Sophia hive blog posts.
Sophia Hive 2 Painted
A wooden hive would not survive very long in the raw state, i.e. untreated wood, so chance select paints were chosen from remnants found in […]
Bee Wise
Wooden Hive Assembly
After considerable delay the wooden hive (National configiration) finally arrived from Donegal Bees: First, the contents were unpacked. Was surprised to find that there were […]
Mothers and Babies are Well
I’m reliably informed that both mother queens and baby queens are doing well in both the Knockainey (Sophia) and Foxgrove (Rockbarton) sites. The new Sophia […]
Sophia Expansion Update
It has been two weeks since the Sophia colony was split to generate a spin-off swarm (artificial swarm). Recall that this entailed taking the original […]
Hive Splitting
Because of Covid 19 related delays in delivery of a completely new and robust Beehivemonitoring system, it was decided that the old sensor system – […]
Swarm Catcher
Recently I bought a nucleation box to have just in case our colony decided to swarm. Unfortunately I forgot to order brood frames and foundation […]
Replacement GSM Units Arrive: Scale Calibration
Just as I had given up on getting the repaired units back from Slovakia, brand new replacement units appeared in my postbox. And that was […]
Sophia Hive – One Year On
It is almost a year since we ventured into the amazing world of bees. The Sophia colony has survived the Irish winter, although I can’t […]
Expansion Room and Honey Show
With the late Autumn sunshine last week, the apiary bees took full advantage to do some late autumn stocking up of supplies, particularly pollen provided […]
September Sunshine
We hope to place observation cameras on a hive to monitor flight patterns and general colony behaviour. The ‘Beehivemonitor’ system integrated with the Sophia hive […]