Battened Down

Not a real blog, but I couldn't resist posting this photograph of the hives tied down ready for the tail end of hurricane Gonzalo.

Accolades

 

We've reached the end of our first season as beekeepers with the help and support of lots of people so this last blog of the season is dedicated to thanking them for their advice, guidance, support and interest.  In no particular order.....:

Paul and Charlotte for hosting the beekeeping taster session last year.

Paul, Malcolm and Penny for the fantastic theory classes.

Sally for letting us handle her bees at the practical classes.

Douglas for setting up Queen B and the Beebettes.

Richard for his guidance and Jonathan and Ben for their support at the Bee Rescue.

Mr G for breeding Queen G and the lovely G Bees.

Jennie our bee buddy for helping inspect and look after our bees.

BJ, Dad and P, the official photographers.

Eth, for helping everyone.

Joe for dealing with the wasps.

Dee for providing the honey jars and extractor.

Bob at the Thornes for his endless patience.

Dad for our bee suits, for helping transport bees, lift hives, inspect bees, feed bees, for general advice and for making the gate and brood box.

P for the birthday present hive, patience and support (but he had tons of fun with the router, pressure washer, extractor and uncapping knife).

And last but not least all our friends and acquaintances who prompted us to keep these notes.

No blogs now for a while unless I am inspired by the National Honey Show at the end of October.

Bees and Mice

Time to make the bee hives mouse proof

We've had the first frost so it's time to put the mouse guards on the hives.  We know there are mice living in or near the apiary;   just before we brought the Beebettes back to the garden we found this one sunbathing on the floor of the apiary. 

 

 

 

Apparently, they find beehives attractive, warm, cosy homes for the Winter.  Bees don't mind them but the mice make a mess of the frames when they remodel to build their own nests.    As they can squeeze through tiny gaps and holes, metal mouse guards are placed over the hive entrance which have holes in that are big enough for bees to enter and leave the hive but which keep mice out.

 

The down side is that the mouse guards may knock the pollen off that the bees are still bringing back in to the hive and they make it more difficult for the house keeping bees to remove debris but with mice in the apiary we don't want to take any chances.

 

We are still keeping the entrances narrow to make it easier for the bees to defend their hives from the wasps lurking about.

  

Varroa Part Two

The results are in

The weather continues to be unusually dry and warm both during the day and at night.   Our two hives are as busy as ever and we have now finished feeding the two colonies for the time being.

 

The bases of the hives are made of mesh which provides good ventilation but also allows dead Varroa mites and other debris to fall through.   To check the Varroa count, we slide trays under the mesh floors to catch the debris. 

 

When we did this before giving the bees a Varroa treatment, we found a few dead Varroa mites on the Beebettes' hive but none on the G Bees' hive and we wondered why because, this year, according to the BBKA, high Varroa counts have been seen throughout the country.

 

When we put the trays back under the hives for the post treatment count, I was extra careful to create a thick Vaseline border around the edge which is supposed to trap any creatures that have a mind to crawl on to the trays to eat the debris.  I can report that this was spectacularly unsuccessful.   As I withdrew the trays from under each of the hives, earwigs scampered over the Vaseline to escape.  The one earwig that looked trapped in the Vaseline subsequently jumped off and is now living in the kitchen somewhere.

Beebettes

G Bees

 

So, you won't be surprised to learn that we didn't see any Varroa this time on either hive.   On the face of it, the results are what we should expect, that is there are fewer Varroa mites in the hives now than before we gave the bees the Varroa treatment.  However, we have to ask ourselves:

a) Were the things we thought were Varroa mites really Varroa mites?  If we get out a magnifying glass will we see hundreds of smaller mites?   Well, I did this and the answer appears to be no.

b) Is the mesh on the G Bees' hive too small for the mites to drop through?  I haven't been able to check yet as the floor is firmly glued in place with propolis.  

 

Another explanation could be that the Beebettes' brood chamber sits on the hive floor but the G Bees' brood chamber is sitting on top of a super of stores (this being a much bigger colony and needing more food for the Winter) so any debris has further to fall and may have got stuck in the super en route.

 

 

Autumn Feeding

Our experience of Feeding our bees this Autumn

A sunny day
A Miller feeder
An Ashforth feeder
28kg invert liquid feed
Wasps
Michaelmas Daisy pollen

The varroa treatment, a kind of paste that the bees apparently find tasty, has been on the hives for the requisite number of weeks so it's time to take the treatment off and start feeding.  Interestingly, each colony seems to have consumed the same quantity of the paste notwithstanding that there are vastly more G Bees than Beebettes.

So,  now we feed the bees to ensure they have enough stores for the Winter.    We have a rapid feeder for each hive but different designs  Each is made to sit on top of the inner hive.  We pour sugar syrup into the reservoir and it seeps through small slots into a separate chamber where the bees come up to access it.   We have bought invert liquid feed via the local beekeepers' club which is a ready mixed sugar syrup.   It comes in large plastic containers that we can leave in the apiary and with one per colony recommended, we can easily keep tabs on how much each colony has had.   The Authorities are imprecise about how much syrup we should provide for each colony.  There are a lot of variables to take into consideration - the number of bees in the colony, the quantity of stores they already have and how wet or cold the weather is.   We should apparently "heft" the hive, ie lift it enough to judge the quantity of stores that the bees have but as novices we will be learning as we go along.

P was official photographer so dad suited up to help.  The bees were busily going about their business and didn't take much notice of us.      I dribbled some syrup into the hive where the bees should access the feeder because, apparently, they can't smell the syrup and can take the days to find it.  Next morning, we checked to make sure the bees had found the syrup and the picture shows the Beebettes through the Perspex cover of the Ashforth feeder.  If you look carefully you can see a wasp that has somehow got into the hive. The bees showed no sign that they had noticed.

The Miller feeder has a wooden lid and we checked the G Bees were in there but didn't take it off for a photograph.

 

Meanwhile, it was a sunny day and bees were arriving at the hive entrances laden with pollen.  This is most likely Michaelmas Daisy pollen.

 



We've also put the Varroa floors back on the hives, taking care to put on a good barrier of Vaseline. Results next week!

Varroa Part One

The mystery of the missing Varroa Mites

1992 a special year for us and the year Varroa mites were first discovered in UK.

Varroa mites were a known parasite of the Asian bee but they are thought to have crossed over to the European bee in the 1960s. In 1992 they were first discovered in the UK and now they are everywhere.

With average temperatures falling, this is the time of year when Queen B and Queen G are starting to lay fewer eggs but those that they do lay now will hatch to become the bees that will live throughout the Winter. The bees that have been working hard all year gradually die off at the end of their natural lives so the number of bees in a large colony reduces from perhaps 70,000 to 10,000.

It is recommended that we treat the colonies to reduce the number of Varroa mites now so that the over-wintering bees start out with as few pests as possible, giving them slightly less to do as they battle to survive to next Spring. Varroa mites stick on to bees sucking “blood” (actually hemolymph) and weakening them. The open wounds that are left leave the bees more prone to infection. Varroa mites also hop on and off bees so they can transmit disease from one colony to another. They prefer to lay eggs in drone cells but in the Autumn, all the drones are expelled so Varroa mites switch to ordinary worker bees.

Before we start the treatment process, we have to check the number of Varroa mites in the colonies already. Luckily, I picked up tips at the last beekeeping theory class in early August, so a couple of weeks ago we smeared Vaseline round the edge of the boards that slide in under the mesh floors of the hives and sprayed the boards inside the Vaseline liberally with cooking spray – yes the oil you spray on your frying pan. After a week this was the result for Queen B and her colony:

 

 

You can see the stripes of debris falling from the frames. At the front of the hive (top of the picture) there is an area of wax bits and pollen. The bright orange is Dahlia and the less bright orange is Michaelmas Daisy or Aster pollen. The pale yellow is probably Himalayan Balsam.

At the back of the hive is what we’re interested in. Those larger round reddish brown discs are dead Varroa mites. We counted about 16 and did the maths. These bees don’t have a bad infestation but this will give us something to compare with the results after Varroa treatment.

As you will have come to expect, the G Bees are different. On the G Bees’ floor, the stripes aren’t noticeable. I suspect this is because there are so many bees in the colony and so much debris that it spreads out. We might have got stripes if we’d left the floor in for a shorter period, say 24 hours instead of a week. Or, perhaps some creatures breached the Vaseline barrier and ran around on the board spreading the debris about.

 

It ‘s all the more surprising then, given how large the G Bees' colony is, that there aren’t any visible signs of a Varroa! I wonder whether it’s because the board is made of wood rather than metal. Perhaps the Vaseline did soak in more and didn’t prevent earwigs and other bugs from getting on the board and eating whatever they wanted. There’s an even spread of wax bits but not so much pollen either. The pollen we can see is yellow possibly from squashes and almost white. It’s a bit late for sweet corn but there is a field within eyesight and sweet corn pollen is apparently white.

Or, perhaps this colony genuinely doesn’t have Varroa. Any thoughts anyone?

Bee Space and Carpentry

We have to do some carpentry to create a des res for the bees

It is true that P was a rocket scientist when we met but this blog isn't about that kind of space.  

Bees need enough room to move both vertically and horizontally around their hive, in between the frames.   However, if you give them too much room, they fill it with brace comb, i.e. extra wax cells that they use for stores or brood.  This doesn't sound too bad but the brace comb effectively fixes one piece of hive to another making it hard to take the various bits of the hive apart to inspect the bees. 

 

If you give the bees a space that's too small, they fill it with propolis.   Propolis is an extremely viscous goo that stops draughts and glues things together.   When it's soft, it sticks to everything but it sets like a lacquer; indeed, it used to be used by violin makers and it stains the yellowy colour of an old violin! 

 

The perfect bee space is 1/4 inch or 6 - 7 mm and brood chambers and supers that make up a hive come either with top bee space or bottom bee space for the bees to move around below or above the frames.  Bottom bee space is the most common but the Authorities recommend top bee space.  This has the advantage that it's easier to put the bits of the hive together without squashing any bees and therefore seemed ideal for us novice beekeepers. 

When we were inspecting the bees this week, the importance of bee space hit home.   Our first hive, which was a birthday present, was built to order, cost a fortune and has top bee space.  The second hive,  an ebay bargain, is identical to the first hive apart from the brood chamber and it has bottom bee space.  We intended to convert it to top bee space and, since this involves a router, one of P's favourite toys, sorry tools, he made a start by converting the brood chamber to top bee space.

 

When we were frantically adding space for the G Bees a few weeks ago,  we ended up putting supers with bottom bee space over the brood chamber with top bee space.  We coped with bits of brace comb built under the frames in the supers, usually managing to scrape them off before they got too big but after extracting honey, we put the supers back in a different order.   This week we found frames from one super glued to the super above with propolis such that they all came out together when we tried to lift off the top super.  With extra frames hanging down underneath covered in bees, we couldn't put the super with it's undercarriage anywhere except back where we got it from.  



It took me a long time to work out a solution but when I did, the first stage was to build the brand new, flat pack super that came with the ebay hive.





The local beekeepers' association has a carpentry day coming up in October but I had expert help on hand!

 

 

Although the new super has bottom bee space, it didn't matter because I was able to swap it with the super with top bee space that was on the Beebettes' hive to give them space for their Varroa treatment.  There was another top bee space super fulfilling the same function for the G Bees.  Then it was a relatively simple task, to switch the frames from the bottom bee space supers into the top bee space supers.   The result is that we have a spare bottom bee space super for P to convert when he has a minute.  That will be after he makes some more crown boards. 

 

Crown boards sit on the top of the supers or brood chamber under the roof of the hive.  They form a base for some types of feeder to sit on and they can be used with bee escapes to clear the bees down from a super ready for honey extraction.  They are also handy for putting over a super or brood chamber during an inspection because bees are calmer in the dark and for putting in between and on top of stored equipment to keep out wax moths and other pests.   We have realised that one crown board per hive isn't enough. 

 

When we had the bathroom redecorated last month, the builders made a cover to fit over the bath to prevent any damage to it.  At my request, the cover was made from ply wood so it can be cut up to make crown boards.  They think I'm bonkers.........  Luckily, P has the perfect saw for that job too.  

 

I had no idea that so much carpentry would be involved in beekeeping but I am very proud of the frames I made up when we thought we were going to run out of them a few weeks ago.

 

 

All these fiddly bits turned in to 10 frames!

 

 

And I haven't mentioned the gate to the apiary that is made but not hung up or the ekes and the spacers that make incompatible sizes of equipment fit together, both of which we know we need to make over the Winter.

 

 

Late Summer Foraging

These are all our bees (we presume) and flowers in our garden!

 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o’er brimmed their clammy cells.

John Keats

My favourite line of this poem has, until now, been the last line of the last verse:

 

"And gathering swallows twitter in the skies."

 

Our swallows left a couple of weeks ago and we miss their twittering but now I see the charms of the last few lines of the first verse, especially with some late summer sunny days.

This is a pictorial blog showing some of the late summer flowers our bees are foraging from.  

They seem to love the borage that has self-seeded around the vegetable garden after being planted to provide flowers to go in Pimms and Lemonade, and in salads. 

 



 

.

Nearby are the red flowers of our runner beans and the pink perennial sweet peas.

 

 






























In the river the Rosebay Willow Herb is going to seed and the bees are all over the Water Mint.

In the back garden the Nepeta is coming to an end making a fuzzy-looking picture and there are so many little flowers it was hard to photograph a bee in action.  This is also very popular with all sorts of different bumblebees.











The Sedum Spectabile is just turning pink and it is clearly a bee favourite as they are all over it.











The clearest bee in action photograph is this lovely bee on a Japanese Anemone.

Finally, the photograph at the top of the blog shows a bee on an Aster in the bee bar that I planted specially to provide late summer flowers for the bees this year.  It provides a dramatic splash of colour near the gate.

Bee Weather

Why we had to mend the outdoor thermometer and hang it near the kitchen window

We find that we are watching the weather forecast with increasing interest.   What seemed like endless Summer days have started to feel crisp and fresh and night time temperatures have sunk to single figures.   Ordinarily, we wouldn't take much notice except to switch to a warmer duvet at night and go back to wearing jackets for work.   This year it's different because we have to think about the bees.

 

According to The Authorities, the temperature should be over 17C if you want to open the hive to examine the bees.  If you have to examine the bees below this temperature, it's recommended that you work quickly and only do essential tasks to minimise disruption to the bees.  They shouldn't be examined if the temperature is below 10C.  

 

Individual bees adopt the temperature of their environment but they can generate heat through muscular activity.  At 8C an individual bee freezes.   Apparently therefore, when the average temperature falls below 18C, they begin to huddle together in the hive forming a ball amongst the frames.  When average temperatures reach 13C all the bees are in this cluster which enables the bees to regulate their temperature by expanding and contracting the cluster and eating more or less honey so they can engage in wing fanning activity which produces heat.

 

All beekeepers want to avoid Chill Brood which shows as white cells in the honey comb and results from the larvae being exposed to the cold for too long.  These larvae never hatch.

 

Our bees show no signs of starting to cluster yet but we have mended the out door thermometer and hung it up where we can see it from the kitchen window.   It is taking noticeably longer for temperatures to climb in the morning now and temperatures seem to be falling faster in the evening.

Wind and wind chill

If you have to open the hive on a colder day, it's best to choose a calm day, at least then wind chill does not make the bees even colder.   Even on a warm day, if the wind is gusting it seems to disturb the bees.    Our apiary is almost completely surrounded by hedges, raspberries, shrubs and a fence which together act as a wind break and filter but we have postponed opening the hives several times because there was a brisk wind.  For flying, wind direction is more important than wind speed.  A strong wind blowing straight along the runway is perfect but a lighter wind blowing across the runway makes taking off and landing a challenge.   Gusting wind, especially wind that is gusting and changing direction makes taking off and landing really hazardous, at least for people with my limited experience.   Personally, I like laboratory conditions for landing, i.e. no wind at all.   Often here the wind drops in the early evening and we have a still period but I am certainly paying more attention to wind speed in the weather forecast and the dilemma is do we wait for the wind to drop and run the risk of the temperature dropping too?

 

Clouds and rain

The standard bee examination templates all seem to include a space to record whether it is cloudy.  That must be for a reason.  It transpires that bees seem to know when it's going to rain and they don't like thunder or rumbly vibrations of any sort.  We chose our apiary site to keep the bee hives well away from the lawn mower and we seem to have got that right as the bees take no notice if it.  We had heard horror stories of bees chasing lawn mowers.
 

Our records of cloud conditions aren't illuminating so I think we will have to dust down P's aero weather text books and accurately record cloud conditions to learn more about how clouds affect bee behaviour.

 

 

All of this makes me realise it was a big mistake not to buy the weather vane I saw at yesterday's country show.  There were several designs - a witch flying on a broomstick ( you might think that appropriate), a chicken ( my favourite) and a tractor, all complete with little wind cups to indicate (but not measure) wind speed as well as showing wind direction. 

Honey Part Two

12lb 10 oz of honey

It took four attempts to get the top super off of the hive.  Perhaps the Porter bee escapes we put on were not adjusted properly allowing bees to move up into the super as well as down out of it.   However, we have learnt that the G Bees are much cleverer than we are, so we are inclined to believe that they wedged open the porter bee escapes with wax and propolis.  Whatever, it wasn't until we switched the porter bee escapes for carefully adjusted ones that the number of bees in the super reached a level where we could brush off the few remaining bees, load the super into our wheelbarrow and fold the sheet around it quickly to prevent any bees (or wasps) coming with us.  The rest of the operation went smoothly and we got the super into the kitchen with no problems.

An oilcloth tablecloth spread over the floor was essential

P took on the uncapping.   When the bees have filled the frames with honey they seal each cell with a wax cap.  These caps have to be removed before the honey can be extracted.   The traditional technique is to slice the caps off with an uncapping knife.  We don't have one so P used a ham knife. An alternative technique gaining currency is to use a paint stripper to melt the wax caps but P found slicing the wax caps off with the ham knife easier. 

Then the frames were loaded into the honey extractor borrowed from the local beekeepers club. What a fantastic resource.   I loaded and held it down while P wound the handle to spin the frames .  The clear plastic lid allowed us to observe the honey spinning out of the frames and hitting the walls of the extractor before oozing down to settle in the bottom. Plenty of weight on the top of the extractor helped stop it "walking" across the floor.  

Once all the frames had been through he extractor, we lifted it onto a stool and opened the tap at the bottom to let the honey pour through a sieve into a settling bucket.  My kitchen sieve wasn't really up to the job.   Ideally, the sieve catches bee legs, wings, bits of wax, pollen, dead bees and goodness knows what else but we ended up with slightly speckled honey. 

 

I managed to borrow a much finer sieve when I delivered Liz's birthday present.   I put the wax cappings that P had sliced off into the oven to melt the wax and separate it from the honey that had been cut off with the cappings and poured the whole lot through a sieve.   This yielded three pounds of honey from the wax cappings.   The honey in the settling tank strained through the finer sieve yielded a further 9 and a bit jars making a whopping 12lb 10 oz of honey and we didn't expect to get any honey in our first season!  

 

By the time we had finished, the kitchen floor was spattered with honey, wax and propolis.   All of these stick to the soles of your shoes and are further spread around. Thankfully, the whole operation had taken place on an oilcloth table cloth.   I wouldn't fancy scraping wax lumps sticky with honey off the floor itself! 

 

Honey for lunch

P and I had bread and honey for lunch - what a treat! 

The honey extracted from the wax cappings is slightly darker and I will keep that for cooking.  The rest of the honey is runny, medium honey coloured in the jar, pale on a spoon and a nice delicate flavour.  The viscosity of honey depends on the where the bees have been foraging, the weather and the age of the honey.   We haven't heated ours to delay the crystallisation process that eventually makes honey creamy but we don't expect it to  last long!     At short notice, the only labels we could source were for "English Honey" .   And that is what it is.

Honey Part One

2 stings

A hearing aid

A bed sheet

And a wheelbarrow
 

Planned like a military operation.......
 

We didn't start keeping bees because we like honey.  We realised that it would be most unlikely that our bees would produce enough honey for us to take some off in their first year but at the last inspection we had 2 supers full of honey  and one of them is the super that used to be a brood chamber ("STUTBABC"). The frames in STUTBABC are old and need to be replaced with fresh frames.  So, we might as well spin out the honey then we can melt out the wax and, hopefully, exchange the old wax for new wax foundation for frames next year.

 

Taking off honey has to be planned like a military operation.   It is, after all, stealing stores from the bees.  They don't know that we plan to take less than half of their stores and to supplement their remaining stores with food to make sure they have enough for the whole winter.  We have to expect them to defend their stores and see off all attackers.

Phase One - reordering the supers

The first step is to make sure that the super we want to take off is at the top of the hive and has no bees in it so we don't have any G Bees "helping" in the kitchen with the honey extraction.    In our case, STUTBABC is the bottom super so we planned to the change the order when we put the supers back during our regular hive inspection.  We also planned to put a clearing board under STUTBABC.  This is a solid board with two gadgets fitted in to it that allow bees to go down into the supers below but not come up again.   

 

During the inspection, there were a lot of wasps around, they were also after the honey our G Bees have made and the G Bees were more agitated than usual, pinging our veils.    (Yes, I do mean they fly straight at the veil hitting it with a "ping" and bouncing off.)   Unfortunately, they also pinged the official photographer who, used to the normal gentle behaviour of our bees, was standing perilously close, and he wasn't wearing a veil!   He was stung - twice.

 

Later in the day when he went for a shower, he noticed that he had lost a hearing aid.  A finger tip search of the garden eventually turned up the hearing aid which was dislodged in his rapid retreat to a safe distance.  It is a miracle because it's one of those tiny hearing aids.   Phew!

Phase Two - take the super to the kitchen

The weather forecast was not good.  We had only a small window to work with the bees so after they'd gone to bed and it was nearly dark, we went to take off STUTBABC.   We took along a wheelbarrow with an old bed sheet spread out in it, planning to sit the super in the bed sheet and quickly wrap it up to make it bee proof in case they tried to follow us to the kitchen.    

 

We had also planned what we would do if there were still bees in the super.  We had with us a large feather for brushing the bees off of the frames in front of the hive entrance and a fine water mister to spray to convince them it was starting to rain and they should go inside (and not follow us).    But when we opened the hive there seemed to be just as many bees in the super as before Phase One.  

 

We thought we hadn't given them enough time to move down in to the hive so we left them for another 24 hours.

Phase Two - again

Once again we had to find a tiny suitable window in the weather to go back to the apiary equipped as before.   This time when we opened the hive and saw all the bees in STUTBABC we realised we had another problem.   STUTBABC came from the bee rescue (see the Blog for 20th July) and is a slightly different size to our other supers.  We thought we had positioned it to ensure there were no spaces that bees could slip through but we hadn't.   Instead of only being able to exit STUTBABC via the bee escapes in the clearing board, they had been able to slip in and out of the sides.  That didn't help them much because that just got them in to the space in between the inner hive and the outer casing but they had plenty of stores in STUTBABC and it's still warm so they had no incentive to go down to the nest in the brood chamber.

 

We have now taken all the frames out of STUTBABC and put them into one of our spare supers and put that on the hive over the clearing board.   It fits neatly.   Why didn't we do that before? We're going to give the remaining bees plenty of time to make their way down into the hive before we try again.   I'd better get a veil for the official photographer too.

Bees and Robbers

Who likes honey and will risk a few bee stings to steal it?

• Badgers
• Bees
• Green woodpeckers
• Hornets
• Wasps
• Winnie the Pooh

At this time of year bee hives attract the unwanted attention of wasps and hornets on the look out for a ready source of food for their own brood and even lazy bees who are looking for an easy source of stores for the Winter.   Having heard distressing tales of hives that have been robbed and colonies of bees exterminated by predators, we were concerned to see wasps lurking around our own hives, clearly looking for entry points.  Lately, during inspections, we have spotted wasps among the frames (and we go to great lengths to evict them before reassembling the hive).

The Experts say that it takes seven bees to see off one wasp, so you can imagine that in a small colony such as Queen B's, they would struggle to defend themselves if we didn't do as much as possible to help them.  I have to say that the G Bees appear capable of putting up a good defence but there seem to be limitless wasps.  So what to do?

We have reduced the size of the entrances to each hive.  If only one bee can get in at a time, the same applies to marauding wasps and the guard bees defending the hive can be lying in wait in just one place, or a reduced number of places.   For the novice beekeeper judging the exact amount of entry space to leave is difficult and we have no idea whether we have got it right.  Time will tell, I suppose.

Dealing with whole nests seems to be the best way to deal with wasps in large numbers.   We spotted one wasp nest in a hole in the ground earlier in the summer.  It was close to where we sit outside and that was flooded.  Let's hope the torrential rain deals with any other nests in the ground that we haven't found.  

Glass wasp traps are surprisingly effective.  This is where you can help.   You mustn't put honey or sugar in them because that would attract bees. A suitable recipe for a 12cm diameter glass wasp trap is:

1 tsp jam
1 tsp alcohol (the dregs from last year's Christmas sherry would be perfect)
A little boiling water for mixing
Enough cold water to make up to a 1/4 pint

Make sure the cork bung is securely in the neck of the wasp trap.  Invert the trap and sit it in a container to hold it steady.  Pour the liquid into it through the hole at the bottom, then carefully turn it upright taking care not to lose too much of the liquid.  Hang the trap at about head height.


I wasn't sure that our bees would not be trapped so I tested the recipe with one trap and carefully observed the inmates.  There were no obvious bees but as some inmates were still alive I dunked the whole trap in a bucket of water so that any remaining live creatures drowned quickly.   When I emptied the contents into the bucket, we had trapped lots of wasps, one hornet, lots of big black flies and some little shiny chafers.  I didn't see a single honey bee or bumble bee.


We don't get badgers in the garden - they are prone to knock over hives to break in to them with brute force and their pelts are thick enough that they can ignore stings.  Our hives are protected to an extent in that they are surrounded by a hedge.

We do have green woodpeckers nesting in the garden so we know that a job for the Autumn is to construct some kind of wire mesh covered frame to fit over the hives to stop the woodpeckers from pecking holes through the sides of the hives.

It is more of a challenge to defend the hives from Winnie the Pooh.  Our current plan is to distract him with a game of Pooh Sticks on the bridge.

 

Moment of Truth

We see whether the G Bees have decided to stay and we find out whether P is allergic to bee stings

It's a whole week since we left Queen G and the G Bees plus hitch hikers with an extra super to give them more space and something to do, i.e. drawing wax in the new super.

Our fears that they might have decided to  move on due to lack of space or inadequate beekeeping appear groundless as, when we rush to the apiary, we see the two hives and bees calmly going about their business.  It appears that the hitch hikers have been accepted into Colony Two boosting the number of foragers.    What a change from last week's bee mania.

ooOOoo

When I was inspecting the G Bees prior to moving them last week, one frame in the brood chamber fell apart.  We replaced it for travelling with a smaller frame of brood from the half bit of the brood and a half.   This week's tasks therefore include putting a new, proper size brood frame in to the brood box.   I had to go to the Bee Shop to buy the bits and make up the frame and insert the wax foundation myself using small pins and a tack hammer.  (I suspect I will get lots of practice at this.)

So, late afternoon when the wind has dropped a bit but it's still about 22c, P and I suit up.  Naturally, our bee suits have been laundered since last week as you can't approach the bees looking like grubby garage mechanics.  We plan what we're about to do in advance (while watching Lewis Hamilton practise for a Grand Prix) and take everything we think we need over to the apiary: new frame for the G Bees' brood box, hive tools, steriliser for cleaning hive tools between hives, tub for brace comb or wax that we have to chip off, loppers to take down some fennel stalks to create more room around the hives, smoker and official photographer (this week it's Dad).

And we open the G Bees first, placing the roof to one side.   OMG!

They have drawn out the new super we put on last week ("NSWPOLW") and filled it with honey!   There are loads of bees throughout the NSWPOLW.   This was not in the plan.  We take that off and the second super, the one that used to be a brood chamber ("STUTBABC").   Sealed brood will still be hatching but it's heavy with stores too.

  NSWPOLW

P gets stung and "it bloody hurts"

 

The brood chamber is alive with bees.  We chicken out.  We planned to inspect each frame but we are daunted by the thousands of bees before us.   By now they are whizzing around and a bit agitated, although still tolerably benign.  We insert the new brood frame of foundation and this is when P gets stung on the elbow.  We have been wondering whether he is allergic to bee stings or not..... Now we will find out!  

Meanwhile, we realise we haven't brought along another super so I run to get yet another super from the barn ( "YAS").    The G Bees need space.  They have evidently found a nectar source and with the extra hitch hiker foragers they are rapidly building their stores for the winter.  Colony Two now have a standard brood box, STUTBABC, NSWPOLW and YAS. 

YAS

We haven't seen  Queen G, queen cells, signs of disease or any of the other things we were supposed to look for but we move on to Colony One.   Exhausted.

ooOOoo

Colony One

Colony One is noticeably quieter but they have also been busy this week and the brood has spread on to 4 frames with stores nicely round the edges and they have drawn out wax on all but two frames.  We don't see Queen B during the inspection but all the indications are that she's there somewhere so we close the hive and leave the bees in peace.

 

Now, is P allergic to bee stings?   Evidently not.  When I tried to take a photo of the sting for this blog entry it was too late and it had all gone........

Bee Rescue Part Two (the rather too exciting part)

Millions of bees

24 miles

5 beekeepers

1 sting

Not enough lifts (the external casings of the hive)

P is still away on cricket tour so dad came with me to help carry the G Bees into the car and from the car to our apiary.   All new beekeepers who get their bees from Douglas or his brother Robert believe that their bees are performing bees trained from an early age to behave immaculately in all situations.   Thus lulled into expecting to arrive at the farmyard, block the entrance to the hive, and then, with the help of Jonathan lift the hive into our car and drive home, we were a bit taken aback to find bees everywhere.   

One hive had already disappeared and we can only assume that many of the workers were out foraging when their hive was moved so when the workers returned to the apiary to find their home gone, they then tried to get into the other hives, resulting in bees clinging to every outer surface of the remaining hives and flying around in an agitated state.   Poor things.

It took 5 of us an hour of patience, misting with spray and a bit of smoking to get two of the hives packed into cars and one strapped ready to move tomorrow.   Unlike the pick up of our first colony, (see the first blog), dad and I were both wearing full beekeeping gear with the veils on for the full 24 mile journey home.   We knew there were a lot of hitch hikers clinging to the bottom of the floor of the hive.  They were quiet for the journey but we had the sun roof and back windows open and it was dark.

Arriving home, it was even darker.  I got stung lifting the hive onto a bogey for the trundle across the lawn to the apiary.   (But hey! The stinging sensation disappeared quite soon!)  It was so dark I couldn't see where the hitch hikers were and I must have crushed someone.  Sorry!

Now, pay attention, here's a technical bit!   Colony No. One, Queen B and the Beebettes have a deep 14 x 12 inch brood box.    Colony No. Two, Queen G and the G Bees have  a normal brood box plus a super, known as a brood and a half.   A brood and a half is taller than a deep brood box so, when we put the lifts (outer casings) on, we found that we needed an extra one, otherwise we couldn't fit the lid on the hive.   This meant unlocking the house to get the keys for the barn and opening the barn to get an extra lift.........  

No, we didn't choose brood and a half and next year we will have to convert to a deep brood box - that will  be several blogs in its own right.

We got the hive in to place and undid the straps holding everything tightly together (not needed for the Douglas pick up) but it was almost impossible to remove the foam blocking the entrance.  In the end I got a couple of the foam pieces out and dad and I ran for cover.  We left our bee suits in the barn along with some more hitch hikers but, for the record P,  we didn't put the bee suits on the TR6 in case they have any sticky propolis on them.   There are no pictures for this blog entry so far because it was dark.

Bee Rescue Part One

30 People in full beekeeping gear
11 hives in 2 apiaries
6 different kinds of home made cake
2 hours on the hottest day of the year
1 poorly beekeeper whose family have asked for assistance

These are the ingredients for a bee rescue.

While one group went to the garden apiary to check the five hives there, a dozen of us went to the apiary in a nearby farmyard.  Tony had been there during the week and cut the grass round the sites so we could access the hives.  This apiary was to be removed so we started with clearing away the redundant equipment.  In the heat, wearing boiler suits over another layer, hats with veils, rubber gloves and wellies, you don't need much imagination to realise that sweat was soon trickling down our legs and off our noses, which of course, you can't do much about when you are veiled.

We worked in three groups with an expert supervising each one to examine two hives.  I was on smoker while Ben did the examining and his dad Jonathan helped Richard supervise.  The  bees were nicely docile even when their hive started to collapse under them but we soon realised it was because the poor creatures were starving.  The hive was quickly prepared for transport to a new home and we started examining our second hive.  This time I was doing the scraping off of propolis, levering frames out of their boxes and lifting them out to examine each side, looking for stores or healthy brood and, of course, the Queen.   Ben was working the smoker.   

Just four feet from the starving colony, this one had copious stores.  Ben managed to try the honey and he declared it strongly flavoured and rich - in a good way.    The supers of honey were left to one side and will soon be used by the starving bees and local wasps amongst others.    By this time the group had disturbed five hives and we were working in a swirling mass of bees. It sounds horrid but, in fact, the bees were so good tempered that nobody was stung and it wasn't that bad at all.

Working at speed to finish before the forecast thunderstorms started, my Bee Buddy Ben and I transferred the brood frames to the spare hive I had taken along.  By now those who had finished their hives were gathered round and that's how the Queen was spotted in the bottom of the old hive.   Apparently she's enormous and golden coloured but we didn't see her again despite frantically searching for her.   The only evidence that she's actually safely in the new hive was the fanning behaviour of the bees at the entrance which should mean they were fanning her pheromones out to attract straggler bees into their new home.

We left the hive strapped up ready for transport and protected from the rain to retire for the compulsory element of every beekeepers' meeting (in my experience) - tea and home-made cakes!

B Day

Join the local beekeeper's association: check
Visit the National Honey Show: check
Research and buy beekeeping suit and gloves: check
Read all the beekeeping books received for Christmas: check
Attend the local beekeeping theory classes: check
Buy a beehive: check
Attend the practical classes at a local apiary: check
Select and prepare our apiary site: check

This all culminated on Friday 5th July 2014 when I carefully drove Queen B and the bees, all snug in their brand new beehive, back from the local apiary where the colony had been set up.
In retrospect it was an odd journey with me in my bee gear with the hat and veil pushed back, accompanied by Dad (in P's absence) dressed for a normal summer evening with a short sleeved shirt.  Luckily the hive stayed upright.

The hive is in the apiary!
We have followed the instructions we were given by Douglas to the letter and we have already learned a lot.   We're feeding the bees a light syrup as this young colony doesn't have many worker bees yet.  Inverting the feeder and placing it on the crown board without drowning the colony is the most  important lesson so far.  You can't take a photo in beekeeping gloves is a close second.  Fortunately our official photographer was on hand.