Honey Shows

The traditional end of the beekeeping season

Last year I had to miss the County Honey Show but I volunteered to help at this year's show.  Since I was going to be there anyway, I thought I would get in to the spirit of things and put some entries in the show too.

Scanning the show catalogue, I realised that this would be more challenging than I had envisaged.   I wasn't confident about showing our honey, even in the novices classes and I have no idea how to prepare wax for showing.  I wasn't inspired to make mead (I prefer sloe gin!) thus it quickly became apparent that I would have to choose to enter one of the baking classes.  The show organisers provide a recipe which you have to follow exactly -  no room for creative twists here.   I have watched The Great British Bake Off so I realised that I would have to practice to avoid embarrassment.

The baking classes consisted of biscuits, fruit cake, honey sponge and apricot and honey scones.

There's only so much fruit cake you can eat and I know biscuits are hard to get right.  I feared a soggy bottom, over-baking or underbaking so I started with the promising sounding apricot and honey scones.  Scones have never been my strong point and P dismissed them as tasteless and a waste of good honey.   Switching to the honey sponge, I found something that everyone liked and was prepared to eat often in the name of testing, even at my first attempt.   The recipe was deceptively simple - essentially a Victoria Sponge cake with a little honey to flavour the sponge and sandwiched with honey-flavoured butter cream.   The tricky bit was that the recipe didn't specify how long to bake the sponge although it did provide the cooking temperature.  In order to prepare properly for the show I had to buy new sandwich tins in the size specified.  Too small or too large and my cake would have been rejected.

Weeks before the show I started to practise.   I tried making the cake exactly following the recipe and I tried throwing everything into a food mixer.  There was no appreciable difference as far as I could see.   I took one of the final attempts to the office where the cake was declared delicious but it was already apparent that my problem was uneven baking.  I could see exactly why the instructions said not to decorate the top of the cake - evenness of the bake was exactly one of the criteria the judges would be using.  I made 2 cakes and selected one for the show, deciding almost immediately that I had chosen he wrong one, but it was too late - P had already eaten most of the other one.

As soon as I entered the honey show marquee and saw the other entries to the baking classes, I knew I was in the presence of greatness.  How do you distinguish a plain sponge cake when you aren't permitted to decorate the top even with icing sugar?  It's so easy when you know how.....a couple of the honey sponge cakes had been turned onto squared racks to cool leaving the chequered indentations  perfectly centred on the top of the cake.   Respect!

As I have mentioned before, the most important aspect of any beekeeping event is the  refreshments and the County Honey Show was the icing on the cake - so to speak.    Immediately after we volunteers were given our rotas and instructions for the day, we were invited to have coffee and tea plate-sized home made biscuits before the first visitors arrived.  I was allocated to health & safety on the live beekeeping demonstrations, honey tasting - (no not me - the visitors), answering questions about beekeeping equipment and  the central display as well as an hour off for looking around myself.     The beekeeping marquee also included beeswax foundation candle making for children, two observation hives, flower arrangements, gardens to attract bees  and honey and hive products sales tables.

Lunch was characteristically in two sittings to allow us to sit down to enjoy it properly.  A long table had been set up in an ante marquee and lunch consisted of beautiful home made quiches and salads, huge home made meringues with stewed berries and honey to drizzle over the top, all washed down with a choice of sweet or dry mead (and lots of water).

My last shift in the afternoon was on the central display.  This was where all the entries for the competitions were displayed.  As volunteers our primary job was to to prevent the competition entries from being stolen!  During my shift I was sought out  by the carriers and instructed to abandon my post for afternoon tea - tea, and a choice of fantastic cakes (not honey flavoured).

And, how did my honey sponge do?   You can see in the photograph that the comment says "Baking a little uneven and quite a few air holes.   Flavour good."  It's an accurate assessment and I wasn't nearly as embarrassed as I would have been if the comment had been "over cooked", "under-baked" or "dry".  I learnt a lot.  Better still, nephew H won first prize in the children's poster competition - with £6.00 so well done him!

New Bee Day

 

 

On a quiet, warm evening a couple of weeks ago I met P at the train station, we went to the pub 400 yards away for a great meal (moules for me, fish & chips with salad, not peas for P), watched a bit of cricket and then  we made our way through some pretty villages to Richard & Ursula’s to pick up our new bees.

We had debated switching the frames into one of our brood chambers but I am glad that Richard and Ursula said we could bring the bees home in their hive and return their equipment later.

The bees had gone to bed so we used foam to block the entrance to the hive, put on the ratchet strap to hold the hive together in case it fell over in the car and loaded the whole hive for the 20 mile journey home.

Back at base we carried the hive to the apiary.  It was as dark as when we brought home the G Bees (see blog Bee Rescue Part Two July 2014) but this hive was much lighter because it’s not such a big colony and there were no “hangers on” clinging under the hive, so nobody was stung.   In the apiary, by now pitch black, we took out the foam and left the bees for the night.

 

The weather has been very changeable this week so the window for switching the Rubees on their frames out of their old brood chamber and in to ours was pretty small.   They weren’t very happy about it.  Dad, used to the good natured bees at the out apiary was chased round the garden but not stung.  He kept his distance as I carried out the manipulation surrounded by a cloud of bees.   I didn’t spot the queen but the Rubees settled down soon enough so she must be there. 

Unlike our other colonies, these bees insisted on sitting on  my head and shoulders. 

 

We gave the Rubees (Richard & Ursula.....) a super of drawn comb including a couple of frames of stores so they had a bit more space and they have quickly taken down the feed we gave them so they are well set for the winter albeit on good days they are working garden flowers - sedum being a favourite.   As for those pesky wasps - we continue to catch tem in the wasp traps but their umbers seem to be declining somewhat.  My plan is to keep the traps out and hopefully catch the queens late Autumn before they can overwinter.

 

 

Home Apiary 0 - Out Apiary 2

The bad news is we now have no colonies at home; the good news is the out apiary is flourishing!

Beekeeping by Torchlight

 

A couple of weeks ago, P and I engaged in some beekeeping by torchlight.   Bob at the bee shop tells me this is a normal part of beekeeping.

 

The bees in the home apiary were under constant pressure from wasps.  We had moved them onto a solid floor to stop the smaller wasps from accessing the hive through the mesh varroa floor; the entrance was reduced to one bee space but the wasps hadn’t given up.  Then we noticed a change in bee behaviour:   they weren’t flying as much and I began to wonder whether they still had a queen so we felt compelled to adopt emergency measures to spare our diminishing colony from this torment.   We daren’t inspect the bees during the day for fear of marauding wasps.

We were at a party nearby but we left just before dusk, donned our protective gear and grabbed our pre-prepared equipment so that we could inspect each frame in the brood chamber by torchlight and put wasp free frames into a clean brood chamber which was sitting on a solid board.   We covered the brood chamber with a clean tea towel and queen excluder, tied the whole thing together with ratchet straps and transported it to the out apiary at the farm.  

 

By now it was really dark.  

 

We took the roof off of the Sue Bee colony (the swarm collected in June), laid a couple of sheets of newspaper over the super and put a queen excluder over that, partly to hold down the newspaper but partly to ensure that if there was still a queen in the top colony, she wouldn’t get mixed up with Queen Sue below.    We made a few slits in the newspaper and then put our brood chamber on the top and replaced the roof.   The idea is that the bees eat through the newspaper from both sides and by the time they’ve done that, their scents are co-mingled and they don’t fight each other.

Then we stripped our protective gear off and returned to the party!

The next day we cleared out the home apiary ensuring that all the equipment was properly cleaned and stored for the next season.  This leaves us with a sad empty apiary and the whole garden feels different.

 

Life at the Out Apiary

After a week, we inspected the conjoined colony at the out apiary but the bees hadn’t moved down from the top brood chamber in the way we expected.   Dad surmised that there was still a Queen in that colony and her nurse bees were staying with her. 

 

 

We decided there were enough of them to set them up in a nucleus alongside the Sue Bees.  So, we separated them again, putting the frames with brood and a couple of frames of drawn comb in the nucleus. 

 

 

Evidently while they were fending off the wasps and during the week post unification, the bees in the colony from the home apiary had been living off their stores and they had little left.  Therefore we gave the nucleus a syrup feed to keep them going until the number of foragers builds up again.

 

Now the nucleus and the Sue Bees are side by side and both colonies appear to be working happily.  The odd wasp is spotted but the out apiary isn’t plagued with wasps in the same way as the home apiary. 

 

The pictures show Mrs Goose and the old chickens and a Gloucester old spot pig who are also resident at the out apiary.  

 

 

And the winner is.....

If you read last week's blog you will know that I am distressed by early wasps patrolling the apiary and I took advantage of P being away on cricket tour to try some of his beers as bait in the wasp traps in an effort to catch more wasps and fewer other insects.  I also used the blog as a test to find out whether P ever reads the blog himself.   The results are unequivocal!

 

In third place....

 

It's the French beer flavoured with Tequila, Desperados.  I can report that  wasps don't like it at all.  Neither do any other flying insects.  The two traps baited with Desperados caught nothing! I've since found out that P doesn't like it either!

 

In second place...

 

Hobgoblin.  Yes, that's the other beer I tried last week.  Initially I thought that Hobgoblin, the Wychwood brewery's "Traditionally Crafted Legendary Ruby Beer" was a more selective bait than the old wasp trap recipe because I thought I could see only wasps when I peered up in to the bottom of one of the traps after a couple of hours.   However, it transpires that these were the only wasps caught all week.  Sure, European Hornets, moths and flies weren't attracted to the Hobgoblin but only a couple of wasps were too.  P's beer is safe - notwithstanding that wasps menace beer glasses in pub gardens all August, they somehow are not remotely attracted to wasp traps baited with beer. 

 

We have scoured the garden for wasp nests to no avail.  The neighbours are on high alert but the villains could be coming in from the field. Meanwhile, I refilled all the wasp traps, this time using a modified recipe from the local beekeeper's magazine.   I mixed a couple of teaspoons of home made blackcurrant jam with a little boiling water and topped it up with cold to 1/4 pint before filling the traps and hanging them on hooks near the apiary and in the orchard.  Within minutes, i.e. between hanging one trap up and taking out the next one, this bait started working and there wasn't even a teaspoon of alcohol included unlike the old recipe. 

 

In this next picture, if you look carefully, you can see two wasps heading for a trap.

In first place...

So the clear winner is the fruit jam and water bait. 

 

Don't waste your beer on wasps and remember, never use honey or sugar because that attracts bees into the traps.

What's the best beer to bait a wasp trap with?

 

Guiness

Hobgoblin

London Pride

Greene King IPA

Brakspeare's Bitter

Peroni

Desperados

It was really distressing last weekend to open up the G Bees' hive and find two bees valiantly wrestling with a wasp.  I helped them out by squashing the wasp with my hive tool and I helped chase out a second wasp.  My precious G Bees are under attack.

 

I put every wasp trap I could find in the apiary and the orchard nearby.  This weekend, wasps are still casing the apiary trying to find a way in to the hives.  

 

I inspected the contents of the traps to check they're working.   On average, we're catching about 70 wasps per trap per week.  This one is representative.

We also get about 10 European Hornets.

I'm not a big fan - the Summer they nested in our front porch and invaded our bedroom when we left the light on and the windows open was not fun but they don't hurt the bees and I don't mind if they nest at the bottom of the garden as long as they keep away from the house.

 

Unfortunately, we also get about the same number of moths.  There are so many I'm not attempting to identify this one, except I don't think it's a large wax moth.

We also get assorted black flies that are hard to identify after a week in a wasp trap.

 

So, I am on a mission to find a wasp trap attractant that attracts a higher proportion of wasps and a lower proportion of other insects.  Hence the beer.

 

This is also a test to see whether P ever reads our blog.  He was away playing cricket and I had the house to myself so I lined up all the different kinds of beer I could find so that I could choose which one to try in the wasp traps this week.   I should add that I don't drink beer.........  

 

For the first beer I chose Hobgoblin.  With 5.2% alcohol by volume this "Traditionally Crafted Legendary Ruby Beer" brewed by the Wychwood Brewery sounds like the magic potion I need.   One bottle wasn't enough for all the traps so I had to select another one!  Desperados is one I haven't heard of before but with 5.9% alcohol by volume and flavoured with Tequila, this beer that is brewed in France sounds as though it may do the trick.  (How come it's in our pantry?)

 

I have left one trap baited with the usual recipe ( see the blog for 3 August 2014) as a control.

 

After a couple of hours the signs are good - peering up under the traps I could see wasps settling into an alcoholic sleep at the bottom but no hornets so far.  Just as well because there are still wasps flying ominously around the hive looking for a way in.

Bee Health & Diseases

A scary but vital day out with our regional bee inspector

I have lots of books about bees;

 

I attended the beekeeping training run by my local beekeepers;

 

I bought the laminated cards that illustrate the main diseases that affect bees which are suitable for taking to the apiary so you can check what you see “on site”;  

 

but I still wondered whether I could spot one of the serious diseases because, quite frankly, the photographs in the books and on the laminated cards show hexagonal comb of various colours and it is tough to distinguish those pictures from what I see in the apiary.

One of the benefits of membership of the local beekeepers’ association is that we get to find out about excellent events like the recent Bee Health & Diseases day with Keith, our regional bee inspector and his seasonal bee inspectors (SBIs) and this was so worthwhile.

In addition to the plenary sessions, more of which later, we rotated through 3 sessions in smaller groups.   

 

Bee Diseases

Our first session included study of large laminated cards (possibly larger versions of my small cards), showing American Foul Brood (AFB), European Foul Brood (EFB) Chalk Brood, Sac Brood, etc. with an SBI pointing out the salient features.     This was useful but not very different to studying books at home.   What made a significant difference was the chance to examine real frames showing some of these nasties.    Of course, we were kitted out with disposable personal protective equipment.  

 

Suddenly it became much easier to spot the difference between healthy Michelin Man larva and EFB blobs.  We watched a demonstration of the difference between the “stringing” that distinguishes AFB from EFB and the SBI used field test kits to show how quickly these diseases can be identified in the field these days.  Most importantly we got to smell these infected frames.  The stench was ghastly!  I frankly have doubts about my ability to spot AFB scale – the black scaly residue that clings to the bottom of cells – but I believe I would spot the disease by smell alone from some distance.  Likewise EFB.   I am pretty sure I could spot chalk brood; I think I could spot sac brood and at least I can test for it.  We were all mightily relieved to exit the room that held these horrors – and that smell - think fox poo and you're close!

Varroa

Our second session was all about Varroa, those insidious little creatures that plague our bees.   It was a good chance to discuss effective and ineffective treatments and how to use them.    We even discussed how to dispose of left over chemicals.  The details on packaging are, at best, vague.

Apiary Visit

The third session was really illuminating.  We walked to an orchard on the edge of the village where there was a large apiary and two SBIs who demonstrated how they inspect colonies.    I think my local beekeepers had done a good job at our practical beekeeping lessons because this wasn’t really new.   Sadly, we observed a colony with Chronic Bee Paralysis (CBP).  I suspect that if I saw a heap of dead bees outside a hive and shaking bees, wobbly on their feet on the landing board and floor, I might think there was something wrong but having seen the bees’ behaviour, this is something I might now spot earlier.  Apparently, a colony may recover from CBP if they are given TLC, i.e. plenty of space and fed but it’s not guaranteed.

 

The very scary plenary sessions focussed on non-native species that are a threat to bees and beekeeping.

Small Hive Beetle

Link to Wikipedia on Small Hive Beetle

SHB  has been found in Italy and it’s believed to be only a question of time before it comes to Blighty.   Keith recommended using traps (Better Beetle Blasters) to monitor for Small Hive Beetles.  Other parts of the world have developed techniques for dealing with these but pending identification and control, they can reduce a the insides of a hive to mush.  

 

Asian Hornet

By far the scariest thing of the BHD was what we learnt about the Asian Hornet.  In their native territory, these hornets are not a pest to the local bee population but European bees are a different strain and Asian Hornets have spread rapidly in France since their arrival there.  These hornets are smaller than the native European Hornet from which they can be identified by their primarily brown colour.  Keith showed us videos from which clearly demonstrated why these insects are such a problem to beekeepers.  The link below is to the video showing how Asian Hornets patrol outside the front of beehives and catch foraging bees in mid-air before they can get back in to the hive.

 

Asian Hornets Hawking a Hive

 

The Asian Hornets strip off the head, wings and legs and take the remains, which includes nectar back to their nest.   In the video the French bees cluster on the landing board seemingly afraid to go out.   Asian Hornets are not dependant on eating bees. Their diet includes fruit and meat.   Honey yields in France have plummeted; there must be an effect on pollination from the reduced activity of honey bees too.

If you spot one, please report it!

Link to non-native species on Asian Hornet

 

Apollo 13

Perhaps you are old enough to remember the radio blackout during re-entry as the crew of Apollo 13 returned from their aborted lunar mission in 1970, which lasted 87 seemingly interminable seconds longer than the roughly 4 minutes expected.  

 

Maybe you recall the feeling of helplessness - there was nothing to do except wait.  

 

Or perhaps you recall holding your breath for that bit of the 1995 film.

 

Well, that sensation of helpless waiting is being experienced by many beekeepers this year as they wait to find out whether their new queens have returned successfully from their mating flights.

 

All bees start out as eggs laid in wax cells.  Eggs that turn into queens are no different except they are laid in special queen cells and fed a diet rich in royal jelly.   Queen eggs turn into larvae; fat, white, Michelin man grubs after 3 days and, after being well fed for 6 days, they are sealed in to their queen cells for a further 6 days.  When they emerge they have to fly out of the hive to a place where drones (or as our nephew says, kings) congregate in order to mate.    After mating the queen returns and starts laying.

 

This year, inclement weather has prevented newly hatched virgin queens from heading out on their mating flights.

 

We were on the point of despair with the nucleus we set up earlier with brood and nurse bees from the prolific G Bees.  We thought that, as beginner beekeepers, we had just got it wrong.  So, it was with complete astonishment that, at the most recent inspection, we observed clearly visible eggs, nice fat white larvae and sealed brood.  Hooray! We have a queen laying in that colony even though we haven't seen her.  Now we just need to ensure that she and her bees are adequately fed until the colony has enough foragers to sustain it.

 

Since Queen Joan went missing we haven't seen any eggs, larvae or sealed brood in the G Bees' colony.  Three sealed queen cells were left in the colony and all queens appear to have hatched but the first, or the strongest, of those will have despatched the other two.   We have been waiting what seems like an eternity for evidence of a laying queen.   This isn't helped by the fact I lost my varifocals about the time that Queen Joan disappeared and I wasn't sure whether there weren't any eggs or I just couldn't see them.  Last weekend we even started to make enquiries about buying in a queen.  As a result:

 

a) We were reminded that it can take 3 weeks for a queen to mate and start laying;
 

b) We learnt that we are not the only beekeepers experiencing a long queenless period this year.  This is because it has been unseasonably cold, windy and wet at the wrong times and that left  the queens struggling to get out;   
 

c) We have to wait another week before we can be sure that we don't have a queen.

 

We've got to hold our breath helplessly for  a few more long days!