Beekeeping in Greece

14th January, 2016

Email from Greece, sharing their latest news from their neck of the woods…

Thanks again guys for your great newsletter, some very interesting articles, much appreciated.
We are in mid winter now. We had one fairly cold spell with snow just after Christmas.
The last week or so has been in the 17C so our girls have been out and about. We have a few
shrubs in flower which they head for also some Spring flowers already. It’s great to see them
out again. Looks like by next week we have another spell of cold weather, time to hunker down
again.
You must be very busy now. We are very interested in your splitting of hives. As beginners
we will have to tackle it in the Spring.
Touch wood we have been very free of mites, very interested in the powder sugar method.
Have a great New Year and a great honey harvest. And thanks again for all your efforts.

A week later…

Hi Margaret, thanks for your reply great to hear from you. As you mention Spring flowers we now have heavy snow, quite a change, all the girls are hunkered down again.
We had a bit of a worry last week. When I had a look at the entry gate I could see what looked like white threads covering a couple of holes. The next day there was bits that looked like chewed wax on the front flight deck. Was it wax moth or chewed calls from robbers. We had to have a look, luckily it was quite warm. As soon as we took the top off we could see what it was. It was only broken bits of fondant which had fallen through. Panic over. It was good to have a brief look in though and everything looked great,healthy fat bees and a lot of them.
Listened to your pod cast over the weekend very interesting. Thanks for all your work and input. Being beginners we find it very informative.
Hope all is going well with you and you are getting a bit of time to enjoy your Summer.
By all means use anything you want.

Your Greek followers Lorin & John

4th February, 2016

Crazy weather here, snow and cold a week ago . Now beautiful warm sunshine 20c like an English summer. It’s lovely to see the girls out in force, was a bit worried abound the winter being our first, but so far so good. We have a few viburnum shrubs that are in flower and they are buzzing, along with lavender, and Rosemarie. To my surprise they also love aloe Vera flowers. It’s interesting to watch them crawl up inside the tube like flower, or climb up to the base of the flower outside and drill through and suck out the nectar.
Also been able to start my bee count again ( that’s counting bees returning in a given time ) pleased to find numbers are at last years Spring levels. Hive One. 70 returns per min and Hive Two 61. Very pleasing and lovely to watch them coming back with full pollen baskets. Also notice how the pollen colour changes through the year at the moment it’s a very light yellowed grey.
This is all great but it is only early February so not to get to carried away.
Hope its all going well down there, and look forward to hearing how things are.

From over here to over there. Lorin & John.