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sir. porky · Joined: 21 Jun 2007 Posts: 59 Location: west of Ireland

Hi biobee,
yes we do have and breed buckfast bees, all though not pure we do have a couple of pure breed queens in our hives, we got sick of all the swarming and agresiveness that comes with the native bee! you are obviously a bee keeper and also know about brother adam and his life long work to develop the "buckfast bee" how many bees do you keep and what breed?

biobee · Joined: 10 Jan 2008 Posts: 9 Location: Devon, England

Hi Sir P,

I worked with the bees at Buckfast Abbey for a year, about 5 years ago. Brother Adam was no longer around, of course, but I have studied his work and regularly re-read his books. I only have 6 colonies at present (two queens failed after wintering successfully) but I will have 10-12 by the end of the season. They are all local mongrels, but one is as pure a Buckfast as I ever saw at the Abbey - extremely docile and easy to handle. I am only a few miles from Buckfast, so their influence on local stock is pervasive.

Pure Buckies are a delight, but some of the out-crosses are wicked - as I'm sure you know. Do you have an isolated mating apiary to control crossing?

I am not particularly interested in honey production - much more in finding ways to keep bees without chemicals. I use top bar hives exclusively now - see www.biobees.com
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low-impact, chemical-free beekeeping in top bar hives www.biobees.com

shark · Joined: 22 Apr 2009 Posts: 58 Location: galway

hi sir. porky his the room for one more ,i have hive .but no bees thanks

Camile · Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:00 am Post subject:

Hi Sir Porky,

I was wondering if you had any luck opening the hives with that fine weather spell we had.

Thanks
Camile

sir. porky · Joined: 21 Jun 2007 Posts: 59 Location: west of Ireland

Hi camile, and hi shark,
Yes we had enough good weather this week and enough time to open our hives, our bees seem to be building up in numbers very nicely,2 hives contained queen cups but no actual queen cells as of yet so we,re sure we will have no swarms for the next 2 weeks. we will keep you up to date as to when we expect our first swarms,
shark, i can,t promise you bees at the moment as we have orders for 3 at the moment but i can put you down for one if we have any spare, i hope this is of help to you i know only to well how hard it is to find bees.
sir.porky

Camile · Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:22 pm Post subject:

Thanks for that Sir Porky,

Melimelo will be cleaning the hives thoroughly this weekend ..

Have fun
Camile

shark · Joined: 22 Apr 2009 Posts: 58 Location: galway

that would be good.thanks sir porky