Sunny , warm and light winds

Well, the good weather had finally arrived, it is hot today , about 27 degrees and wall to wall sunshine. Its a terrible shame it was not two weeks ago but thats nature for you.

I took some film last saturday of midday bees working very hard on mainly chestnut, bramble and thistle flowers and wanted you to see just how busy it gets at the entrance to a hive.

I artificially swarmed 3 of my hives just after I took this video. I wanted to make a couple more colonies for next year as I still have not got my own numbers of hives at my apiary up to 12 hives. I got rid of a few swarms in the spring and was relying on having some decent weather to precipitate  sucessful mating of virgin queens to re queen colonies that had swarmed, but that just did not happen this year. So I have learned that lesson well. Never rely on bees to requeen themselves if the weather is poor!

The colonies that I have hopefully created last saturday, will remain in the same nucs for the whole of the forthcoming winter and  if they are queen right in the next month they will have enough time to prepare themselves for the forthcoming winter. I will feed them generously over the next few days as very soon the main nectar flow stops, leaving only a few shrubs and plants in flower.
The honey that the bees have been gathering in haste is now being dried and capped, when it is judged by the bees to contain the right amount of sugar and water. Not too much water to allow it to ferment, but not too much sugar to let the sugar solidify and become more difficult to extract over the winter when the need arises.
I will be harvesting the honey crop on or very close to the end of August.

Skep Beekeeping.

I was doing some surfing on u tube last week and found this wonderful insight in to the virtually extinct method of beekeeping.

It is actually a very well filmed and informative series of films, explaining in quite detail, the work at the skep aipary. It incredible just how labour intensive it is! The hours are very long and the rewards don`t seem to justify the work put in, but  I think if you trained there, you would certainly know you bees well!

There are 7 films in total , this being the first one. you should be able to follow the link afterwards to the next 6, It is worth a look.
 I love the naration, so wonderfully like Pathe news from the 1940`s and 50`s. Enjoy!

A lesson in artificial swarming

Beekeepers from the region attend workshop in artificial swarming.

Last sunday 15th July, Myself and a group of beekeepers from the surrounding region attended a lesson in artificial swarming. 

The Lessons are held by my beekeeping teacher Mr Charles Basset, at his place in Quevert. The whole objective is to pass on the theory and practice the technique of artificial swarming on the Dadant hive here In Brittany.

 Charles has  been carrying out this method for over 20 years and now has a success rate of about 85 percent.

The method is as described in one of my previous blogs, as is the video posted on you tube.

We carried out AS on about 15 hives at two sites, giving everyone practice and the confidence to carry out the procedure on their own hives when the need arises, avoiding swarming and losing half your colony.

 
I had used this method myself many times before but it was great to go along and meet new beekeepers , who had`nt used or seen this done and I was able to help explain in more detail to a couple of english speaking  beekeepers, who were in their first year of beekeeping.

 I always say you never stop learning with beekeeping. This was a first for me. This photo shows clearly what hapends when your hive becomes congested and bees start to run out of space. They build comb else where, wherever they can. In this case the top feeding tray of a combined frame cover and feeder
Their wax working is quite a work of art, if a little disjointed..

A lovely picture of the 5 framed nuc in place of the donor hive. All the flying bees from the mother hive begin to return from their foraging  to find a new hive in its place but no queen. Look at all that lovely pollen they are carrying.!
The next "seance" will probably be on, or around the 15th Aprill 2013. Please feel to e mail me nearer the time, or contact Charles Basset via the link on this blog if you want some more information or just to make contact.

Going to these events is a really great way of getting to know a few faces in the french beekeeping world and I think a great place to comment about the really crappy weather!

Poor weather and more swarms

More swarms and the poor weather continues.

I had this swarm at the end of june and it wasnt that large so i put it straight back in to a nuc box. They have got away well, with the queen laying within 3 days. I fed them a bag of sugar as well. Even though there is lots of food around  the weather has not been in their favour, so at least if they were stuck in side then they have enough sugar to continue to build comb which is what swarms love to do.

I had another 2 swarms from my hives sunday afternoon. There was a gap in the weather and the sun shone and it was actually quite warm for the afternoon. I was really busy at home but thought it would be a good idea to pop past and see if anything was happening that I needed to sort out. Sure enough it had. 2  of my hives had swarmed. One large sized one and one smaller one.

The largest swarm pictured above) had settled nicely on the hedges in front of my hives. I had my swarm catching box but I didnt have another hive quite ready so I shook the swarm in to the box, put in the bottom door and turned it upside down, slowly. This bottom door has a small gap when nearly closed and gives the  bees total darkness once inside but still allows access in and out I will post some pictures of this later in the year. So after they initially rushed out to the front they soon realised their queen was safe and they were in an ideal place for the time being and then they started to fan on the front lip attracting all the other bees in. This bought be a bit of time until I could get another hive ready.

Bees Fanning producing the "come on in pheremone" Nasanov 

It was only when I turned around did I see the second swarm , high up above my hives in some lovely prickly sloe bushes. This was going to be a ladder job, back to the house again for a spare nuc and my biggest ladder.

I managed to cut away the majority of branches with secateurs and this gave me a free hand to hold the swarm as I was cutting. It was a relatively simple job. I then came down the ladder and put the swarm on top of the nuc and let them get on with it.

Swarm placed in to the top of the nuc.

So I had captured the second swarm . I then went back to the first swarm and shook the bees installed in the box , in to a 10 framed hive. There was 5 new frames to the outside and  when I had shook them in, I placed some other partially drawn up frames in to the middle of the colony that had come from one of my other smaller swarms from earlier in the season that had become queenless and basically died out natrually.
This will give them a good start and help the colony get away quicker.

Chestnut Trees  "Castania Sativa"

The chestnut trees are now in flower. They are the main source of the summer honey crop. This year the trees are only just coming in to full flower as the weather has been so rainy and cool. By this time last year all the trees had finished flowering and we were in the middle of a drought.

Pollen rich fronds on each flower spike

Chest nut trees are an amazing species of tree. Their wood has a very high calorific, value making it excellent fire wood and its easy to split and is so wet but you will need to dry it for 3 year before burning.
The tree copes very well with being pollarded. The stump below shows how much growth you can expect just after 2 years in a heavily leafed wood. Amazing I think!

Typical chestnut tree in full flower.

Another flower many insects love including bees is phacelia. Bees go mad for it. It is an annual . I like to sow as much as possible as late, in the year as I can so My bees have another source of pollen and nectar later in the year, just before the Ivy starts flowering.

I have just sown about 400 meters square yesterday and left it to germinate. Its being well watered in today. It should be in flower in about 6 weeks . I will post some more pictures as it comes up and comes in to flower. By the way this cost me about  15 euros for the seed. Very little for a large return for the bees.

Waiting for the nectar flow

Well all is ready. I have made spare honey supers, put on honey supers to my hived colonies, all we need now is some better weather.

I checked over my Nuc colonies yesterday. I still have 4 nucs that are taking their time to re queen.
In the ones that had produced queen cells 3 weeks ago have now torn down the cells and the hive,comb is now back in to a more organized pattern, with the random pollen and nectar storage in the middle of the frames being re directed to the upper and side areas , thus preparing  areas for the queen to start laying in to.
I can only assume that the queens in question are either finishing their mating flights ( due to terrible weather last week) or growing and developing in to queens before starting to  lay.
The two swarms I had at my apiary have also started laying which I am very pleased about. They were two reasonably sized colonies that I pictured in my previous blogs. One was definitely queen less so I gave it some eggs, 2 days after it swarmed as they had prepared queen cells on fresh drawn up wax sheets. They became very protective last week which is always a good sign that they are guarding something. Sure enough a queen that I didnt see has been laying in a nice uniform pattern so I have left them well alone to get on with being bees. Incidentially they have become very well behaved.
The second of my two hives that swarmed, I gave them eggs last week as there was still no eggs being produced but to my relief when I had a little look yesterday  a queen has also started laying and no attempt to make a queen had ben made. It proves that queen was there but just not ready to start to lay at the time.
She must have also taken her time to mate in the poor weather we have had since mid April.

Big swarm update

I also had a look at the swarm I featured in my last post "Big Swarm", amazingly they have just drawn up the last 2 frames and now the queen has laid in to about 5 frames on both sides.  Its incredible just what a really big swarm with a very strong queen can do in just under 2 weeks. I have cheekily put on a honey super, perhaps I should have waited another week but there is a queen barrier between the super and the hive body as I am sure she would have been there laying in to the honey super. Just have to see  how things progress . over the next 4 weeks.

Another queenless hive

Well beekeeping would`nt be normal if you did`nt have a queenless colonie just before the peak nectar flow starts. It was one of my best hives. There was a hollow noise on smoking this suspiciously under active hive and immediately you could tell it had been queen less for at least 2 weeks. However on the plus side they had made at least 1 queen cell which I found hiding in the corner of what was the main brood frames so hopefully all is not lost.
I expect that hive to be re queened in about 2 weeks looking at its current state. That what beekeeping is about! especially with non selected queens from feral clonies.

Thats one reason for keeping at least 2 hives going . You always have a source of eggs and bees if one colony goes belly up.


Queen hunting
Another thing I must really advocate is that of not trying to find the queen unless you are sure there is a problem in the hive. Once you have honey supers on in the main nectar flow don`t bother to tear all the frames apart  in that ritualistic hunt for the queen and her eggs.
If you see a hive that is not very active compared to the others have a look over different times of the day.
I have experienced for instance that some colonies gather pollen and nectar at different times of the day and in vastly different quantities.
If you have a hive that is queen less then you will see a noticeable difference in its behaviour. Compare it to the other colonies and then have a look inside but start from the outside and slowly work. If you find eggs then fine, just check there`s one egg to each cell then you haven`t got a laying worker or too. |Leave them alone and all should recover. If you find a queen cell then back pedal and leave well alone for at least 2 weeks.
If you find no eggs and empty frames of brood and scattered pollen and honey then you have been queenless for a couple of weeks. Immediately add a frame of eggs, less than 3 days old from another colony. That should do the trick, but be sure that the colony has a good number of bees left in the colony as otherwise there may be no point in continuing. Just treat it as a loss and keep the frames to put in your traps next year.
If after that you still have no queen then you can either let the bees die naturally, or reunite them with a queen right colony. This does work well and I will do a post and hopefully a video in it as well. Its used up all sorts of problem hives you may have at the end of the season and providing you have one good queen out of the 2 or 3 colonies you very quickly have a good colony, capable of recovering before overwintering.

Lets hope that when the chestnut trees finally come in to flower we have some hot weather. They are about 2 weeks later this year.

Good Nectar Flow!

Big Swarm

Caught this really big swarm  last night. Well I did`nt exactly catch it, I showed them the Nuc box and they filtered in after about an hour. Its probably the biggest I have ever caught, about 15,000 bees or more.

I have just returned from transfering them in to a Normal 10 framed hive this morning and could not believe that over night they had partially drawn up 4 frames of plain wax sheet.
When I coaxed them in yesterday evening I didnt have any dawn up comb so I simply sprayed all the wax  sheets with sugar syrop. It seems to have done the trick.  I have also put on a feeder  to give them a really good star!

The Artificial Swarm

The Artificial Swarm.

Artificial Swarming has many uses and had been used for many years, as a way of managing bees for the purposes of swarm management and producing new colonies. It also could be said that it is a way of "supressing" or "dampening" down your bees for a few weeks until you really need the maximum amount of bees in your colonies. I will try and  explain what I mean in the following  senarios:



Senario 1


You have a colony of bees that has made it through the winter. The colony builds up very quickly in March and April, so you decide to take spring honey. The numbers of bees in the colony are high and there is a lot of bees in a standard size hive and they are getting very congested. You put on your honey supers, so that giving your bees more space, so they begin to forage well and  fill up the honey super quickly.

Hey presto, you have a super full of spring honey and you decide you need to extract this honey because if you don`t extract it soon the oil seed rape presence within the honey, will cause it  to crystalize in the honey super, making it virtually impossible to extract and use afterwards. You extract and then suddenly all the extra space you had for your bees has gone. You are now putting your bees under pressure and kind of inducing swarming. They have all they need, a good functioning queen , loads of brood constantly hatching and loads or workers all packed in to  your 10 framed hive. Its a sure thing that within the next 2 weeks they will swarm. So what do you do?  you perform an artificial swarm.

Senario 2


You have a good spring build up, but are not too bothered about spring honey and want to get some really good quality summer honey and could use another colony of bees.
You leave your bee numbers build up well and when you think they might be about to swarm ( see guidelines) you perform an artificial swarm. This will reduce the numbers  and create a new colony but also suppress your bees for a few weeks, lowering the numbers of the colony to avoid congestion and swarming.
Just when the numbers start to build up well, you add your summer honey supers and give the colony more space, thus avoiding congestion  and assisting in the prevention of swarming.
That`s not to say that they won`t swarm but generally if you have a few hives and follow this senario then most of them won`t swarm at the wrong time, leaving you with a few foragers in a heavy nectar flow.
Don`t forget you need the maximum amount of bees in the hive at the peak nectar flow, whether its spring or summer honey you are taking.


Senario 3


You can also perform an artificial swarm at the end of the summer nectar flow, but before the honey harvest.
Carry out all of the senario in 2 but just carry  out an artificial swarm at the end of the main nectar flow and move all your honey supers with the hive you have swarmed. Yes its darned hard work moving all that around! The remaining bees will finish curing and drying the honey but it won`t mean you lose your honey crop and also you will have some really good mated queens and above all feree colonies of  bees.
They summer queens are always said to be  the best queens as they have mated in the best weather with the widest selection of drones. In brittany carry out this last artificial swarm when the chestnut tree catkins turn dark brown. Thats the end of the main nectar flow here usually the second week in July.





(Shown by kind permission of Mr Charles Basset who narrates in the film.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KEsJEmv2_c

The principle of Performing an artificial swarm is this.

1. Move your mother hive off the stand  and place it in front of its original position. about 1 meter forward is fine.
2. Open up your mother hive after smoking well. and place an open nuc in the positon of the existing mother hive.
3. Select 1 frame of eggs from the mother hive that are less than 3 days old.( or at least a good amount of eggs that are visibly there.)
4. Select another of brood , pollen and stores ( on one other frame)
5. Place these two frames in to the middle of the nuc and put in three other frames of un drawn up wax sheet around other 2 frames.
6. Close the lid of the nuc, put on the roof.
7. In the mother hive replace the missing 2 frames you have selected. I prefer to bunch up the brood to avoid separating the brood and I place the replacement frames in between the end of the brood and the start of the reserves. That way they will draw they will draw up the new frames quickly but not at the expense of losing some all important brood.
8. Close up he mother hive and move it more that 10 meters away.
9. All the flying bees will then, if not already , will return from the mother hive to the nuc and find the queen missing and start to initiate emergency queen cell production.

Before I explain any more, I know there is loads  of what I would term" very complicated" ways of performing an artificial swarms but this method does work well if you follow the basic guidelines and you carry it out at the right time.



Over The last 4 years I have carried out this method and it does work very well. I made some big mistakes when I first carried out this procedure but now realise my mistakes and this year after looking yesterday all my artificial swarms carried out in may have worked. I have good laying queens in all 5 I did.

Guidelines for successful artificial swarming.( refered to as AS)


Carryout AS on your bees when there is a minimum of 6 frames of brood, eggs and larvae and the other frames to each end of the colony are drawn out and full of reserves.

Put up a couple of swarm traps to help ascertain the optimum time to AS your bee hives. If you monitor your traps in the spring you will know what your bees are preparing to do!

If you find open swarm cells on the lower part of your hives carry out an AS immediately. If not, within the next few days. Those cells could be closed and the current queen gone within a week!

If you don`t think they are quite ready and the weather looks rainy and duff for the next week, leave it for now and look again in a few days time.

Always try and perform an AS when the bee numbers are at their maximum. The more flying bees back to the nuc the better the success rate.

I prefer the queen in the mother hive, that way she will continue to lay as normal as if nothing has happened.
If she goes in to the nuc then fine the bees from the mother hive will make a new queen but the chances of success are less, as most of your flying bees  are in the nuc. It may be too late if the queen is not missed for a couple of days and the best eggs most recently laid( that you selected) are in the Nuc.
Also you dont want to open your` nuc for 1 month in which time the queen has been laying and all the brood hatching in week 3 and 4 will initiate a swarm when you were not expecting it. This happened to me recently,fortunately I was there to see it happen and to catch the swarm, It may help to mark your queens to find her more easily. Yellow and white seem to last the longest don`t worry about the colours of paint matching the years , this is reality! and you are not a queen producer or supplier you only want to know where  the heck the queen is! Get a small queen holder or clip and put it in your pocket. If you see her and have that brief second to catch her, she will be safe until you have selected you frames and put her back in to the other hive. This also works well but it helps if you are experienced at finding the queen.

When selecting frames don`t brush  bees  in to the mother hive in an effort to keep the queen in the main mother hive. You need all the nurse bees you can get in the nuc to help run the hive in the abscence of the queen and organise the production of  a queen cell.

Don`t open the hive for at lease 1 month after you carried out an AS. If you must then use minimal smoke and be oh so careful you don`t break that one and only queen cell that is somewhere on the two middle frames (usually). Damaging the developing queen through your impatience  will cost you the colony.

Feed your developing colonies of bees  generously. It helps the other frames get drawn up very quickly and encourages a newly emerged virgin queen to mate well and start laying quickly when her colony is well stocked when she arrives on the scene after her 16 days of transformation.

AS is a great way to control your bees and is easy to do. you also learn an awful lot about your bees when carrying out this procedure.  Its  a great experince to create a new colony.
Have a go and enjoy .

Richard












 

A week of swarms and hot weather!

I have had an amazing week of swarms and challenges with bees that I have never had before.

First of all I had a second swarm at my own apiary, A classic swarm and luckily accessible, only 3 meters from  the mother hive and a nice height off the ground.
Easy to deal with and went in to its new full size hive with no problem at all and now seem to be drawing out comb at a rapid speed.

Ereac Swarm

On wednesday morning I went down to Ereac ( about 45 mins from Corseul) to collect a bautiful swarm that had appeared in a garden the evening before. I was there at 8 am in case the swarm moved on and when I got there  was luckily still there.

 The swarm was on the branch of a  hybiscus shrub and as you can see the weight of the swarm had caused the branch to bend over and touch the ground. This was not a problem and knowing that the bees had been there all night and were quiet I simply  cut the branch off (with the kind help of the property owner) the branch and simply placed it on top of the Nuc containing 5 frames . 4 of plain wax sheets and 1 of drawn up comb that had all been sprayed with sugar solution.

They seemed to be happy with the home I offered them. They soon filtered  in to the frames and then started Fanning on top of the box and also on the front landing strip.

Then slowly I closed off the top lid, causing them to revert to fanning on the front landing strip and the majority of the remaining bees then were called back in to the hive.

 The weather was hot  so I had to be quick. You have a dilema! Should you come back that evening and collect the hive when every single bee has returned to the hive and also run the risk of the whole lot absconding during the day or do you cut your losses and chose the right moment and close off the front.
Don`t  forget that when you put the frame over on the temperatur will start to rise to you havent got long before they may find it too warm.

I think I lost about 20 bees but all was well. I drove back to the apiary and left them there for about 15 mins before opening the front door and letting them out. They were so well behaved and simply in and out for a while before settling down.

Flying swarm.

Well I said I had been an amazing week. On my way to work after collecting this swarm I flew in to another swarm that was passing over the road I was on. Luckily I was not going to fast and immediatly adjacent to me was a small lay by, So I pulled over and took up the chase!.
I went through 2 gardens and 2 fields and simpy ran with the swarm. Its an amazing experience. The swarm stopped a couple of times , paused over a couple of buildngs, obviously not choosing each place as a possible resting place, and then moved on.
We got to a small valley and they simply vanished in to the top of some large oak trees and they were gone!
What an experience I will probably never see that again.


Swarm arrives at a swarm trap


With the weather being perfect after about 2 weeks of cool and wet the potential for swarms is large.


I checked this trap as I was passing the garden on the way to see another client. On the way back this is what I found.

  A beautiful swarm had cast and landed on the front of the trap

The big question was, why was it on the front of the trap and not inside. I was perplexed. Usually some bees arriving at a trap would  gather around the front of the entrance, or even virtually cover the trap, but they would  gradually move in to the trap.

I phoned up my beekeeping teacher who at the time was also up to his eyes in bees, told me that they may well go in on their own but it may take a day but if they don`t go in to the hive by the following day then I should take off the top of the hive and try and coax them like that.. So I left them alone and took some Pics for the album. I came back that evening and  they were even more clustered above the entrance. So the following morning I decide to try move them in. It was nearly a costly exercise. The minute I took of the lid and started brushing some of the bees in to the box, the bees initiate a mass take off. What a sight. The whole swarm was in the air and circling the garden. They went over the garden wall  and then came back and very fortunately, settled on a shrub in the garden. Again I was extremely lucky. They had chosen a lilac shrub about waist height.

So what next, Well I also had my swarm trapping box with me so that was my next weapon of choice. It was obvious they did`nt want to go in the Nuc that the scout bees had drawn the queen and the rest of he swarm to.
I waited until they had all settled and then put the box underneath them and gave a large shake and the majority went in. Then closed off most of the bottom door, leaving access and slowly turned over the box and put it on the ground.

Bees appeared at the front fanning nicely. This time the queen was in the box and at the moment, happy to be there. I closed off the box and lost about 10 bees but thats nothing to loosing a beautiful swarm!
I transported  them to the apiary and used the white sheet method to give them the sense of walking in to their own hive.

So I set up a ramp leading  up the the nuc box and I have chosen a nuc box because i felt that the size of the swarm did not merit a large hive and in this sized box it would probably get away quicker!
I tipped out the bees on to the ramp and just let them decide what they wanted to do.

They all climbed up well, straight in to the box

To cap all this activity, when I was pouring all those bees on to the ramp one of my nucs started swarming. It spewed out bees for about  2 minutes and they all took to the air in a  amazing spectacle. They headed off in to the nearby scrub so I followed them from a distance. Fortunately I was had another nuc spare at my apiary which I grabbed and ran with.
They settled after about 5 minutes on to a gorse bush. It was a good size swarm for a nuc box and I just took pot luck and just shook them off the bush straight in to the nuc. They immediately started fanning and going in via the front landing strip. I put on the lid and walked them back to the apiary where they are now installed. What a week! hope this weather continues like this.

Nuc box underneath gorse bush