Ted Hooper (1918 - 2010) Memorial Lecture

Well, actually 2 lectures.....

The Garden planted for pollinators at The Coach House, Marks Hall

P is away, so Dad and I thought we would go to the inaugural Ted Hooper Memorial Lecture on 18th April 2016.  We weren't sure what to expect but as it was the inaugural lecture, nobody else knew what to expect either.  

The venue was the lovely Coach House at Marks Hall.   More usually  a venue for wedding receptions (we went to one there and it was great), the Coach House and its intimate walled garden are situated in a deer park and arboretum.    Now run by a trust that seeks to implement the wishes of the last owner, for hundreds of years Marks Hall belonged to the Honeywood family whose coat of arms included an oak tree with a wild bee nest in it.

So who was Ted Hooper?

Ted wrote the fantastic "Guide to Bees and Honey" ("the Bible") which is still recommended to novice beekeepers as one of the best books on the subject.    Ted, we learnt, worked for a bee farmer in Hampshire before moving to Essex in 1962 as County Bee Inspector.  As CBI he taught hundreds of beekeepers, not just in the County, but all round the country and even overseas.  He looked after 700 hives and taught commercial beekeepers and amateurs everything related to bees from anatomy to carpentry.   He was actively involved in the BBKA and in setting the syllabus for beekeeping qualifications.   We could tell by the size of the audience that he must have inspired a great many people, hence the inaugural lecture(s).  There were really two of them.

The two lecturers both knew Ted well.  Margaret Thomas described how Ted encouraged her and her husband to develop their interest in beekeeping and nudged her to write and lecture herself.  A forthright and engaging speaker, Margaret told us about her own memories of Ted.  She was honoured to be asked by Ted to update the diseases section of the Bible and more recently to edit Ted's lost book, see below.

Clive de Bruyn was taught beekeeping by Ted and eventually succeeded him as CBI in 1984 building on Ted's achievements.   Clive was wearing a rather old fashioned jacket - think Roger Moore, 1970s safari style - and it immediately became apparent that this was just to demonstrate that he could still fit in it after he showed us his first slide, a photograph of him with Ted from the 1970's in which Clive was wearing the same jacket!

It transpired that Ted wrote a book in the 1980s for new beekeepers in the belief that there was a need for a simpler guide than the Bible.  He sent it to his publishers who went bust.  The book was "lost" but came to light while Ted was still alive and he asked Margaret and Clive to update it for a modern audience.  I was able to get my copy of "The Beginner's Bee Book" signed by Margaret and Clive to go with the signed copy of the Guide to Bees & Honey that I was given when we first got our bees.  

To learn far more about this revered beekeeper, see the link below to the BBKA obituary.

http://www.bbka.org.uk/local/bigmedium/obituaries/ted-hooper-1918-2010.shtml

Nucleus Update

We discover what the G Bees have been doing over the Winter

The temperature in the shade hit 15C briefly; there was a lot of coming and going at the nucleus; all the gear was ready in the shed and the weather forecast for next weekend doesn't look as though I will be able to open up the nucleus then so I decided to open up the nucleus and move the G Bees into a proper hive to make sure they have enough space for the queen to lay and for stores.  The willows are flowering and I hear rumours that the oilseed rape is not far off flowering.    If bees run out of space, they will think about swarming and the nucleus only has 4 14x12 inch frames in it.

Frame Number 1 was very clean and completely empty with a couple of bees on it.  Reflecting on this discovery later, perhaps I should have stopped the planned move at that point and just continued with an inspection visit but the excitement of planning the operation took over and I continued.

Frame Number 2 was hard to get out.  I had to lever it away from frame 3 and up with my hive tool which is like a cross between a huge screwdriver and a scraper.   A big piece of brace comb fell into the dark of the nucleus.   This frame had something shiny on one side.  I thought it looked like uncapped honey but I couldn't really believe my eyes and there weren't many bees on that frame.  I was wondering where all the bees were - well the foragers were out in the sunshine - but where were the house bees?  I was half way through the nucleus which I expected to be in danger of being over-crowded and I hadn't seen many bees.      The other side of this frame had dark brown, almost black shiny stuff in it.  Pollen comes in all sorts of colours and although the dark pollens look sinister, I'm sure that's what it was and that's a good sign because bees need pollen to feed baby bees.

Frame Number 3 was tricky.  It became apparent that the big piece of brace comb that fell off of Frame 2 had been wedged between Frames 2 and 3 and was, in fact, a lovely, almost circular piece of comb built by the G Bees in between the frames.   Frame 3 had sealed honey in a circular pattern on both sides - hardly any bees.

Frame Number 4 was like Frame  Number 1 and also had no bees on it.  Oh dear!

I had gone past the point of no return....

Where were the bees?  There had been so much activity at the entrance of the nucleus, I was convinced there must be some bees somewhere.     I picked up the piece of brace comb and there they were - a big "beard" of bees hanging on the underside of the brace comb in the dark of the nucleus AND there was a lovely pattern of sealed brood on the both sides of the brace comb!   So, I had 3 frames in the hive and a large circular piece of brace comb in the nucleus with sealed brood and all the house bees on it.  I couldn't put the frames back in the nucleus without squashing the brace comb.

I needed to find a way to put the brace comb into a frame so I could reassemble the colony.   Luckily, I had some old 14 x 12 frames that had had the wax stripped out and been washed in washing soda.  I was intending to properly remove the wires (from the old foundation) then boil them in washing soda so that they would be properly hygienic and ready to be used again but I don't have anything suitably large enough (yet) to boil them in.  This was an emergency and I think the frames came out of the G Bee hive last year anyway so I found the one with the most intact wires and carefully laid the brace comb on the wires inside the frame and closed the wires around the brace comb fixing them in place with a cable tie.   This enabled me to suspend the brace comb in the hive in between frames 2 and 3.

The G Bees therefore now occupy half a bee hive.  They have a couple of extra frames (which I now realise they don't need yet - let's hope they are too busy to play sculpting with them).  The other half of the beehive is blocked off but assuming I haven't damaged the Queen and she continues to lay, it will now be easy to give them more space as they need it.    

G Bees coming and going from their new home

The weather is typical for April; cold mornings and evenings but warm and sunny in the middle of the day and lots of showers.    I gave the G Bees some syrup to supplement their stores in case they are confined to the hive by the weather.   I don't need to disturb them for a couple of weeks.

So, I didn't see the Queen at all but judging by the way the bees behaved when I shut up their new hive, she's definitely in there.  There was absolutely no evidence of any disease; the sealed brood was a good sign but I don't recall seeing eggs or larvae.   Thinking about that, if they were there, they must have been under the beard of bees which I tried hard not to disturb - and I wasn't wearing my glasses.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed and leaving it to the bees now.