Beekeeping in the Long Hot Summer of 2018

Well, it was a bit boring really.

The limitations of wifi temperature gauges became apparent.

If you read my last blog you will know how pleased I was that I could see activity in the hives without opening them up during the Beast from the East and Beast from the East Two storms.  When the weather was eventually clement enough for the first inspection, the limitations of wifi temperature gauges became apparent.  While the G Bees were building up as expected, the newest colony had no queen.  I had observed that there was a difference between the two colonies from the behaviour of the bees on the landing board.    Clearly something must have happened to her in the Spring and that's one thing you can't put down to bad beekeeping because I hadn't opened the hive.   Normally, the bees would just create a new queen but there was no guarantee there had been any eggs for them to create a queen from, no signs of queen cells and worse, evidence of laying workers.

When worker bees lay, the brood is not in a neat, circular pattern but more like ribbons.  This was a completely new experience for me and I consulted all the usual sources, eventually deciding to follow the Ted Hooper advice and dismantle the colony leaving the bees to find new homes (most likely with the G Bees).   When I started to carry out the process, P spotted a Queen.  (He's very good at that; much better than I am still.)   Where I think I may have made a mistake is that I carried on with the dismantling plan and perhaps I should have taken time to reconsider.  Anyway, I started the season with one colony in the home apiary.  The colony in the out apiary appeared to have absconded.

I took off honey at the end of May just as the oil seed rape flowers were fading......but it seems the bees weren't working oil seed rape!   There were beans flowering, there's a hint of hawthorn in the flavour and it has set like rock.  As usual, the bees won't say where they had been.

Dad inspected the hive in the out apiary, confirming there were no residents and got it ready to take a nucleus or split if one became available.  

It was so hot that experienced beekeepers were wondering whether the wax inside the hive would melt.   

From the middle of May until now, in October, we've had an exceptionally warm season.   For most of the summer, it was also windy.  The warm wind stopped the heat feeling oppressive but the bees don't like to be disturbed when it's windy and I left them to it simply giving them more space regularly.   Eventually the hive was taller than I am.   In early August it was so hot that experienced beekeepers were wondering whether the wax inside the hive would melt.   The thought had crossed my mind but I reasoned that bees are kept in much hotter places than here so I tried not to worry.   

A swarm took up residence in the out apiary and built up nicely over the season.

I had to wait for a not quite so windy day and for a cricket game to be cancelled so P could help my lift the supers off the G Bee hive because they were so heavy.   

At the local honey show, Lot 9 from last year, now set and nicely marbled, came second in the set honey class.  The Long Hot Summer of 2018 in a jar, Lot 11, didn't win a prize although lots of people kindly pointed out it was indistinguishable from Sally's clear honey that won second prize in that class.  My honey fruit cake came third :)

The 29th September was one of the loveliest days this year.  The temperature was 23C, there was absolutely no wind, it was sunny but not scorching and that's the day I sorted the G Bees out for the Winter.  As usual, they have a new floor, new brood box, a full super of honey and the frames in the 14 x 12 brood chamber are wall to wall honey.   I turned over the entrance blocks to the Winter setting.   There are nine narrow holes which are too narrow for a mouse to pass through.  This stops any mice from setting up home in the warm hive on a cold night.  The G Bees were not happy about that.  They were clearly still foraging in large numbers and they couldn't get in an out fast enough.  They've got used to the entrance now and I've set up the wifi temperature gauge again.

It is challenging to get the timing right for setting the hive up for Winter.  It seems too early judging by the plants that are flowering but any day now we could see temperatures returning to their normal range for this time of year.

Bee Weather 2018

How my friends in Finland laughed when I told them we were experiencing an extreme weather event with temperatures of -4.5 Celsius and wind chill making it feel like -9.

The Beast from the East was sweeping across Finland too and they sent me their weather forecast for the week:  temperatures weren’t forecast to exceed -19 Celsius.

My Christmas Present Thermpro TP60 (see the Winter Beekeeping 2017-2018 blog ) has turned out to be vastly more useful than I expected.  I had thought it would be interesting to monitor temperatures in my hives:  I didn’t appreciate how truly useful it would be to be able to observe activity in the hives without opening them up.

The unusual-for-us-cold weather, (let’s not call it extreme), has had beekeepers all over the country worrying whether their colonies have survived.  Some have resorted to peeking inside.  That’s tempting but a sure way to chill the bees.  Apparently, in freezing temperatures, some bees can enter a state of torpor and bees in this state are sometimes presumed dead even when they aren't.

With the aid of the Thermpro and without leaving my kitchen, I have been able to see that there are bees alive in the hives.

To be honest, when I first set up the devices I thought they were just measuring the ambient temperature.   I considered that the small difference between observed temperatures in the hives and the ambient temperature was probably accounted for by the devices being sheltered from wind chill and the worst of the weather by being inside the hive on the crown board just under the roof.   

After a few weeks, the variance from ambient temperature grew noticeably.  By the time the Beast from the East struck, I was confident that the in hive devices were measuring bee colony activity, albeit I can’t tell whether temperature changes reflect an increase in the number of bees or how close the colony is to the sensor.

The following graph shows the ambient temperature compared with the temperature in each hive.   The trend lines clearly indicate increasing activity in the beehives.

This second graph shows how the variance from the ambient temperature is growing.

It's still too cold too open up the hives for the first inspection this year but both colonies are flying and bringing back pollen when the sun shines or the wind drops.    They still have fondant as an emergency food supply but trees are starting to flower now so it looks as though both colonies in the garden apiary have survived the Beast from the East 1 and 2 and Winter 2017/2018.   Phew!

Winter Beekeeping 2017 - 2018

The 2017 Honey Lots

This weekend we had the local beekeepers' branch Annual General Meeting so it's time to report on that and to note what is flowering in the garden now for comparison with previous years.

Regular readers will know that the main reason for belonging to the local beekeepers' branch is the outstanding quality of refreshments at any gathering of members.  This year's AGM and dinner were no different, literally.  The menu was exactly the same as last year but nobody complained.  It's an inspired idea to hold the dinner immediately after the AGM to maximise the number of members who attend the AGM.   The branch is doing well and no new catering equipment had to be purchased.  

Prizes were awarded for winning entries in the local honey show back in August.  No cup for me this year.  My entries were limited to a jar of clear honey and a jar of set honey because we had to deliver our entries a week in advance due to travel plans.  Lot number 6, the first honey extracted in 2017 won 2nd prize in the set honey class.   Lot number 7 was unplaced in the clear honey class.   In terms of taste this year, Lot number 8 is my favourite.   It's just beginning to crystallise; the texture is creamy and the flavour is full and rounded but we didn't extract lots 8 and 9 until after the show.  It's the first year we've had such dark honey.  We don't know where the bees were foraging.  They won't say, however, we have sent a sample off to the National Botanic Gardens in Wales and they have promised us an insight in due course based on their DNA Barcoding.

https://botanicgarden.wales/science/saving-pollinators/honey-bee-foraging/

I am the only person who had a Thermpro TP60 Digital Wireless remote Thermo-hugrometer for Christmas. 

As always, the dinner is an opportunity to pick the brains of experienced beekeepers and to compare notes.   Honey yields were average;  experience with wasps varied.   I am the only person who had a Thermpro TP60 Digital Wireless remote Thermo-hygrometer for Christmas.  With this I can monitor the temperature and humidity of the two hives in the garden apiary from inside the house.  I have placed the sensors on the crown board above the brood chamber so they are inside the outer casing of the hive.  

Initially, I thought the sensors were just reading the ambient temperature.   The sensors show a temperature approximately 2 deg Celsius above the ambient temperature and one hive is consistently about 0.2 deg celsius warmer than the other.  However, in the last week we've had some warmer temperatures and then there is  sometimes a greater differential between the hive sensor readings and the ambient temperature.  The temperatures in the hive also seem to stay warmer for a while after the ambient temperature starts to drop down in the evening.  The reading will be affected by heat generated by bee activity but also by the location of the cluster within the hive but nobody can tell me what temperature I should expect to see - as for humidity.....!

G Bees Varroa tray after 1 week January 2017

Originally, I hoped to be able to tell whether the colonies are alive by using the sensors.  I know they are alive anyway because I can see chewed wax cappings on the varroa trays where they are using their stores.   Now I think I may be able to observe when the Queens start laying more and activity levels  increase towards the end of next month and in to March without opening the hives.

This picture shows the G Bees Varroa tray.  The pale debris is wax cappings from honey stores;  the darker debris is wax  from the brood chamber.  A week earlier, the pale wax debris was at the right front of the hive.  Now it's very central so they are moving around.  The bees do have fondant too just in case they run our of their own stores.

Flowers on bloom

This Winter we've had a few days of snow and some milder weather.  It's been quite wet and very windy.  The following flowers were on bloom this weekend:  aconites (well there were buds), the first snowdrops, winter flowering honeysuckle, cyclamen coum, winter box (sarcocca) and the daphne odora is just coming out.

Results of the Nasty Queen Replacement Plan

The weather is suddenly autumnal and next door have ploughed the field.    I managed to carry out my last big inspection of the bees to get them ready form the Winter season.   The big question was, how would the new colony, comprising the home bred queen and her progeny combined with the Nasty Queen's colony, behave?

The theory, as I understand it, is that a colony of bees shares the characteristics of their mum, the Queen, who may have mated with one or more drones.  Therefore, unless you can control which drones the Queen mates with, there is a risk that her progeny will inherit their dad's characteristics instead of their mum's.    By giving my nucleus eggs from the lovely G Bee Queen from which to develop a new queen, I was doing my best to produce a new Queen with lovely G Bee characteristics but I couldn't control who she would mate with.

Over the Summer, it became evident that the new Queen and the bees that hatched from her eggs are "normal" bees who concentrate on their bee business and take no notice of me unless I disturb them, which I try not to do.

When I united the Nasty Bee colony with the new Queen's colony after the demise of the Nasty Queen herself, I expected the united colony to have 40-50% of bees with Nasty bee characteristics until those Nasty bees gradually die off.  At this stage in the season, the colony does diminish in size as the Queen does not lay so many eggs and more bees die off than are hatching.

What I didn't expect was that just a couple of weeks after uniting the colonies, the new colony would be so well behaved.    Over the last 2 years I have got used to the Nasty Colony sending out alarm pheromones as soon as I lift the crown board and guard bees pinging my veil at eye level almost immediately after that.

This time, there was none of that.  No sticking of little bottoms in the air when I took off the crown board, no angry guards harassing me.    It's the result I planned for but I am still surprised that to find such benign behaviour so quickly.  

Both colonies now have clean varroa floors, a full-ish super of stores, a clean brood chamber and there is enough room between the crown board and the roof for me to feed them as required over coming weeks and in late Winter.

Their behaviour may now be similar but there is one respect in which the two colonies are completely different.  The crown board in the picture on the left came off the G Bees.  They don't like ventilation.   Crown boards often have a couple of holes in the top  which can be fitted with bee escapes (a kind of one way valve) when you want to move bees down from one part of the hive to another, e.g. in order to remove a super of honey.   

In the summer, I usually cover the holes with wire mesh so the bees have some ventilation.  The lid of the hive stops rain getting in and it also has ventilation holes but the G Bees have completely sealed the metal grills that cover the holes in the crown board with propolis.  They have also sealed the edges of the varroa floor with propolis.  

The new colony has glued the wire mesh to the crown board with propolis but left the centre clear.

Nasty Queen Replacement Plan Part 2

The time has come to implement part 2 of the nasty Queen Replacement Plan

As we approach the end of the season, the time has come to implement part 2 of the Nasty Queen replacement plan which involves finally finding and killing the Nasty Queen and then uniting the colony with the new colony headed by Queenie, the new Queen raised this year from a G Bee Queen egg.

Last week, I visited Bob at the bee shop to buy the Varroa treatment that I will need soon and, as usual, I got a lesson from him - this time on how to find and kill a problem queen.   

Bob recommended putting on every piece of protective clothing I have, dismantling the hive and taking the brood box well away from the apiary then inspecting each frame and shaking off surplus bees onto grass in order to find the queen.  This process should be repeated again and again until the queen was found, then she could be stamped on.   The hive could be reassembled on its usual stand in the apiary so that all the bees would return home.  Finally, the colony could be united with another colony in the usual way, or alternatively, a frame of new eggs from a from another colony could be inserted for the bees to raise a new queen.

My regular outfit for inspecting the Nast Queen colony is jeans and a long sleeved T Shirt, scarf round my neck, disposable nitrile gloves under washing up gloves under long beekeeping gloves, cricket hat, beekeeping suit and wellies.  It gets hot!

No sign of the queen

As I can't lift a full brood chamber easily, I used a nucleus box to move a few frames at a time as far away from the apiary as possible.  

I carefully inspected all the frames and couldn't find the Nasty Queen.   

I shook off surplus bees but there was no sign of the queen.  

I returned the frames to a new brood chamber and repeated the process until the old brood chamber was empty and the new brood chamber was back on the stand.  There was still no sign of the queen but there were a lot of bees on the grass at the bottom of the garden.   

The weather forecast was for showers so I put a cover board against the hedge so the bees still on the grass had somewhere to shelter in case they couldn't get back to the hive.

Next day, with better weather, I repeated the process.   I found an empty queen cell on one of the frames in the brood chamber.   (Could they really create a queen cell so quickly or did I miss it the day before? ) I still didn't find the queen.   

There was a group of bees that had spent the night by the hedge and their demeanour made me think it was likely that the queen was amongst them.   I consulted Dad and he suggested shaking the bees onto a sloping sheet, placing the skep on it and watching the bees march into the skep.  He said I would see the queen running over the other bees to get in the skep.  I've heard of this process for getting bees into a hive but I haven't observed myself.    

this was the point when I belatedly realised that I wasn't sure I could kill her even if I spotted her

It was fascinating to see the bees send out scouts in all directions to the edge of the sheet looking for somewhere suitable to congregate.  They returned to the main mass of bees and I saw wiggle dances.  After a few minutes, a few bees moved slowly into the skep, then others followed them and then there were two rivers of bees running purposefully and swiftly into the skep.    I couldn't see the queen but this was the point when I belatedly realised that I wasn't sure I could kill her even if I spotted her.    Perhaps that was why I hadn't found her since March.  Perhaps subconsciously I didn't want to find her because I couldn't actually kill her.     Absolutely convinced that I couldn't stamp on her, I picked up half a brick and carried on watching the bees.  I was feeling a total failure as a beekeeper because I couldn't even spot a queen bee on a white sheet.

When about three quarters of the bees had moved into the skep, suddenly I saw her.  She looked fatter than I remembered but there was no doubt it was the queen and not a drone.  She was running alone up the middle of the sheet between the two main rivers of running bees.   Without hesitation I put the brick on her and then stood on it, massively relieved that there were no other bee casualties.

The rest of the bees eventually made their way into the skep.  It may be my imagination but they were quivering and looked lost.    In the evening, I put their brood chamber with the bees that were still in it onto the new colony and shook the bees from the skep into the brood chamber.    The blog from 31 August 2015 explains the process for uniting two colonies of bees.   I'll leave them alone for a week and hope they are happier when they realise that they are in Queenie's colony.

The final act (I hope) of the Nasty colony was to sting P  when he arrived home from cricket.  He wasn't near the apiary but a bee got behind his glasses.  Bob says he doesn't mind follower bees but he doesn't like greeters.  P was met by a greeter.  

The Nasty Queen had to go.

Implementing the Nasty Queen Replacement Plan

The first Problem

As a beginner beekeeper, my first problem is making a new Queen to replace the Nasty Queen.  

Any egg in a beehive can end up as a worker or a Drone or a Queen depending on the size of cell the egg is laid in and the food it is given.  Drones have noticeably larger cells that workers and Queen cells are so large they hang off the frame.  So, if a colony "loses" a Queen, the bees can construct an emergency Queen cell around an existing new egg to grow a replacement Queen.

There are lots of beekeeping techniques for making spare Queens and I must have read about most of them over the Winter.   I discussed options with other beekeepers and realised that everyone has their favourite foolproof method.    I decided that grafting queen cells and most other techniques sounded too complicated but I was more confident about setting up a nucleus hive with sealed brood, nurse bees, stores and a frame of eggs from my G Bee Queen and letting the bees do their own thing, so I decided to do that.  

Timing is everything.  I would need good weather for transferring a frame of G Bee Queen eggs safely into a nucleus.  Set up the nucleus too early and there aren't any Drones about for a newly hatched Queen to mate with.   The end of May is supposed to be the best time for Drones, so I had to count backwards from then to find the optimum time to start the process.   I took advantage of a beautiful day in April and put two frames of stores from the G Bees, two frames of sealed brood covered with bees from the Rubettes and one frame of eggs from the G Bees into a nucleus hive.  Any foragers that end up in the nucleus return to the main hive next time they fly out leaving the nurse bees to look after the sealed brood until it hatches.   By then the nurse bees and newly hatched workers all think the nucleus is their home so when they become foragers they return there.

A week later, quite a lot of the sealed brood in the nucleus had hatched and they had used one whole frame of stores.   I gave them another frame of stores to keep them going until they had enough foragers to bring their in their own stores.   I didn't inspect the frame that had been the G Bee egg frame for fear of it getting chilled but after another week, I found an empty Queen cell and when I closed up the nucleus, there were bees fanning on the landing board - normally a sign that there's a queen inside.  According to my beekeeper's rule (a sort of beekeeping slide rule that helps you work out how a colony is developing), it was entirely possible that a Queen had hatched in the last day or two so I might have an unmated Queen in there.

The Second Problem

Problem number two is finding and killing the Nasty Queen.  I didn't see the Nasty Queen during the whole of 2016.  This is partly because I didn't hang around looking at the Rubettes last season.   My objective in an inspection is to check for signs of the Queen (eggs, larvae and sealed brood), to check the colony is developing as expected and has space; to check they have adequate stores and to check for disease.   It isn't necessary to see the Queen if you can see signs of her. 

So at the very first inspection in March this year, I was astonished to see the Queen!!!!!!   The Nasty Queen is slim and black with a reddish brown tinge to her tail.   When I spotted her, I contemplated doing the deed but that would mean inspecting the Rubettes without fail each week to to make sure the colony weren't making a Queen from a Nasty Queen egg.  The weather is too unpredictable in March to be sure of being able to inspect the bees every week.    However, the main reason I didn't catch the Nasty Queen and commit reginicide was that I suddenly realised I didn't have enough hands to hold the frame and my hive tool and do something else at the same time.   

The next week feeling confident that I would shortly have a new Queen in the nucleus, I started to focus on finding the Nasty Queen.   I had just started the inspection when I realised, to my horror, that the zips on my veil weren't done up properly.  For a fleeting moment, as I calmly retreated away from the hive, I thought I might have got away with such a stupid error without the bees noticing but, that was when I heard the buzzing.  I had two stings, one on the back of the head and one on my forehead.   Luckily, P was on hand to scrape out the stings and find the oral antihistamine.  He also helped me finish the inspection but I spent the next 2 days looking like Melania Trump.    There are no photographs but having had this premonition, I will not be rushing to try the fashionable fillers and botox beauty treatment!   The Nasty Queen is still very much alive.

I now have two colonies of badly behaved bees!

Here's the thing.   The Rubettes are still the Rubettes.  The Nasty Queen is as productive as ever and it's a huge colony but the nucleus is also currently populated by bees that came from the Rubettes' hive.   They share the same characteristics as the Rubettes - pinging the veil and following me after an inspection so I now have 2 colonies of badly behaved bees!   

There is a small ray of hope.   At the last inspection of the nucleus, I saw lots of polished cells waiting for eggs to be laid in them and I think I saw the little elongated dots that are eggs in the bottom of some of them.   

Bad Beehaviour

What to do about a badly behaved colony

Over the course of last year, it became increasingly apparent I had one badly behaved colony of bees, one colony of angelic bees and a "normal" colony in the out apiary.   So what's the difference?

My G Bee colony, descendants of the rescue G Bees (see blog for July 2014) are every bit as well-behaved as the original G Bees bred by Mr Griffiths.   When I open them to do an inspection, they go about their business as if I am not there.   Visitors used to watch inspections from only a few feet away (albeit, the other side of the apiary hedge) and I regularly took off gloves to take photographs with my phone during an inspection.     The Sue Bees in the out apiary aren't quite so tranquil but they don't make much fuss during an inspection and nephew H helps Dad look after them.  The Rubettes distinguish themselves by their aggressive behaviour.   As soon as I lift the crown board I see them sticking their bottoms in the air to waft alarm pheromones to the rest of the colony.  Shortly after that the guard bees start pinging my veil.  They fly into the veil at about eye level and keep up this behaviour throughout the inspection.  The Rubettes have a habit of sitting on me and they regularly follow me back to the shed or even the house after an inspection.  This accounts for the lack of photographs last season - I wouldn't dare remove gloves in the apiary - and it's the reason we've made visitors stay well away from the apiary during inspections.

The photograph above was taken after my first inspection of the Rubettes back in 2015.  At the time this sitting on my back and head seemed almost affectionate but when they sit on your arms....and you bend at the elbow....they sting.   I've also been stung through the seam on my gloves where the leather joins the gauntlet.  

I reverted to using leather gloves last season for inspecting the Rubettes simply because they are thicker but I have gradually developed full battle dress for inspecting them.  This comprises my bee suit, wellington boots, two long sleeved T Shirts, a scarf around my neck, a cricket hat under the hood, nitrile gloves under washing up gloves under rubber bee keeping gloves with long gauntlets.

So, what to do?

I spent the latter part of last season and the Winter talking to other bee keepers and reading books eventually coming up with a plan that I thought I could implement to replace the Rubettes' Queen, aka the Nasty Queen. As all the bees in a colony are descendants of the Queen, they carry her genes.  Replace the Queen with a well-behaved Queen and after about 6 weeks, you should have a colony of well-behaved bees.  But will the theory work in practice?