into the bees health. AContinue reading “3 september – bokslut”

English summary: We took a swarm that have shown to be a super productive colony where it have grown from 6 combs of bees and now needed the fourth box since there wewre so many bees that we couldnt move a comb without crushing bees. It’s very odd to add an extra super this lateContinue reading “24 augusti – raketsamhället behöver skattlåda”

Englis summary: We hoped for a flow of heather which would have secured the winter store for the bees. Unfortunately no rain in late July with the consequence that nectar is scarce even if the flowers are vividly showing off their purple glory. Therefore, we have started to add a bit of sugar since thereContinue reading “Invintringen påbörjad”

Invintra på LjungDen allmänna åsikten är att ljunghonung innehåller för mycket antioxidanter och mineraler och kommer leda till utsot och därför ska all honung bort. Eftersom ljunghonung är eftertraktad och genererar betydligt bättre betalt än vanlig honung så kan man undra om en del av anledningen möjligen ligger där?Nå, är utsot månne något hittepå? Nejdå, eftersomContinue reading “Ljunghonung som vintermat”

English summary: Honey can only carry 20% water without a high risk of fermentation. Heather honey is claimed to be able to carry 23% whithout issues which we found very odd. My hypothesis is that the different value is due to a measuring error because there will be air trapped in the honey spreading theContinue reading “Myt om ljung”