Hurrah - They Made It through The Winter!

G Bee relaxing in the sun on the back of a daffodil just outside the hive

I know this photograph only shows one bee sitting on the back of a daffodil but this is just a representative G Bee.  If you followed last year's blog, you will remember that we moved the G Bees to the out apiary to save them from unrelenting wasp attacks.  Originally, we thought the remaining G Bees might be queenless and that their numbers were so depleted they would have to be united with the SueBees at the out apiary but there was enough evidence of a queen (even though we couldn't find her) that we set them up in a "nucleus" to over-winter.

A nucleus is a small kind of beehive (see the picture below) that has a variety of uses, one of which is to home small colonies that would be lost in a normal hive.   As they have much less space to heat, a nucleus can give a very small colony the best chance of survival in Winter.    The mild 2015-2016 Winter may have helped too but it also encouraged bees to fly raising the risk that they would use their winter stores faster.  We put fondant - (yes, like the sweet goo you use to ice cakes!) - under the roof of the nucleus within easy reach of the bees to supplement their stores as a precaution.

Over the Winter, we've cleared the soft fruit bushes (black currants, gooseberries and raspberries) away from the the apiary as we think they might attract wasps there and we will be extra vigilant for wasp nests this year so, a couple of weeks ago, we moved the nucleus back to the main apiary on a cold dry day when all the bees were huddled indoors to keep warm.   

We were delighted to see them out flying in numbers a few days later indicating that they have survived the worst of the Winter.  A quick peek at the fondant shows that the G Bees have hardly touched it.

Look carefully and you can just see the start of activity at the entrance

The Rubettes in the main hive are buzzing with activity.   I know it's probably too early but I want to move them from their two normal size brood boxes on to a single big brood chamber to give them comfortable room for the nest and when they are building up the colony in Spring is the time to do it. The weather forecast is for a mainly dry and sunny week but low temperatures.   However, these girls are flying in large numbers when the sun is on the hive and neighbours have reported them visiting their gardens too so I have risked giving them a project.     

I warmed up a spare deep brood chamber on a lovely sunny day when the wind was almost non-existent.   To make the wax in the frames inside the brood chamber more acceptable, I warmed it with a hairdryer until it smelled fresh, then I whipped the crown board off the Rubette's hive and carefully put the deep brood box on.  I noticed that the girls had started to build brace comb so they are looking for more space.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they move up into the new brood chamber.  The willows are starting to flower and that will give them the encouragement they need but whatever the weather, I can leave the Rubettes undisturbed for a few weeks which is just as well if the weather stays too cold for the first proper inspection.

Winter Beekeeping 2015/16

New Crockery Purchased to Cope with the Number of Beekeepers attending the AGM

Horse Chestnut Buds at Christmas

This weekend, the local beekeepers' branch got together for the Annual General Meeting and dinner.   If you have read more than about one of these blogs you will know already that any gathering of local branch members is a noteworthy culinary event and I don't think I could be challenged for saying that the reason that the AGM is so well supported is because the dinner is held immediately afterwards.

Last year the main item of expenditure was new teapots; this year it was new crockery to cope with the number of members wanting to attend the dinner.  Next year may mark a departure from the norm as there is a plan to purchase microscopes for members to borrow!

I could mention the inspired menu (watercress soup with a variety of artisan breads; lamb hotpot with roast potatoes and beetroot relish; a choice of trifle, cheesecake, fresh berries and chocolate roulade or cheese and biscuits; coffee and chocolates; wine, beer and water - how do they provide all this for £8 per head?) but I should focus on the main topic of conversation, namely the extraordinarily mild winter and its effect on our bees.

Everyone reports that bees are flying on an almost daily basis.  Sure, there have been some very damp days and some very windy days, which the bees don't like but with temperatures above 10C almost every day throughout the Winter so far, they are out foraging and not just popping out for a comfort break.   We can see them bringing back pollen which is good, because they need a good supply of pollen to feed to developing brood.    Pollen contains proteins, amino acids, lipids, etc in varying quantities depending on the type of pollen and a diet that includes varied pollen sources is thought to contribute to strong bees.   Maturer bees mainly eat honey.

Flowers on bloom in January

A quick tour of the garden in the last month found the following early flowers in bloom: white periwinkle, aconites and snowdrops (all in large quantities in Joe's beautiful garden next door), winter flowering honeysuckle, primroses, hellebores, cyclamen, thyme, rosemary, winter box and perennial wallflower.  Flower buds tried to open on the horse chestnut but then we had a couple of frosty days so we're hoping they have not been damaged even though they seem to have stopped opening any further for the time being.

One result of all this unseasonal bee activity is that colonies may be using their stores faster than they can replenish them because they have to fly further to find nectar.   When I visited Bob in the bee shop last month, he reported some customers buying fondant because they had some colonies that appeared to have used all their stores.  In the same apiaries, other colonies were still doing fine.   We have put fondant on all three colonies so it's there if we have a cold snap or the bees can't get out for a few days and their stores are low.  So far, they aren't using the fondant in earnest.  If there is any left at the end of the season, we can store it wrapped in sealed containers and labelled so we know which hives it came off, for next year.  Bob says fondant will keep for at least 5 years if stored properly.

Another big topic of conversation over dinner was wasps.   Douglas, who has hundreds of colonies, reported losing 20 to wasps last year.   He explained that the bees he and Robert breed are so mild tempered, they don't put up enough fight to deal with wasps and that explains a lot.    There is some hope that overwintering Queen wasps may suffer from the mild weather and run out of energy before Spring.  Sadly, though, that would affect bumble bees and solitary bees who have a similar life cycle so it's hard to wish for that fate for all of them.

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.