So, were in to late autumn, the temperature has finally dropped and its the perfect time to treat our colonies against Varroa Mite.
I prefer to use this treatment as its very effective, Organic, has little chance or resistance build up and is also less likely to compromise the bees auto immune system, post treatment, which some other treatment might do! (very topical debate at the moment)
It is also very quick and easy to apply and not at all invasive during treatment.
The price is also another fact. I certainly wouldn't be keeping spare colonies if i had to use the chemical treatment in the late summer, that rely on temperature for diffusion around the hive.
The results speak for themselves, though they suggest a second treatment may be of benefit (mite count more than 1,000), two weeks later. will review this and treat a couple, just to see if further treatment produces and further mite fall.
"In the shed
I am making up a double nuc box with a thin partition in the middle( not fitted yet), this will be the first of many. The evidence that two colonies in one box, with a partition down the middle of the box, as if you were dividing the colony in to two, gives stronger results.
In each side the centre of the brood nest is actually against the divider board.
This heat sharing, although may benefit more the colonies that overwinter much further north, should help on numbers of bees overwintering.
One of the biggest problem here is that i find that the numbers of bees are too low for much honey in the spring, at the critical time when the oil seed rape comes in to flower (sometimes too quickly).
I will be adding bees, in the form of "bee bombs" to other production colonies, this is capped brood from other nuculeus colonies (brood factories), that literally makes the colony explode in to life, with an extra load of bees! Its important to use your resources wisely.
Time is ticking away!! get your frames made and make a plan for next year.!
Happy winter beekeeping.
I won't go on about how fantastic the Nation Honey Show was for me!! (we'll i will a bit then) But indeed it was a truly great experience. Great speakers and also a very useful afternoon workshop on bee diseases and their identification and a great bit of shopping in the trade hall One day just wasn't long enough!!
Picked up a lovely new smock top, with a round bee veil. Hopefully I won't get stung at the back of the neck now ! www.bbwear.co.uk
Also picked up 10 extra feeders, at a fraction of the cost, From Maismore apiaries www.bees-online.co.uk
Also found "mannlake" www.mannlake.co.uk They had all the small things that others didn't!!
Great books too! bought a couple I could have bought another twenty !! Northern bee books www.northernbeebooks.co.uk Their range is impressive to say the least!!
So all in all an excellent day ! but i was exhausted, got up at 5am, left at 05:30 arrived just before 9, left at 17:30, 6 lanes of stationary traffic on M25 for an hour, got back to shropshire at 09:45 !!
Wont be doing such a long drive again, will stay closer next time, but still well worth it!!
Back to reality !!
Well what a great end to the season too. The incredible Ivy flow has just about finished (here in Brittany), still some plants with a little on but it must have been in flower for nearly 6 weeks!! and yes i am banging on about ivy a lot, because its such an under valued flower at a time of year when theres really not much else around. I also want to make the point that this year the Ivy gave us a flow, A real strong flow!! Its a great example of what can be achieved by our dynamic bees in the right conditions. I have learnt a huge amount from this autumn!!
Just before I went away, I finished sorting out my nucs, transferring colonies in to ventilated Nucs for the winter and sorting out a couple of drone laying worker colonies, that were weak, so I moved them to adjacent nucs and mixed the bees that were remaining with colonies that were queen right.
As a result I have a few extra frames that will come in extremely handy next year, in my traps and in my cell builder for queen rearing.
There was a little honey in a few of the frames but i have washed that out, so if i put the frames in a trap they don't attract mice, wasps or hornets!
I have found a way of washing out the honey, simply with fine rose or jets from a multi head kitchen tap, warm to hot water and a lot of patience. It has to be said that this is a lot of work to get the frames clean, but these frames to me are priceless and you just can't buy these, no one will sell you them!! I certainly wouldn't. With out these its unlikely you will catch many swarms! The first pic is before being cleaned, the second is cleaned.
Before cleaning
After cleaning
So you are also probable asking, why waste a bit of honey, well that a good question. If the frame was more than a third full of honey on one side, then i usually keep them to give to a weak colony, or an artificial swarm next year. Less than that, I bite the bullet and clean them up. I am pretty sure that following last septembers very generous flow, I am going not going to have many empty frames in my hives next spring. So I am capitalising on the few spare frames I have now and putting them in to reserve now!
Three years ago we opened up our hives and the frames we usually remove (number 1 and 10) were completely honey bound in March, I feel its going to be the same this coming spring, Unless we get some serious periods of cold and warm in-between. I can't see our bees using up all the frames of stores. Time will tell.
The death of the drones!
The eviction has well and truly started! Queens are booting out the un economic drones, their job is done for another year. Colonies are also doing hygienic cleaning and removing any diseased workers or remaining bees with parasitic mite syndrome!! Don't worry about this , its all good news!
The long range forecast (according to the experts) is for really cold weather to start mid December and it could continue in to March! Phew, if so thats great. We need a good spell of cold, shrubs are in flower that should'nt start for two months yet. cold and dry, bring it on!!
The good stuff!!!!
I am really enjoying my honey this year and I nearly cry when I go to the supermarket and wonder how they are allowed to stock poor quality imports that are more than likely full of American Foul Brood spores!! Its one of the two main ways of how this dreadful disease is spread.
I personally think our local honey, and to that , all local honeys are massively undervalued!!
Well as i write this, were experiencing the first of the autumn gales!! but it is October, and we've past the equinox without any wind and rain whatsoever, so i am not complaining. Took this video only two weeks ago, how its all changed since then!!
We were spoilt in September this year, a truly wonderful period of weather, in a truly strong nectar flow. Alan took some honey from supers that remained on his hives after the previous summer harvest and extracted it. It was as I thought ivy honey would be, very course, quick to harden and very strongly scented with the rich smell of the ivy pollen. Not my cup of tea!
Alan fed most of it back to his bees, they have fortunately taken it up fortunately in time before it start to congeal. The pot he saved me has gone a dark cream to brown colour and has gone totally solid in 3 days!!
Drone Laying workers
Sure sign of a drone laying workers would be in the above photo. The presence of multiple eggs in each cell, uneven laying, drone cells in abundance and no visible presence of the queen are all sure signs that your colony is queen less.
Also the hive would be generally be in a mess, with much reduced foragers doing a lot less work than adjacent hives. Always compare with other and see what the majority are doing at a certain time, this will help you identify a problem earlier!!
So, what are your options with the above problem!
well you can combine the colony with another one that is queen right, or just let the colony die off naturally if its already very diminished. Sometimes theres no point in doing anything if the colony is full of drones and had very few workers. Even requeening is really a waste of time, unless you have extra brood to add to the colony, that will hatch out and assist the queen in restrengthening the colony.
Books talk about moving the colony to more than 200 meters away and shaking the contents out on to the floor, in an attempt to get rid of the laying workers. The idea is that the laying workers are not able to fly that well and they won't make their way back to the colony.
Personally i have just requeened and found that there has never been a problem. A new queen seems to stop the workers laying by the presence of her pheromone or her ability to find them and kill them. I never see this as being a problem.
Asian hornets!!
Hopefully a lot of their colonies will have been discovered and destroyed this year, but its important for you to refill your hornet traps this time of year. Common hornets are a plenty, and are constantly taking some of our bee, but its of no real consequence, as our bee numbers are very high this year and the hornets will soon be mating and dying off. All the more reason to try and catch the queens of these colonies and you will be trapping next years queens that will forge new colonies.
We will have another chance to trap them next spring, when the success rate seems to be greater, however and asian queen trapped this year in one less!! There is going to be more and don't even thing there won't be, their a blasted nuisance, but saying that alone won't reduce their numbers. careful watching in front of your hives next summer could easily lead you to determine the direction of the nest. Once you've found it, always call a specialist, out bee suits just aren't up to the job!!
you will get multiple stings, and it hurts!! if you think a bee sting is bad, then thing again!!
So its just Varroa treatment and mouse guards for me, then my bees are fit for winter.
Time to get on with next years prep. Old hives to clean, Nucs to finish off and frames to put together. Theres always plenty to do!!
We've been spoilt this year. The lousy end to August, gave way to two of the best weeks I can remember in September. Shrubs and plants have come back in to flower and given our bees plenty of pollen.
The ivy has now started in to full flower, the plants and hives are again wreaking of pollen, as the bees hurriedly dry the nectar in to honey for winter storage. The temperatures have been in the upper twenties for the last two weeks!
Ivy flowers.
So whats the effect been on our bees? well on comparison to this time last year, we were at the end of a dearth, queens that had virtually stopped laying, were just starting with the autumn bounty that ivy provides.
This year there was no dearth at all. In fairness you couldn't say there was a huge nectar flow that took over once the chestnut trees had finished flowering but instead most people have found, upon inspection of their hives, 3 to five sheets of unhatched brood and high numbers of bees.
This is an excellent end to our beekeeping year. The prospect of bee colonies going in to the long winter months full of pollen and natural honey is just a bonus that we weren't expecting! The long range forecast is still showing temperatures in the low twenties for there next two weeks, so its all good news.
So whats next, well the feeding should have finished and weak or queen less colonies should have, or very soon be combined with a queen right one. Don't waste your time leaving drone laying workers weaken the hive. Add any spare bees to a queen right colony and put the good worker bees to good use in another colony. Also you might find yourself with a few spare frames for next years traps.
Its a good time to make sure all your queens are marked. Although it might be a bit more trickier this year, due to the numbers of bees in colonies, patients and careful going through the frames of the brood nest will lead to success and a nicely marked queen. This in turn will make it a lot easier and less time consuming when we open our hives up next year to see whats survived the winter. You won't have to look hard to see a coloured dot on a small brood pattern, anyhow, just seeing some eggs or brood in March next year will be the major bonus. knowing you've got a good strong queen thats survived the winter!
Following the success I had this year, in spring of next year, I will be utilising my queens from my overwintering nucs and swapping them with my old queens from my honey production hives, This being the first year I have done this, will at least guarantee I have a queen, that has successfully survived its first winter, and is in a colony for honey production. This will hopefully reduce the swarming impulse and hopefully give me stronger hives. They do say a young well mated queen is at or in her strongest point in her life in the spring of the second season.
Admittedly, these afore mentioned queens were made under the emergency response, during splits, or as we call it, artificial swarming but I must start somewhere!!
Following this swapping over of queens in nucs, I will then re queen all my nucs later in the summer, or if they swarm natrually, which is probably going to be more likely, as i will have changed the queen to a much older one!
Its my plan to use these nucs to rear enough brood to add ten frames to a very strong hive and create a cell building colony, in which i will raise my queens, for the first time, under the most favourable conditions, in a flow, and when the bees would do it. Not as this year under the emergency response, when its debatable that the worker larvae thats floated down from a worker cell and fed royal Jelly, may not be just the right larvae or the right age, possible making an inferior Queen. It still might make a good queen but a lot more can be done to ensure its fed right the way through its development before pupation!
Working with the bees is so important in all aspects of beekeeping, work against it and you have a fight on your hands.
When inspecting a hive or nuc, if you see white honey comb when looking in from the top its very likely that you have a good colony, with a good strong queen. Bees don't store honey like this unless they have good direction!! thats all you need to see, if you have no queen this time or year, the colony is lost and you should seriously consider adding the resources of the hive including bees, pollen and honey, to another hive, that might be low on stores. This ivy flow being so strong should see the majority of our hives like this is the good conditions continue.
Delightful and successful cut out at Scrignac this late august.
Those bees are doing well in a nuc box. Perhaps a lot of bees in the nuc, but i don't think they will be swarming this year and a strong colony in a small box, will overwinter better than in a large hive!
Thanks as usual to Alan!! we had this one wrapped up in just under 2 hours, but it was 260 kilometre round trip, so we didn't have a lot of time!! how strange is it that we did another one in the same village last year!!
You can see below just how they love their sugar. They emptied 2 feeders in 24hours, so i knew we had the queen, even though i didn't see her during the cut out!! she's marked now, so will leave them alone to get on with being bees.
Finally, after the harvest, its time to give the bees the honey supers back to lick clean you can see just how mad they go, but be warned, two days outside is enough, otherwise wax moth starts to lay in to the combs and the wasps start to chew the wax and damage the combs!!
After you have stocked your supers, think about wax moth treatment and prevention. Spray the frames with biological control " Bascillus thurgiensis"
It comes in a powder you mix with water. You then treat the frames by misting them over lightly. If any wax moth larvae hatch out or have already hatched out, they are consumed by this natural fungus that causes the larvae to rupture and die. a very useful treatment!!
With the honey harvest complete its time to consider feeding your bees. I would love to know the weight of each of my hives, but being a hobby beekeeper its very difficult to weigh each hive empty then calculate what the ideal weight should be.
Each of my hives are a combination of different parts, some bought, some made so assessing individual weights is very tricky.
For me the easiest way is to take a look at each hive and assess it. Its still a bit open to interpretation of how you asses the stores in a hive, but to me a good arch of honey across the top one third of each frame in frames 4 to 7, some larger stores in frames 1 to 3 and 8 to 10 would be ideal. Slightly less is of no major concern but empty outer frames and minimal in the brood sections is a real worry.
An ideal frame, neat brood space, pollen beneath and plenty of sealed honey in the top sections
I have made a small video on making up sugar and feeding.
Its looking like a very positive ending to the year. The ivy is nearly in flower and with the 100mm plus rainfall we have received this august, its looking very likely that the bees will be going in to the winter with hives packed full of honey. Lots of flowers have had a second or third flush, plantain and clover to name but a few, are supplying plenty of pollen, theres not really a shortage this year, in others theres literally nothing around, so its all good news.
Ivy in some years can be very generous and is similar to oil seed rape honey in that it crystalises quickly. I have heard of some people putting on honey supers to take a last crop from their bees, but thats sheer folly!!!, its the bees moment to gorge and store around the main hive and prepare for the winter. We might just have a normal winter this year with snow and ice as well as milder periods.
If i can and theres time, I believe in giving the sugar slowly, over at least a couple of weeks, to much results in a flooded brood nest, the queen must lay and lay well this time of year, its these bees that will last well in to next march, essential for the colonies survival.
Queens are all to precious now, a lost queen after the end of august is as good as a lost colony in novemebr or december. The chances or re queening within the next 3 weeks are minimal, so be extra careful when assessing your hives.
You don't get any second chances this time of year, or indeed up until the end of march next year, when the first few drones are produced.
Varroa mite treatment will again be done in November when the brood size is at very small, but thats another 3 month away, but its planning that keeps you ahead with beekeeping. Its already time to think ahead, consider getting some frames in kit form.
Save yourself some money and build them yourself. Its not difficult, just takes a little time and patients. Something i don't appear to have a lot of these days, where has this summer gone!!
Theres not much left for our bees now. Close to my apiaries i have a nice field of phacelia in flower. I took this short video as it was such a lovely sight!!
Wholesale robbing
This is a frame taken from a hive combination. It contained some honey and was completely cleaned out in under 4 hours. just incredible!!
Good results so far!
The artificial swarms I carried out 2 weeks ago seem to be doing very well. All had at least 2 or more queen cells which is excellent and the first queens were due to hatch out this last saturday. on the whole the weather is good. Thats the beauty of doing splits (artificial swarms) this time of year. the weather is good, the nectar flow has finished and you can put your bees to good use. For mating the weather is at its best.
Queen mating
Reading up on the subject, summer mating is always a better option. The quality of ripe drones is at its highest, as too is the number of drones.
Queens are known to fly to certain areas where drones congregate in warm summer afternoons. This gives a much better genetic diversification, rather than early spring mating, where a queen might have to settle with whats in the apiary. This for me isn't a real problem, as i keep a good selection of swarms, trapped over about a 50 kilometre radius so I can't see this ever being a problem but the summer gives a better product by far.
This year I had a colony that became queen less very early in April. Remarkably a new queen took over but only laid for a few weeks, badly mated i assume. The new one that took over from her is a much stronger and better layer, uniform brood in clear patterns. What we all want in our hives.
End of the swarm season
So with the dearth setting in its also the end of the swarming season. Time to collect back in the traps, sort out the frames, clean them, remove wax moth and put them away for the winter.
Frames in the deep freeze, easy when your divorced!!!!!!
To leave your traps out is just sheer folly. With the previous mild winters we have endured, wax moth numbers seem to be up. To combat this problem I remove all the frames from each trap and freeze them down to minus 16. This kills off most of the larvae and eggs. Then the hive is scorched with a blowtorch and the frames are replaced, the front of the hive sealed off and the hive stored back in the shed for another year.
As I have a good number of colonies in nucs, I have been utilising the resources I have and have been swapping colonies in well propolised nuc boxes, to nuc boxes that are newer, in an attempt to get them more acceptable for next year.
I transfered 7 last night and it gave me the opportunity to mark some of the queens and assess for winter stores, amongst other things. Thats the next thing on the horizon, starting to plan for next year. not nice but thats the reality of beekeeping.
So, the nectar flow comes crashing to an end! The chestnut trees have well and truly finished, their catkins are falling. Time to make artificial swarms and make use of the high population of bees.
Classic chestnut fronds and the developing nut.
I have taken the decision to keep producing as many colonies as possible. All my strong hives from the supposed honey hives were artificially swarmed, 10 in total as well as a few very early swarms that had made the criteria, so i have another load of nucs full of bees.
Full of bees they are indeed, the foragers returning came back to find their hive moved and just a nuc or mini hive in its place. Subsequently the bees go in to emergency queen cell production and will by now, have floated out a larvae that was less than 2 days old and flooded it with royal jelly to ensure it turns in to a queen larvae, rather than a worker larvae. In another 13 to 14 days a virgin queen will emerge and claim the throne for herself.
So when I selected two frames from my mother colonies I selected one frame with eggs less than 2 days old and another with brood and pollen. This will give the nurse bees plenty of food to nourish the developing queens, prior to metamorphosis and again after emergence.
Honey supers
So what about these if they are honey supers on the hives, well these get moved too. Empty ones are removed, or frames juggled around to reduce the empty space in the hive. The bees might consume a little from these supers over the next four or five weeks prior to the harvest , but its food they have stored and they will continue to dry and cap over any uncured honey.
The numbers in your mother hives ( donor hives) will have taken a massive knock, but you should have seen plenty of brood about to emerge (part of the selection criteria) so this will soon make up the losses and bring the hive back up to full operation within a few weeks.
Create a Flow
Theres no flow really now,( a little bramble and some clover and pollen from the abundant maize plants but thats only for the next two weeks or two) so its really important to create one. So sugar syrup has been fed to each colony, until the queen cells are capped over and they will be fed again upon emergence.
This is very easy and in the summer its amazing just how quickly the swarmed colonies build up their new home (nucs) in to three to four full frames ( out of the 5) in only a few days. Its also very important to say that you must not over feed the nucs, however tempting. Just enough to keep the hive in the right balance, keep the bees drawing up comb. but not too much to take away space from the very soon emerging queen.
I was feeding 250ml every 2 to 3 days for the first 6 days, then the same on day 15 for another 3 feeds. Its worth it, the colonies are then stocked up prior to there winter, and the developing young queens are born in to a strong, well fed environment, during her mating flights.
This is the way forward for me, the production of good queens, made under the best possible conditions, but thats for next year, now i have the nuc banks to give me all the resources i need.
Late swarm
So my good friend Alan called me to say he had had a call from a friend who had a swarm of bees in and outside electric meter box, so we went to investigate.
This is what we found, a newly arrived swarm , probably no more than 3 days since arrival, had made this its new home. The entrance was just the small 1cm square hole in the front of the box.
So rushing in, where angels fear to tread, I quickly lifted out the few bits of newly drawn comb and shook the bees from that , in to my waiting nuc box. Sure enough this worked but only for a short time. The queen obviously decided she didn't like the box, or the frames , or something, did a u turn and left the box initiating a flying swarm with all the bees following her.
Fortunately they landed on a nearby cherry tree, after giving us a nice display of a beautiful swarm, on a lovely calm sunny day
Lovely swarm, more than a handful Alan!
We then decided it was best to leave them hanging there for the rest of the hot day, rather than risk them moving off through our disturbance. sure enough they were still there in the evening, when they were relatively easy to hive.
Always wear a vail when handling swarms, docile that they seem, it only take one sting on or in the eye and you will really suffer!!
Good result, another swarm safely captured and now doing well. Its also useful to note that all artificial swarms created will not be going in full sized hives, theres just not the nectar flow. These will be kept over winter in nucs and their spring build up and overwintering quality, together with general state of the hive can be measured.
Next spring is going to be interesting!! Time to make some more Nucs me thinks!!!
Apart from my stupidity in not rocognising a very lightweight hive, things seem to be going well.
We all make mistakes and this one cost me the hive contents. During what I described as a recent dearth before the main nectar flow started, I moved my hives to a valley where there is an abundance of chestnut trees, but failed to act on a very light hive in time to save it. One unusually cold night and the result was catastrophic for the colony. Probably 25,000 dead in one night. It was certainly starvation as there was not a drop of honey in the hive and no gradual weakening over days. All other hives adjacent very strong so i can rule out poisoning! well that will be in my diary for next year.
Still the hive did give me an artificial swarm (split) and i made use of the 10 drawn u frames in my taps. Like always with beekeeping, you loose in some areas and gain in others.
Bramble, clover and of course the chestnut trees are in full flower. The glorious stink of chestnut emminating from the hives is reasuring that all colonies are getting what they need. Full nectar flow means happy bees and hives full of honey. Honey supers should be on all hives now and queen excluders should be cleaned and stored away until next spring. The summer honey allows a late harvest and all brood (mostly drone) layed in to the upper parts of the hive ( the supers) will mostly hatch out and be replaced by honey, by the end of august, just in time for the harvest, but abpve all the queen has the freedom of the hive to organise more honey storage and brood production, so she is much less lilely to swarm. \Theres also a good arguement that shes already starting to prepare for the coming dearth , before the onset of autumn, depressing though it might be, it wont be far away!!
It is a waste of time putting on a honey super after the middle of july, as its the end of the main nectar flow and the end of the swarming season.
This swarm had been on this garden fence for probably four days and had built comb in to the fence. we managed to get most of the bees off, so we then were able to remove the comb and remarkably the bees just walked off the fence, in to the new hive we placed on the floor just adjacent. Its almost as if they were pleased of their new accomodation. The colony has a very small queen that appears to be laying well, so fingers crossed. Thanks again Alan, it was a rather nasty ditch, that was full of nettles that you managed to climb up, while i stood the other side of the fence, as you smoked them across.
Another person that called me, said they had the remains of a small swarm in their vegetable patch that had mostly disipated to elsewhere, so i put a swarm trap out and he morning after a swarm arrived and took up residence. Its just having enough traps and material thats the problem. You must have well used nucs, with well used frames in, if you want a realistic chance of success.
My swarm traps have worked well. Over the last week I have found another 6 swarms in my traps. they are all of varying sizes, some on all 5 frames and some on only two. The smaller ones however, seem to be laying just as quickly as the larger colonies. As soon as you see a few eggs you are reasured that that colony has a realisitc chance of making it through this coming winter, in to the next spring. If the queen fails for many reasons, mostly she just is worn out and exhausted, then as long as she has laid a few eggs to cement her dynasty, thats all a colony will need under the emergency response to successfuly flood a larvae with royal jelly, float out and extend a worker cell in to a beautiful queen cell.
So my plan is to keep as many swarms as possible in ventilated nucs for overwintering.
My criteria for this will be, for this year that they have queens from this years artificially swarming, as its a pretty sure thing that most swarms will contain queens that are probably from last year or more than likely the year before. I cant be any more selective than that, as i havent at this stage chosen eggs to graft from that subsequently will give me better selected characteristics and so on! you have to start somewhere.
This will give me a brood factory for next year, so i can make up a very strong hive for queen rearing, which in turn might give me better stronger queens, it will allow me to have a nuc, or a queen ready to transfer in to another hive at short notice. and also give brood or frames of eggs to weaker colonies.
The whole concept is so clear to me now and initially is a lot of work to set up but in the long term the results should help make better queens and stronger hives but from a much more sustainable source!!
I hope your Bees are working well, good forecast for the next few days, just when we need it. Enjoy!!
Well, its all nice and quiet, too quiet really. This weather has been a little too cold and wet for the last two weeks now. We have had more rain which is good but were missng the heat. No bees around any swarm traps and a few swarms emerging from managed hives at the glimse of a bit of sunshine, clasially typical of this kind of weather!! Theres enough food around but not a huge flow, a sort of calmer period or "Mini Dearth" before the big nectar flow starts.
Phacellia begining to flower, giving purple polen in the frames!
After all my artificial swarms were created , with the valued help of my good friend Alan, most of my hives ( 10 framed hives) have returned to the home apiary about 400 meters from their original location. Lots of forraging bees thus returning home, to find queen gone and a hugely reduced colony.
I looked through all the reciever nucs last saturday and was pleasantly suprised to find at least 9 of the 13 seem to be queen right. There is the possibility that there could be another one of these may be qeenright but its often difficult to be sure until that queen has begun to lay eggs. So overall I am very happy with these results despite the crappy weather for the nuptual flights, we have laying queens in over 75% of nucs, so thats very encouraging>
I will be doing another load of artificial swarming at the end of the main nectar flow arond the second week of july. this should produce the best queens of the year, when the weather should allow longer mating flights, with more mature males around.
Virgin queen, just emerged!
I had a couple of swarms from my apiary, but none of them huge. one was from a Nuc that was full of bees, out comes first queen and decided the shes good to leave, well stocked with aditonal unopened queen cells, so thats now a good laying colony.
Second larger swarm that i have risked putting straight in to a large 10 framed hive. This was a little more of a difficult extraction, as most of the colony was within the hedge, but I did the old box trick and they were soon on their way!
All hives going to be moved to the summer forraging ground next week. The chestnut trees are begining to show the first few flower stalks. flowering in about another 3 weeks!
I will be double supering straight away to give that queen lots of room in the hive and hope reduce the risk of swarming just at the critical time in the necta calender. bring it on!!
have you ever heard of the 7p`s..... Perfect Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Perormance!!
Well what a busy busy month its been. Not even time to do any blogging! Still here i am to report back on what has been an excellent April.
I mentioned my new pollen trap in my March posting, well i used it for a few days and have harvested more than I need,although i am thinking that I might stick it back on my hives and just harvest a bit more, a its easy to freeze it down until needed.
I intend to use it mainly during queen cell production. I hope to have my first attempt in about 3 weeks. There will be a small gap then before i move the majority of my hives for the main nectar flow of the summer.
Spring honey and swarming.
I have been asked many times this spring when will you have your first honey? well this year i will have virtually none. Only one of my hives (of the three) had any appreciable ammount in the super, so on the other two, the supers were removed and they were artificially swarmed. There was queen cells in a packed brood nest of ten frames. This is good, as they were going to swarm early. So, as far as I am concerned, I am controling the swarming and its going to be at least another 6 weeks before we need the bee numbers high again.
Its been an odd start as well as a good one. Plenty of food around for the bees, a very strong flow indeed. I must remark on how the relacement frames from artificial swarming 4 days previously, were already drawn up! and mrs queen laying in to the majority! the question will I will be wanting to know, is should i reduce the numbers of bees still further to avoid the bees having another go at swarming. I had masses of unhatched brood in the hives, an i think this spring is so strong that it might be necessary in another couple of weeks. However i am going to monitor my hives very closely and i am expecting much reduced flow after next week, when the majority of the oil seed rape ha finished flowering and the apple blossom has nearly finished, so i might not have to many problems. I want my numbers high but not too high to enduce swarming again! I may add the first super in about 3 weeks, just to make the queen entirely happy shes got space, but i would dearly love to be able to do this after i have moved my hives but its probably not going to be possible to move them until the 1st week of june!! its all a juggling act.
One of my strongest hives was full of really good sized, accessible queen cells so i cut the majority out and inserted them in to my nucs( with queen cell protectors) for good measure. some had only made one or two queen cells, so i didnt want to miss the opportunity and waste good cells, (made under the swarming response, under deal conditions, by the bees in their own time) possible giving me the best made queens!! Its always something to remember. Thanks to Alan for helping me cut those out and then artificially swarm the hive, the insert all those queen cells!
Its also a point to note that eventhough i keep saying "you can never have enough nucs", artificially swarming 10 nucs plus does have its practical difficulties. I have been making more nucs sincelast november, and ive made about another 20 since then, but they soon get used up!
I have also incorporated a ventilated base and also some ventilation in the roof space.
After the last very wet winter and my desire to become more sutainable and create some nuc banks for brood production I have tweeked my nucs a little and this should help against winter humidity and help spring build up.
I remove the feet after marking, cut out the middle section and place in the mesh. It could be blocked off, if need be,to create a sealed box for use as a trap.
I have also cut out a 30m hole in each end of the roof section. Its closed with mesh too. I really think this will help with ventilation problems.
First very early Swarms
First swarm of this year, caught on the 19th April, about a month early, and my earliest yet, hadnt even finished putting out all my traps. Lovely to see. This is the afternoon, following arrival late morning, so I am led to believe. Classic trap senario with nothing two days before, a build up the day before, then swarm arrival mid morning on a lovely warm sunny day.
Close up of the front landing strip, showing bees fanning and generally dancing around the front of the hive.
In total I now have 3 swarms, they all came within the first week, and since then the weather has gone off a little but i am still very pleased. All 3 have good strong laying queens( now marked), that have layed extremely well following arrival, So should give me honey this year. Two of them can go in to full sized hives next week.
Asian Hornet
Well Its finally appeared at my apiary, but luckily this one was trapped in my special, beer, white wine and blackcurrant mix. so thats one laying qeen dead. I have doubled the number of traps arond here to try and keep their numbers down. It all depends if one makes a nest near my bees or not.
One can only try.
Good times with good strong hives. long may it continue!!
Richard
Oil seed rape is already in flower, as too, is just about ever early spring flower you can think of, its a bonanza for our bees but a shame the last week has really been too cold to forage in great numbers.
I did a favour for our local farmer and couldnt help but think, oh well, I was actually going right past my local bee shop, so i paid a visit whilst en route with some large metal gate sections.
Found myself a nice little pollen trap, so i can store a little pollen for use when i insert my grafts in to the queen production hive. Although not essential, its a good idea to have pollen in very close proximity. I also didnt know, until recently, that you can harvest pollen from each hive, for one day or two, preferably a day apart, then freeze it down until you need it.
You can then pour a good handful of the stuff and rub it in to a drawn up frame, then insert that in to the hive when needed, making feeding larvae so much easier for the bees. The one I bought wasnt the one I had intended to buy, but its a real beauty, and you can retract the reduced hole section and allow the bees to come and go, rather than give up their pollen load, which is a nice feature.
Pollen is collected in the draw beneath.
I also bought some extra supers and hive bodys. The wood is excellent quality from this shop and the price is good. All their woodwork is also sanded to a good finish , which i like too. This will give me a few more hives to make up over the spring and summer should I have need for them and capacity to have an extra super for nearly all my hives in honey production. I will be fitting a piece of 25 x 25 mm pine around the upper third, making the supers easier to handle the little handles cut in to the 25mm sections are ok, but not that practical when handling them full!! (
I have also made up another roof for a hive that was spare last summer. I lent the hive to a friend in order he could copy it, then realised it had no roof when I collected it last week. I used 3 pieces of 15mm exterior and one piece of 10 mm for the sides of the roof and the top was made from the weather proof fiber board, ( grade 3) moisture resistant, but was from the skip! I will try and make more roofs like this, as its reasonably cheap and although the production ones from this shop are really good, they still are 20 euos each!!!
Painted up with roof attached ( metal sheet from printers again)
Roof in situ!!
Electric bees!!
Well there was some other very good news, in that a colony of bees has established itself inside a large concrete pylon, that is actually situated on the land of a fellow beekeeper, just over a kilometer from me.
This is excellent news, as it could be there for a long time, as no idiot will be able to cut it down, as they probably wood do, if it was in an oak tree. This colony will be swarming away for generations to come!!
Will have another very quick look in to my hives, nearly two weks since my last feed of three. hopefully they will be increasing in size well!
Good weather forecast for tomorrow and the next week, temperatures near normal which is good news for the bees!!
Enjoy!! I will !! once i`ve made a start on painting up those supers!
What a great start to this years season.
Despite some recent days of fog, when it clears its been beautiful. I fed a light sugar queen stimulation feed last week and this week and will give another half litre next week but really its not been totally necessary.
Many of my hives were well stocked, so the emphasis was more on convincing the queen that there a always sugar availible ( more of a flow) than anything else. Feeding generously now, wouldnt do any favours other than inducing earlier swarming, which is whats going to happen anyway this year, if were not careful.
The queens must have space to lay in to, especially if your putting on your first honey supers in another 4 weeks. If you use queen barriers in the spring, take out some of the old honey bound frames and generally make sure the queen has room to lay. If you remove a frame of honey, if you can, replace it with a ready drawn up comb and keep the honey bound frame for artificial swarming.
When the oil seed rape starts to flower in another two weeks, it going to become very cramped in a very short space of time. This year, if it stays warm could be an excellent honey crop. Correct supering is also a must.
I would advise putting on two supers, on any strong colony, they may even make 3 full this spring.
I also like to put on my new supers filled with pain undrawn up wax sheets and capitalize on the crazy rush of the bees in springtime. After all it is only spring honey. Presenting your bees with drawn up supers for the summer honey crop is a more sensible option!
We already have populations rising rapidly, plenty of early goat willow and camelia, to name but a few and the oil seed rape looks like being 2 weeks early. 4 weeks earler than last year, so be prepared.
I choose to artificial swarm my strongest hives (early april this year i think) and use the slightly weaker ones for spring honey.
I will also be trying a different method of swam control and instead of artificial swarming, i intend to take out some bees and perhaps one frame of brood, then combine this with the same amount of bees from another hive, then give it a queen cell and create some colonies like that. Just a different way of thinking, not hitting the colony so hard and leave the hive nearly emptyof forragers, until the remaining brood start to hatch out and start to forrage for the existing queen again.
Dont stop searching for info, you never stop learning.
I have been doing a fair bit of reading this winter and feel more confident to try and think more laterally with my methods, underpinning knowledge is key!
Number one is to work with the bees, do what you want to do with them, when they want to natrually do the same.
Just bought this book and would reccommend that every beekeeper should read it. Perhaps not if you a new beekeeper, but certainly if your in your third year. It broadens your horizons on many aspects and gives you more ideas on how to be more sustainable in your methods. Really enoying the idealogy.
Hers a link to a really interesting talk at the bee show! would like to spend some time working at this guys apirarys!!
Theres so much promise this year, not for huge profits but interesting and enjoyable beekeeping!
First Inspection, Hive death, Sugar and frames.
After what one would describe as probably the wettest winter on record and certainly in my lifetime, we can reflect on how bad its been but at the same time be a bit thankful that at least its been mild, very mild the entire winter. I think I can remember a few early frosts in Novemer time, but our old friend the north atlantic drift has protected us from severe cold weather and has instead fuelled sucessive severe winter storms via the very strong south westerly jet stream.
I went in to my hives last week. The weather was very briefly sunny and quite a lot of my bees were flying, with no wind. In summary it was good news. One colony completly dead with only dead bees and remarkable, a marked dead queen. Another colony with no brood and eggs and queenless, with not many bees, so therefore thats dead too. I will leave the mouse guard up in April and allow this to be robbed out so i can have spare frames for my swarm traps.
Clearly this queen failed to lay, the numbers of bees declined and the slippery slope of colony collapse is evident here. I imagine that this colony has been dead for a while. Tt took all its autumn feed and was laying well, so it looks like it failed to lay down or manage sufficient stores.
You can see the bees in the picture beneath. They have died in the clasic position, with their heads in the bottom of each cell, in a despeate attempt to lick out and remaining sugars.
All ready for the spring feed. I have been buying sugar from my local supermarket for the last couple of months, a couple of bags each trip spreads the cost. It looks like spring will start next week, with temperatures rising to the dizzy heights of 15 degrees, so i will be giving each hive, half a litre of sugar syrop, each week for the next 3 weeks. This should help stimulate the queen in to laying more, so thoretically assisting the spring build up.
All frames ready for the off. Spare frames for the swarm traps. I like to put in at least one very old, smelly brown coloured frame in the middle, with at least two half drawn up frames either side of this.
The two outside frames, just new undrawn out wax sheets on new frames.
I have also extended my workshop bench for solely beekeeping stuff. hopefully a kind of "grafting table" too. ( when its tidy)
I am also making a new apiary at home, where my bees used to be. I have made up some wooded supports . These 4,5 meter lengths are of tanilised, pressure treated timber that were a bit twisted and on sale really cheaply at my wood store, so they are perfet for me and should last for a while. These beams sit on four concrete blocks which works really well. I will be covering the soil around with plastic sheeting and plantng through this with winter flowering honeysuckle, a long term plan for a bit of extra winter wild food.
I want some of my bees here at home here so, more so for queen prodution in the late spring and summer. I need the hives as close as possible to my house so everything is a bit easier.
I will be doing a video on queen rearing in dadant hives, which is the same process during the initial screened bottom box and grafting section, but will be using a isolastion cage during the finishing process, as dadants dont have two brood sectons and keeping the queen away from the developing queen cells is not possible without a queen excluder, so i am working to find the best way to keep her isolated, but still keep the queen cells in the brood nest.
Its all looking good at the moment, plenty of food for the bees when its warm enough. Willow already starting to flower and also the prospect of much of the green manures flowering over the next few weeks. They are usually killed off by the winter frosts. so potentially a very strong spring ahead!
But theres some way to go, this week last year we had Blizzards.. Not again this year thanks!!
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