Christmas Treat

I have had some good news:
The bees were all checked on the 28th December and all are still alive despite the bitter cold weather.  They were all fed with a block of fondant, and we will be able to see which are the stronger hives when we do the oxalic acid, which will hopeful be in the next few weeks.



Now is the time if you have not already started to get on with your winter jobs, one of my jobs this winter will to me to make some homemade contact feeders and I am in the process of working out the correct sized mesh for the feeders, fine enough to make a seal but not so fine as to stop the bees tongues.  You can just punch holes with a small nail in a jar lid, but I am going down the mesh route as more bees can get their tongues in, and hence feed faster.

Another project, if I get around to it is to make some nucs and just maybe some baby nucs or mating nucs, I have the plywoood so now down to work in the next couple of months.

Honey Show

Okay - so this post is late, but Autumn is the season of plenty and I have been so busy harvesting the garden, mainly apples, that I have not got around to an update.

At the beginning of October we had our very successful Honey Show, in which I entered 3 items for the apiary and another 4 for myself, as well as been an assistant steward to Anne. So phew it was a busy evening. It was not especially easy as we were late (well later than I would like) getting into the hall as there were people in there stretching themselves in funny angles, I think they call it YOGO, but I have yet to be educated, it just looked painful so I did not watch!

Dave Marsden was our Honey Judge this year, and complete with his white coat looked the part...I could not tell at first if he was being very serious or just having fun, when he kept saying the the stewards would have disqualified all of the entries for one reason or another before he would even have to judge them in a bigger honey show.  Luckily we only do it for fun.

It was as normal Open Judging so he talked us through his decision been it good bad, or just picking at random according to what he liked. The Honey judging is particular interesting, with the emphasis on things like Clean Jar, Clean Lid,  no bits in the honey, no crystals in the honey, no bits on top etc.... oh yes and finally the top three get tasted, so it seems taste is not very important and presantation is everything... but I never worry It the taking part that matters well that is what I try and tell myself, but some how I am always disappointed by something.

However it was the first time that I have had a go at entering into "A frame suitable for extraction" and as I spent about 2 hours before the show making the stand, you know last minute is always best. It was particular satisfying to win first prize for the apiary.

A great evening of fun was had by all, and now we have year to forget all we learnt.

Feeding and Apilife

Well at Lydney we have spent the last four weeks doing the Varroa treatment - APILIFE VAR  or as I wrongly called it apivar Life.... I don't it is horrid smelly stuff that takes a good few hand washes to get off your hands even when you handle it wearing gloves... anyway it kills the nasty varroa mights...

It  comes in packets and you need two packets for one hive and it is a treatment of 1 block - (there are two blocks in a packet) cut into four pieces, with a piece placed just above the brood in each corner. If you had a double brood hive then it was necessary to put all the brood into one box for effective treatment, which is fun, and as you need two people really and then you play pass the frames, one of brood being switched with one of food, and you just about squeeze them all in. Then comes the feeding, most of the feeding takes place with a JUMBO feeder. Although if after one week they had not taken the food down then we changed this to Frame feeders.

In the past two weeks we have also being taking samples of 30 bees, and "deheading" (sorry if you are a bit girlly, but we do kill them first in the freezer... it it is for the greater good, and the bees would only have a couple more weeks to live... as we take the older flying bees) and testing for Nosema.  So far only one (out of four) has had a very minor infection, the langstroth. But we will be doing some more tests during September.

The more fun bits has been the queen movements.  If you can remember we split hive 1 into a circle of 5 nucs, well unfortunatly not everything has gone to plan... only ONE, bless her, queen manage to get mated correctely, with 3 having DRONE layers (OH BUM), and one being queenless.  Luckly for us in our apideas we had 3 queens to use, and as we merged a couple of other colonies, there was another queen to spare... so we were back to 5 nucs again.... then disater again... one of the queens from the apidea was another DRONE layer... how much bad luck can you have... well this time there were no more spare queens, and by now a couple of the nucs are looking short on bees, so we had to "squash" her whcih I took great delight in doing although I have to admit I did look around to make sure no body was watching, just incase anybody got the wrong end of the stick and swung a smoker in lieu of a handbag at me.  Then we had to combined the two nucs together using newspaper. There was some improvisation as, because we have solid floor nucs... we could not put one on top of the other, so we had to put them both into full hive boxes, using frame feeders as dummy boards either end, with the five frames in the middle, and then same in the bottom with a layer of newspaper inbetween... will be a job to sort those out nextime. I hope it has worked.

Also in the last month, we have merged a couple of the colonies into double broods, primarlily to make sure that they are strong enough for the winter, and also because I took as disliking to one of the queens, as she seem to make the one hive cross and sting people... although of cause the day the deed was done she was good as gold so we did not have the heart to kill her and she was one of the queens used in the nucs as above.....

A Visit from the Bee Inspector

My home APIARY (Not Lydney).
Well, a visit from the Bee Inspector is something which you should look forward to, as they can be really educational, but somehow when the phone range on Friday evening, asking whether Monday was a convient day to look at the bees. My first reaction was WHAT ON A BANK HOLIDAY.... and then oh yes no problem, can you let me know a time... "sorry don't know a time" comes the reply.  Anyway after the phone goes down, all reason leaves you brain, and somewhere in the back some small niggle and worry starts... what is he going to be like, will he be gentle with the bees, will he respect my way of beekeeping, oh and PLEASE please don't find anything wrong.... and somehow the tenision just built because it was not until late afternoon that finally on Bank Holiday Monday did the bee inspector arrive.  I must admit that I had virtually given him up a couple of hours before and having not looking at the bees for a month... I starting going through them.. because I needed to know if they need more food or not.

Anyway the he did finally turn up, all suited and booted with his posh bee suit with "national bee unit" embroidered in on the front pocket.  A nice cuppa to start just seemed to put me more on edge, and him being a quiet man with few words somehow did not settle me down much...


Anyway, away we went, starting with the observation hive, so out came the glass, and he runs his finger over the frames.... There the queen he says.... well yes obviously she has a big YELLOW mark on her back, and she is always easy to see it is an Observeration hive... and then comes the first question, is she last years queen as she is yellow.... and as it happened she was last years queen.... but then all my queens are Yellow so it took me while to twig, and explain to him then I keep a record of the year queen on the record not by the colour she is...."no commment".... but then I refection he is not allowed to pass comment,,, he is not hear to tell us how to keep bees just to make sure that there are no dieseas.

Now we are half-way through and to my amazement,  this is the first half which has  a problem with Chalk brood, very easy to recognize...  and so on we go.

Finally after 2 hours we have been through all 11 hives.... and he says " no notifiable diseases" the relief is just amazing you do not realize the tension that has been building for days, and he was so tight lipped that I had no idea till he reached the end..... but I knew in reality that I did not have any problems as I am always very careful and inspect myself... but still it is nice to know that I have not missed anything.

What followed was another cuppa, and a bit more friendly chat... he is a nice man  just a bit quiet.  Then comes the best bit of the day.. as I am in WALES,  and as WELSH as can be, I can get some great free hand-outs thanks to the Welsh assemble... sorry not available in England...ha ha... at last a benefit for being in Wales.

Honey Extraction + rainy weeks

It has been a while since I posted, as we had two rainy weeks.

In the first rain week, we had a great lecture on Microscopy, and learned all about how a microscope is put together.  On the bees we just did a little feeding, getting very wet in the process.

Second rain week, was not as bad, well the rain was very hard, and we spent an hour sheltering from the rain, chatting, and learning how rhombus boards work and talking about how we were going to use apivar life, which is the newly licence treatment   for Varroa this year.  After the rain we did manage to go out a look at the bees, but only the small nucs, did not really learn anything intersting apart from that one was no longer viable and therefore it was thrown out. All this rain meant that I had to make a special trip to the apiary on the Saturday to get a few jobs done.

On that Saturday; I went through any hives where we were waiting for queens to lay. I must have checked about 7 - 8 hives and only one of them was still waiting for the queen to lay; which was hive 10, which was the last split we did.  The two introduced queens where both laying.

Thursday 27th July  Clearer board -DAY

I am not sure what happened in the hives themselves, but any hive which had honey supers on, we had to put an Rhombus clearer board on. We first attach the rhombus to the crown board, which then becomes a clearer board, taping any unused holes up. This clearer board then goes directly below the honey suppers with an eke, (an empty super) below this, to allow space for the bees to move down into.

In the case of one hive instead of using an eke, we gave them a brood box of foundation to give them something to do. This led to a very very tall hive, Three brood boxes an eke, plus four suppers, see images.

Saturday 31st July - Extraction Day.


This was a Very busy and long day, the hardest day beekeeping of the year. Starting early to arrive at the apiary before 9. We remove all suppers all 22 of them and then sort them so that we only have to transfer home frames which have honey in it the extracted. 14 of them.  The bees are then squeezed back into their box and the eke and clearer board removed.  Then the uncapping, spinning and filtering all take place. Finally at about 9.30 at night we bottle/tub up the honey after it has been left for a few hours to float, any final bit to the top of the filtered honey.   The wax all then needs processing.  There was a fairly good crop of about 280 lb, however some of it had granulated (about 40lb) so we have choices left to make either melt it down or feed it back to the bees.

The honey moisture content was checked and came out at approximately 18.5%.using a refractometer
.

Finally above is an image of how bees if they don't like a draft will use propolis to fill the gaps, leaving us beekeepers a lovely stick mess, with it almost impossible to take one frame out at a time.

Using Mated queens

Here is an image from the circle split, which was the topic of last weeks post.  The update this week on this is that most of the nucs where fairly evenly split and we only swapped two of the nucs in position so that the flying bees would strengthen the weaker nuc.

As well as doing a lot of general bee work and discovering that there are happily laying queens in a couple of hives that had been in shut down. The main interesting job this week was the caging and using of the mated queens from our queen rearing. It was quite hard to find the queens and capture them into queen cages, we used butler cages.... the baby nucs where then re-populated with any sealed queen cells we could find around the other hives, primarily hive 10 which was split last week so they were going to be knocked down if we did not use them.

Two mated queens were sold the other two have been introduced into the hives in the apiary.  There are lots of methods of introducing queens and we used a slightly different approach in each hive. In hive 20; where the queen cell we left three weeks ago had failed to hatch, we put FOUR layers of newspaper over the end of the cage and left the bees alone until next week.  The other hive 13 the queen was introduced with the wooden block still in and then on Sunday, TWO layers of newspaper was to be put over instead of the block.  To insert the cage in, use a cocktail stick and insert into the side of a frame, preferable near the center of the hive.

One useful tip I learned if you are using a queen cage, is to make sure there is an area in the cage where the queen can shelter, just encase any of the bees decided to try and bite her legs off, this is easily achieved by wrapper a piece of tape around the cage.

Spliting a hive into a circle - creating five new nucs

Thursday 1st July

This was a grand day of Fun, and nearly everything went to plan. Besides the weekly inspections, which did not reveal anything horrible, apart from the possibility that a couple of hive may be queenless, but then it is too early to tell. Highlights are:

Hive 10 - was split, this is the last hive that I expect to be split at the apiary this year, and means that all but one hive has a new Queen, mostly by splitting but a one by supercedure.  The lonely hive, is hive 12, who has made steady progess from a weak start but does not have lots of HONEY.

Queen rearing success
We checked the baby nucs today and the four remaining all have laying queens;  not news yet on the virgin queen which we ran into the baby nuc.  So that is a real success story. We put queen exluders on the front of the baby nucs as the new queens are quite likely to abscond   due to lack of space. So next week we will have to do something with them.. either use them to re-queen a couple of colonies or sell them!

Splitting a hive into a circle

This is something which I have been wanting to try for the past twelve months. The basic principle is to place a number of nucs around the site of the original hive in an equally space circle about 4-5 feet away. You then spread the whole hive around leaving a means for the new nucs to generate a queen, or introduce a queen if you have been queen rearing.  Well we did this to hive 1 which we split a few days earlier, and therefore was full of uncapped queencells,  The hive was a double brood chamber, which means 22 frames, therefore splitting it into 5 five frame nucs we needed only 3 frames of foundation.  A fairly well developed queen cell was left in each nuc apart from one which had just an egg in the queen cell. There was queen cells, extra but of course they are always more than one on a frame so they could not be used.  A lot of judgement went into decided which looked like the better queen cell.  Well by the end of the evening most of the flying bees had returned and seemed to find no difficult in finding a new home the brood in each nuc should hold them there. When we go next week we may do a little juggling in one nuc is much stronger than anthother. Hopeful in a couple of weeks we will have 5 more viable collonies. To go with our burding collection.

General comments and forth coming events
If I remember correctly we started the year with 15 hives plus a nuc.  Well at present on site on think we have 20 full hives plus, 7 nucs - and we have sold 5 nucs, which means we have more than doubled the number of bees; which in a good year like this any half decent beekeeper should be able to do, and still get a  Honey crop. Talking HONEY we had to added another super to Hive 20 which means they now have three supers and therefore will give us the best crop, well they are a double brood so I should hope so.

Plans are now been made for Honey extraction which will take place in Early August; which is followed straight away by winter feeding and varroa treatment.  We will also be starting soon to test the bees for "the bee gut" (the misery of getting older words escape you)  disease; as we can treat this with the winter feed if necessary.  

hatched queens and assement day 2 - manic

Sheer exhaustion of beekeeping is now kicking in, I do have a couple of great photos and things but will post them maybe later in the week...but need to clear my memory to allow a few more thoughts in.

Thursday 24th June

For once a fairly quiet evening. The most memorable event was at the end of the evening, (no not the beer) but the apidea's, a certain unnamed person was getting so excited everytime that I was watching how high the job was and then I knew the outcome. Five out of the 6 queen's hatched successful which is brilliant as we droped the 6th queen cell so that was no surprise.  Elsewhere in the apiary many attempts where being made to find, and then mark and clip our newly laying queens, although we really should leave them lay for a couple of months before marking and clipping them but then everybody has then own ideas... that is after all beekeepiing.  Also the other main event was the hiving up of the nucs  but this was done in such a way as to prepare the collonies to be ready to run two queens simultaneously, one in the bottom then 3 suppers and then one on the top, will try and explain more later on.

Assessment Week Two

Now I arrived just after 10, and by about 11.30 three swarms had emerged from various hives. Not what you want when the assessor is on the bees. There was an huge swarms from what I think was hive 14 they were just coming out when I arrived and settled beautiful at the bottom of the hawthorn tree. We thought great they will be there for a couple of hours.... oh how wrong you can bee!  Only 1.25 hours after they where out they were off over the fields and into the woods. Oh POOH  all that honey to the pooh bear. At the same time that swarm went out, I vaguely noticed another swarm, just out side the fence, not sure where they came from but think they were a cast swarm from hive 14.  It is a testament to how much noise the first and second swarm made that did not notice them come out.   How the 2nd swarm was from hive two which was a queen which was clipped and marked last Thursday. so all the bees did not go far, they did not as normal, group under the floor and on the ground, she has managed to crawl back in which we confirmed later when we went through them. The surprise was that in hive 2 there were only queen cups with eggs in no royal jelly, NOT ACCORDING TO THE BOOK again.

Anyback to hive 14.. after the assesor has gone home we had some fun going through the hive. We heard and saw 2 queens pipping.. and running loose. Wonderful noise they were also checking out all the other queen cells which were about to hatch.  We managed to help hatch SIX virgin queens into butler queen cages.  It looked to me that the 7 day check was forgotton and the hive was riddled with queen cells, and would most likely have swarmed out, let count the queens

2 swarms

2 virgin queens seen running around and left in there

6 queens harvested

4-5 viable queen cells destroyed

I make that 24 or 25 viable queens.  Wow.... don't know why I bother queen rearing.

Anyway what happened to the harvested queens

1)- run into baby nuc one where the queen had not hatched on Thursday

2&3) -  Our swarm guru took them away with him to use some how

3 & 4) I brought home and made up small nucs and put newspaper over the butler cage now hoping they will go out and mate

5) gave to my beekeeping neighbour who did the same as me.

Whilst at the apiary we briefly checked the babynucs (apedea) one had absconded.. another was all on the front.. maybe waiting the return of the queen. the other seemed happy will wait till Thursday to see if they have mated and are laying. fingers crossed.


UPDATE 
Here are some of the images and videos I promised.

1) successful hatched queens

Queen rearing natures way. How cool in that!

The Huge swarm that go away!

Assessment Day 1

Saturday 19th June

Today was the first day of assessments, the chap doing the assessing "Roger" is great and friendly everything you could wish for, puts you right at ease with conversation off topic and does not hover over your shoulder.

Anyway there were a few bee keeping jobs to do as well. Mostly they are boring but essentially jobs like building supers, cleaning boxes and generally sorting the shed, but hey ho it looked really neat and tidy when it was done shame it will need doing again next week.

Queen Rearing stuff.

Well dotted all over the place are images from the queen rearing. The task for today was to populate the apidea's hence forward know as "baby nucs" cause I can spell that. The important thing is not to get any of the male boys in there that is the drone bees, the big chubby lazy ones who live to mate. So to ensure we only get the nurse bees, (worker who are just born but not yet guards or foragers), at lunch time we shook all the bees of 3 frames of eggs and lava and placed them in another brood box just above the brood chamber and below the supers and then all the lovely nurse bees come up to look after their sisters & half sisters. This was left till late afternoon at which time we go back to the hive and shake the poor ladies into a bucket spray them with water. (on a side track would like to try water instead of smoke it seems to calm them just as well.) Then with the baby nucs all set up with their fondant food supply we scoop up the bees 250 ml, using an old milk container, they are just like black currents when they are wet so they are easy to handle and then we though them in and seal it in. Once this has been done for all 6 baby nucs. we put the hive back to normal. Moving on to the queen cells, (this should be the 15 day but we break the rules because we were there on the 13th day, but needs must.) we take them from the frame (see image) and place them through the hold on the top of the baby nuc. All are now sealed up for a few days whilst the queen hatches and to give them a chance to bond. We have to spray them with water every day and keep them in a cool dark place as possible to find. They are very very noisy if they need water... could not believe that so few bees could make so much noise when I went down Sunday to spray them

Well looking forward to another busy day tomorrow when the baby nucs go to a new home and are finally let out.

More splits and Queen rearing update

THURSDAY 10TH JUNE

Weekly Inspections
This was a horrid evening, but not wet, just cold. So the choice was given to the leaders as to whether the hives where opened or not and the decision was to open only hives we really needed to check.  The outcome was that to my surprise we did four splits. Hives 14, 8, 4, & 20. The Split on 8 was moved to a new site because it is a little high to work when there is a double brood and two supers.

Queen Rearing

First job is to set up the receiving rearing colony, which is hive 1; arriving as early as possible we go through the collony and knock down any queen cells, insert the cloake board and open the rear entrance, and leave a gap in the top middle of the hive where we will insert our prospective queen cells later.


The Second job was to check the jenter cage from hive 10 hoping that the queen had stayed and laid some eggs, so at the same time the weekly inspection was done. Unfortunately the queen had not laid in the jenter, but this was not unexpected; due to the trial nature that was used the previous Sunday. So undaunted,  we temporarily stole a frame of eggs, and lave, so that we could have a go at grafting with the Chinese grafting tool. What we were looking for as the smallest lava possible, so that you can almost only see them with a manginfy glass, with lots of royal jelly and just in the "c" shape. Once we have selected a possible cell, we carefully slide under the back edge of the "c" of the lave making sure we do not roll the lave and put it on the tool; (not that easy). Sometimes we found it eaiser to cut away the edge of the cell to allow better access. This done we careful place the lave on the cup of the jenter and put it together with the other three parts.  Repeat 10 times... allowing other to have ago. Then insert into hive 1.  Finally return the frame of eggs to hive 10 as we are sentimental and don't like to kill bee babies.

Sunday 13th June

General work

Today was mainly another training day, for those taking their Basic Assessment in the following weeks. However we did take the opportunity to do a couple of jobs.  All hives which were split were given their initially check and knocked down all but one queen cell. (hopefully the one we decided to leave last Thursday) This is a slight change from our normal methods as following a consultation with "snelgrove" book, he suggests checking the hive after 5 & 10 days for queen cells after a split, previously we had only done 7 days. Also some feeding was done; on the new nucs, and topped up on the swarms.

Queen rearing

Just to build the tention to an extreme level we left checking the queen cells until last. I was feeling almost so nervous that I was glad in the end when J. said he would look. What a relief we had SIX accepted and I was over the moon. As one of the cell had fallen down, I think we had 6 out of 9 which I make 66% not bad at all for a first effort.  That discovered we let the get on with it. But we did make the colony queen right again by removing the cloake board. 

Thursday 17th June

Weekly inspections

Well in complete contrast to the previous Thursday the weather was almost perfect, well for me as a beekeeper it was because I would not swelter in the heat, and it was warm enough for the bees as well. 

The session began with a surprise when one of the members turned up saying "I just caught a swarm which is in the back of the car" So this was the first job, to hive a swarm... I did not really see what was going on, but I got the impression that they were walked into the hive. This is done by putting a board in front of the hive sloping up to the entrance and then dumping all the bees on the board and they all just walked calmly into the hive. An absolutely fascinating watch, well worth doing just for the sheer amazing seen. 

Today was the day to check some of the hives that were split almost a month ago to see if their new queens were laying. Well I think out of the 5 original splits 2 have perfect laying queens, 2 we need to leave for one more week, and finally we come to hive 6 which is a slight mystery as for the pasts couple of weeks eggs had been found but nothing much was developing into lava and capped brood. Well this week I saw that there were lava (not sure about capped was not there). But I was told that there were queen cells in the centre as well so the theory is that the bees don't like their boss and there for are going to supersede her.

The Langstroth now has a laying queen, which is unmarked so it looks like the new queen has ruled the roost. An effort was made to find her so she could be marked, but this failed. I did actually see her the Sunday before but at that time there were no eggs, so she was not ready to be marked. We will nab her soon and mark her.  Hive 2 which has already supersesed now has a laying queen called "Alice" and she was marked and clipped. 

Queen Rearing

Today we added the hair rollers or queen guards if you prefer. The aim of this is a precaution against one queen hatching early and then going and killing all the other queens.  This was done quickly with just one minor miss-hap of the one queen cell not wanting to stick back to the frame so if fell of a couple of times, which just may have been enough to dislodge the queen lava from it food let hope not. 

Well that enough for now, off to do some more bee-keeping  today & tomorrow.

Queen rearing update & langstroth update

Thursday 3rd June

I thought it was about time we had another go at Queen rearing at the apiary.  Fingers cross this time we will have some success. Therefore using hive one.  "for those in the know it is a hive with a queen name; now is it "Alice" "Phoebe" or what ever" anyway the important point it is a double brood chamber hive. This is the first time that I have actually set the hive up in step one of the rearing process; and although I thought I knew what to do, I realized half way though that I had forgotten some bits, mainly because there are so many ways to do queen rearing. The principle is to separate the queen from all the eggs and lava - so that in one week time we have a box with out any possibility of raising a queen on their own; but lots of capped brood so lots of nurse bees coming; the queen is kept separate in the other box by a queen excluder.

All this work meant that I rather lost track of goings on else where on the apiary, but I did see quite a few extra supers going out, and there was no further splits.  Also found out later, that the Langstroth which we thought was queenless last week, could not have been, because there was capped brood. However this week there was no eggs and this weeks theory is that one of the new queens has hatched and killed the original queen so we now have a virgin queen in there.

Sunday 6th June

This was extensively a teaching day; so not much was going on but there are a couple of notable things

After being there almost and hour we noticed a swarm of bees hanging in a nearby tree;  This swarm must have come from either hive 17 or 18 but we are not certain because  it came out the day before. Just goes to show that as soon as you leave more than one queen cell; they will swarm if both queens hatch. Had exactly the same thing at my home apiary.  We initially collected the swarm and put it in a nuc box with a queen excluding across the entrance, but damn me she must be a small queen because they were back in the tree in under an hour. So this time they went back into a full hive; but only five frames and a dummy board, and because it has a mesh floor we could seal them in for 48 hours.

Also Hive 2  - this is the hive from where we merged hive 2 and 7 earlier in the year. We found a virgin queen in there, and no eggs so it appears they have superseded this queen which was not very good.  I am amazed that this was not spotted in the last two inspections. How can you miss a queen cell in a week hive... but obviously it was. So that is another two virgins which need to mate. 

Back to Queen rearing; I put the jenter into Hive 10, as soon as I got there on Sunday and put the queen inside, technically she should stay there until the next day, but as we were not going to be there, I left it for a couple of hours and then open the door so that she can get out if she wanted to. I could not see any eggs in there but I am hopeful that there will be lava of the correct age. 

Either way on Thursday will be down there early setting up hive 1 ready to accept the grafts which will use a mix of jenter if any and grafting which we will do latter in the evening. 

As a tester I have spent last week beekeeping and have a couple of reasonable videos which will tell you about soon; all so a very memorable swarm catching experiences.

Weekly inspections end of may

Well, I can not believe it but May is almost over, so ends the saying for one more year "A swarm in May is worth a barrel load of Hay" or what ever it is. At the apiary this week..

It was a quieter week but still interesting.
1) we took of the rape Honey - only one super this year, there was a lot of debate about the best way to get the bees out of the super in only a couple of hours, what we tried was a rhobus clear, upside down on a super, and a few kicks to get the bees to move out, and in theory they should all leave.  However I was very sceptical, and although I wish I was not proved right come after 10 and time to pick up the super, there were still bees in it. So back into the bee suit for me, and in the pitch black brushing the bees of...  So Lesson learnt, next time we will do as I say and just brush them to start with... I must add was not pleasant doing it in the dark as you cannot see the bees so keep trapping them with your figures and hence getting stung!

2) the langstroth hive - these had beautifully drawn out the comb, but unfotunatly the queen has completed vanished and no eggs, so we have tried to introduce a sealed queen cell which we got from hive 18, which we split last week so had a few spare.


3) The ROSE hive: this is working well with the bees having drawn half of one of the box, with the queen laying, so more feed, and I am sure they will pick up and love their new home. Now there is brood the queen excluder at the bottom of the hive can be moved.


4) update on the nucs.  At least 2 if not 3 of the nucs we had the "bleed" now what a funny expression, what it means basically is to remove one frame either brood or food and give them a frame of foundation, so that they do not out grow their boxes before we Sell them next week.   I know one had a frame of brood put into the weaker hive which  I beilive is hive 2.

5)  At least 4 or 5 colloinies are now in lock down, for the next 2-3 weeks waiting for the new queens to go out an mate. so there is a bit less work now at the apiary.

Oh finally, - I wish I had a photo, but the hive 1 which we re-united last week, had drawn a hole perfect frame of wild comb of their crown board... because certain person who re-untinted them did not give them a full complement of frames.  Therefore the wild comb honey and all in now wedge up on the crown board so they can take their honey back and the hive built up in to a double brood.  We may just use the hive for queen rearing.

Shook Swarms at Lydney

Well if you missed yesterday session at the apiary then you missed a treat.  It was a lovely hot sunny evening and it was a good job because we achieved a lot.  We did two shook swarms. on hive 5 , planned for month ago and hive 3. One into a ROSE HIVE  and the other into an langstroth.   To do a shook swarm 1) Smoke heavily 2) leave for 5 mins.  3) Move hive from original site. 4) Find queen and place her in new box. 5) Shake all bees off into new hive. 6) Feed hive   7) don't forget to put queen excluder between floor and brood chamber so that she cannot get out

There were two more splits on hives.   Hive 15 had swarmed and were hanging on the mesh floor. So this was sorted out. One of the splits from last week, was reunited with the original collony as there were no viable queen cells... with a debate on the merits of emergency queen cells. 

Queen rearing - was a complete wash out, with not one been taken.  Not sure why but we know one thing they were over fed. See photos, and video below.  More beekeeping tommorow, Sunday and so on and so on.....

Queen Rearing Course at Hartbury

On the 15th May, day started early so that we could arrive at Hartbury College on time, indeed early. Oh yes by the way I have left it a week before posting this as I wanted to leave a fair reflection!

I must say that it was not a good start with Shirley, who was our "teacher" for the day turned up 20 mins, late.We then went into the classroom for the morning. Rather than any formal lecture Shirley led a general discussion about what we wanted for the day and some very basic methods of queen rearing, i.e. spliting the hive; and what we might want to achieve from rearing the queens.   She then disappeared for another 40 mins to finish of the photocopy, whilst we talk amongst our selves. Then came back the notes and we had to organize them ourselves.  I must say that the notes were actually very helpful after reading through them on my return, but the general discussion was well not as informative as I would like, needs work and having some of the equipment to hand would help greatly. Not a great start.

After lunch; we went down to the apiary at the college, and to be frank I was APPALLED at the state of it. There were hundreds of boxes which seem to have been slung any which way. There were greater wax moth damage, wood pecker damage, wax moth flying around the shed. No obvious hygiene method were being practiced,  The comb in the bees was a black as pitch and we were told to save money it was just treated with acetic acid and re-used. No obvious records cards were being used and the memory was not that good. Anyway that is the bad points out of the way & we should not dwell on them.

The set up of the hives was done really well, which enable use to do all but one of the 5 main stages of queen rearing. 1) setting up the hive  2) setting up the hive again 3) grafting the bees 4) introduction of queen cells 5) checking to see if the queen has mated and is laying.

I know I have simplified it beyond beleif, but hey I am still learning not writing notes.  There were a few minor hick-ups but overall the practical went well The most fun part was learning to graft lava with the chinese grafting tool, it was really good to know what size the lava should be and how best to get them out. We also had a go with the jenter method, and the Miller method.

Anyway I have taken photos and videos which I will just dump down here, and you can view as you wish.

Bee Safari

Well I promised you as summary of the Bee Safari, & thanks to David we have an excellent one, which includes some useful tips picked up on the day. I was particular taken by the idea that it takes 3 days for a swarm to use up all the food in their tummies.  Any way you can read about the BEE SAFARI

It has been a busy few days of beekeeping, I have looked at bees everyday! for a week now and some much to share, but just not the time to post..... and OH Hell, I must write my piece for the newsletter! so much to do not enough time.  Anyway I promise you soon that I will give you some video and photo from my queen rearing course at Hartbury college last Saturday.

P.S. Off topic I know; but I did a course today for work all about improving websites, and optimsing them, and a little about what they call Social Media... so I thought I would give you a link to the beekeeping books at Stella Books where I work be warned there is only one beekeeping book in stock at the moment; not something we specialize in.

Finally a busy evening at the apirary

Well if you missed today's session then you have missed a busy evening which will try and summarize below.

Will start with last Sunday the 9th May,  Queen rearing hive, we put the queen into the jenter cage to lay the eggs, this was hive 6, the grand mother hive, to do this we first had to find the queen and  mark and clip her because bad planning it had not been done.  Then on Monday 10th may, the queen was released, and the eggs left to develop until Thusday 13th May. On Wednesday 12th  on hive 8 was some fiddling with the cloke boards and entrances to make them think the queen has gone away and get most bees into the top box.

Now to this evening, well it really was busy so in summary, we

1. checked all the hives
2. took 3 splits, using the method of removing the queen on the hive along with two frames of brood and either one or two shakes of bees according to how strong the hive was and putting the nuc on the top of the original hive..... bit more to it than this but you just have to be there to see it done.
3. a couple of hives were fed, and I discovered a hidden gem in hive 15 which has 10 seems of bees and now we have added a supper.
4. Queen rearing, the jenter cage was removed from hive six, and Lee and Val used the caravan to select the smallest lava with the most royal jelly. Due to the strength of the queen raising colony it was decided that only 10 queen cells would be attempted. These where then put on to a frame, as per images.    The hair roller is to come more on that next week.

To Come next week.

• We still have the shook swarm to do into the langstroth  from hive 5, and then distribute the brood.
• Possible another shook swarm into the rose hive, mainly because hive 3? have quire a bit of chalk brood.
• Maybe another split
• Checking the split colonies to make sure we leave only one or two nice queen cells.
• Clean boxes for most hives...
• We have much more planned but I don't think there will be time...

Also on Saturday we have our annual Bee Safari; I won't be able to attend but will see if I can get a report for you.  I am off to a  Queen rearing course for the day, which will be fun.  Well that it for this week.

bad weather delays things - queen rearing started

Well the last two Thursdays have been something of a wash out / freeze out with it being to cold to do our full inspections.  I am almost certain those bees are all busy building queen cells...I wonder how many sealed cells there will be when we finally get in ? Anyway the focus has moved on to hive 8 our queen rearing hive.

Jim and Lee did the following work last Tuesday 4th May

hive #8 - rearranged the colony in readiness for cell raising into new boxes, with the open brood in the top box, the queen in the bottom, and the cloake board (without insert) between the boxes. The entrance to the bottom box is closed, and the bees use the entrance in the cloake board. Contact feeder put on.

Today 6th May, I decided on Hive 6 to be the grandmother colony, as it is a good strong queen. Therefore we have put the Jenter (image right in two parts) in ready for the bees to clean, and on Sunday we will pop the queen in there to lay us some nice eggs. When popping in the jenter i noticed, on the only frame of brood which was taken out, that there was a queen cell.... so that had to be destroyed shame as it would be good to split them, but they will build more.



So when the weather final improves we will be doing lots of things, shook swarms, splits, queen rearing, clean boxes,...plus plus.... and and by the way apparently Nuc A  (the third) is doing well, so the queen from no. 7 may not be a dud then.... also about the merge, again quote from Jim

merging of hive#2 & hive#7 didn't really go to plan. The top box #7 has so few bees they stayed put. We have reduced the colony to one new box and clean floor as #2.

busy busy busy - season in full swing

Well firstly let me apologize for being so long since the last update, I have been having some technical issues with the computer which are ongoing and means that no photos or videos this time...but anyway you are not interested in that you want to know about the bees. Well will try and give it some sort of order but it may be a bit muddled.

Thursday 15th April. - Weather was a little cold and therefore we mainly contrasted on feeding the bees. So it was a case of checking the frame feeders did not leak, which some did so we resealed the wax in them using the blow torch. Then out to the bees and on with the spring feeding, idea being to help the bees build up in number. Always being careful to make sure that any spillages are mopped up so as not to cause any problems.

Sunday 18th April - The second practical session for the beekeeping class of 2010. Due to the weakness of colonies 2 & 7 it was decided that we would merge the two especially as they were fairly close to each other. Therefore the first step was to decided which queen was to be left out in the cold.....but not see latter...I decieded that it was the queen in no.7 that was to go and

phoebe

(that is the queen in no. 2 to everybody else but the person with the largest personality who numbers are not good enough....)is to stay. Therefore measuring the distance between the two hives with decided as it was about 6m to do it in three steps and the colony would be merged next sunday... see below. Also today was the day that we added out first super to hive 5..... Oh and yes we got all the beginners to show us what they had learned the week before...

Thursday 22nd - This was a much warmer day and it finally felt like spring... So much was happening that I was having difficult keeping track but I do know that we 1) moved hive 7 closer to hive two
2) Marked and clipped two queens.
3) Carried on feeding the bees
4) decided what we might do with the queen from no. 2. and discussed hive no.5 as I thought the comb in the brood was a little dark, and we had various options as to shook swarm bailey comb change, ect.. but more latter. I have to say that the rotor for the tea making in the caravan and the cleaning worked really well and made things easier.

Saturday 24th April - The first one day taster course. My part in this was to help show people the bees at an apiary of our bee gurus in Monmouth. But the great bonus was that it was a free lunch of such wonderful tasted food that I could not believe my eyes. Best of all there was enough left for tomorrow.. Anyway I took three budding beekeepers, two of which had been down in Lydney before, but I managed to get them all to see the eggs, or specks of rice as they so delightful put it, as well as drones, pollen, stores, etc... pretty much everything but queen cups.... then to afternoon tea and delicious cake and scones.... I think everybody enjoyed it and now we have people signed up for next years full course and a few more members.

Sunday 25th April - Back to lydney for the third practical session for class 2010, - this was a busy day and a little hectic to begin with....


Dave Sutton - bee inspector visited us and showed the beginners in two groups how to check the diseases. He inspected hive 5 for us so we could be sure that there were no serious problems so that we can carry out our plan for this colony. He managed to find two wax moth lava using two different methods, one a tap the other by digging it out. Also inspected hive 8 which is been fed to death ready for queen rearing, and I think there was a couple of play cells.


Whilst this was going on; we were taking three frames of sealed brood and bees from three different colonies and with a slight dusting to stop them fighting, and making sure the queen was not present into a nuc. This was then left to settled down for a while. Into this nuc we finally introduced the queen from hive 7 in a butler cage, with three layers of newspaper so that she is realized slowly.... normally you go back in two days and do it but we won't be there...
Now to merge hive 7 into two, to do this we pined down some newspaper onto the top of hive 2 after a quick inspection to make sure all was still okay, and pierced a couple of small splits. Then put hive 7 on top, and the newspaper will give them time to get the smell the same and they won't fight. I think if we had left hive 7 another week they would have been dead so we got there just in time. The Nuc then became Nuc A.... because I fogot to tell you that the 2nd nuc A did not make it, so this is our third nuc A of the season, let hope it is third time lucky.

TO COME NEXT THURSDAY Plan is to be doing a shook swarm on hive 5 into the langstroth hive... our first at this apiary... and then with the 5/6 frames of brood spreading these around the weaker colonies of the apiary...which is why the it was lucky the bee inspector was there because now we are sure we will not spread disease around..... and only a final note, I understand that one of our members had the first swarm I have heard about this year on Friday 23rd April...so I think the fun is just about to begin....

all that and I have not even mentioned the fun and games at my home apiary, ah well another story another time.

clubhouse opening and first practical session

Here is a video of val's speech at the opening of the clubhouse, where we had a large cake with bee design on it and lots of bubble, I thought I had a photo but as with all modern technology never seems to work. The cake tasted wonderful and many hours was spent in the clubhouse christening the facilities and drinking beer etc.

 

Yesterday the first practical session of the BEEKEEPERS OF 2010 took place, I think 31 trainees turned up with 10 teachers. I took three people out to hive 7, where we found the queen, saw the eggs, larva and brood, a lovely if some what small and weak hive. Hive 5, which was missed last Thursday, I am informed is doing well and looks like an average colony. The other hive which was missed it hive 4, this we thought initially may no longer have a queen as there were only a few bees, but inspection told us there is a viable queen; so as they were weak we found a marked queen and watched her into a nice clean nuc box.

2 busy weeks - first day at lydney

Well it has been a very busy couple of weeks which is why there has been no new posts.  Firstly Lydney Apiary well April 1st was a complete wash out, although we did enjoy a lovely chat in the new clubhouse.

April 8th - this was the first time we had been through the bees this year and there was some sad news and good news.  Starting with the sad news - Hives 9  and the only Nuc did not make it threw the winter, Hive 9 was no surprise, but we thought the nuc would of made it.  So the remaining bees were shaken out of the hive in front of another hive into which we hope they will be accepted. Then all the equipment was cleaned and sterilized and put away.

The good news is that we have 14 hives all with queens that have survived,  all in varying strength.  Here is a photo of a perfect example of a frame I saw, which have sealed brood, lava, eggs, pollen and food. 

 

At the end of the evening we enjoyed a cup of black tea and coffee, must remember the milk and discovered we missed out 2 hives, so we will do those on Sunday. 

On Sunday the 28th March, about 40 of us had are pre-season get together and  had sunday dinner and coffee at bells golf course in coleford.  It seemed that most people enjoyed it and lots of talking about bees took place. We also most importantly toasted the bees.  Here are a couple of images

On 27th March, it was the Welsh beekeepers convention at Builth Wells, in order to manage to get a few of the thornes bargins meant an early start leaving a 7.30 and getting there about 9 am to find that about 100 people had beat us to it, but we get most of what we wanted.  Then the lectures started, I went to the morning lectures, firstly an interesting lecture from american beekeeper keeping bees in France and Chille and how he has bred the bees to cope with the varroa might.  Below is the only image of took of the Maisemore van doing wax exchange.  Good day out

Finally for this post is a few images from the caravan before it become a clubhouse. Look at the state of it and think about it now!

Supermarket to house bees in Gloucester

A supermarket chain is claiming a UK first by announcing plans for several hundred bees in land around its new eco-store.

Pick up this news story ! Is it just publicist stunt and who are going to look after the bees, and where are they coming from? Also eight hives and only "hundreds" of bees, seems very little research done for the story.

Link to the story below, seems to pose more questions than it answers.

Supermarket's eco-store will be first to house bees

Cleaning floors after hard winter

Here is an image of the entrance to the hive at my home apiary in Tintern after I took the entrance box out. As you can see there is a whole layer of dead bees which went all the way over the mesh floor. So yesterday which was a lovely sunny day, was spent with one person lifting the hive whist the over clean the floor. Very important activity as this will stop disease festering and save the bees a lot of work. The bees would normal clean this all this away but I think it be so cold they have not been their normal clean selves.

All 6 hives where flying well, so fingers crossed for the next three weeks as I would argue they are the most important of the year for the bees.

putting electric into shed

Some images below of today's work putting in elec to the shed. Also done was a lots of rubbish movings and cleaning.

bees taking fondant - quick update

Today I had the pleasure of checking the bees fondant food. It has been the first day that it has been a pleasure as the sun was out and it was not too cold, although too cold for the bees to fly.

It was really just a quick check of the bees to see they were still alive, which happily they all are and to make sure they all had food and were not too far away from it. A couple of Crown boards were quickly turned so the food was nearer the bees. Apart from Hive 9 which looks a little too weak to survive all were doing okay. Hive 15 will need close eye on as they are a little light and eaten most of their food. Oh for a warm day so we can see what they are really doing!

And to cap of an excellent day, after having dinner in the pub, this evening we had an interesting talk on bee keeping in Mexico,, and of all things stingless bees... can we have some please!

Beekeeping One Day Introduction Course

Hot of the press is this advert from the club, so if you are interested in bee keeping but just not quite sure you want it for a hobby or not now is your opportunity to find out.

DEAN FOREST BEEKEEPING ASSOCIATION

Beekeeping One Day Introduction Course

Saturday 24^th April – 9.30 for 10:00am to 4:30pm

Learn why so many are taking up beekeeping.

In the morning you will gain an insight into bee life, their behaviour, life cycle and husbandry. Learn how to manipulate a colony, feed them and extract honey.

In the afternoon you will visit a private Apiary to observe and handle bees under the guidance of local experts.

Theory session at Staunton Village Hall;

Practical at Kymin Apiaries, Monmouth

Inclusive of:

• Lunch and refreshments

• Protective suits and tools provided.

• Literature and Course notes

• Certificate of Attendance

• Free transport between

  Staunton and The Kymin (and return).

Course fee £35.00 pp, already booking.

Phone Jim on 01600 714428 and download an application form

Beekeepers QuestionTime

Last Thursday, we had a great evening at Elwood football club Hall, when a whole 2.5 hours was spent questioning the experts. One of which was an ex-bee inspector and another a local commercial bee keeper. Questions varied from the serious matter of the cost of bees and can the price be justified to the more humours story of the panel most memorable swarm catching experiences.
Lots was learnt by all even some of the most experienced bee keepers picked up some more tips on how to produce creamed honey. It was a slightly disappointing turn out, but those who went had a wonderful time and there was a successful raffle, at which I was shocked and delighted to win a limited edition pro-type of two copies of a baseball club with forest of dean bee-keepers on the top. See photo. Also we had chance to pick up our fleece and polo-shirt with the dean forest badge on, which we all look very smart in.

We also had the pleasure of the company of Arthur Talyor who has been keeping bees for over 50 years, and when asked by the chairman what one piece of advice above all others he would give to newly starting bee keeper, his answer was "to give something back" and then of course another three answers... but I intend to try my best to give something back by encouraging others to keep bees.

Lydney Apiary: Count of Varroa after treatment

Cycled to the apiary today and spent an hour and 20 mins checking the floors and bees.
I have removed the floors and given them a rough clean but they will need doing more thoroughly.
The count will be for virtual 6 days, It is much higher than I was expecting. However there were three hives which were noticeable lower than the other, one was a weak hive, however the other two are average strength hives so it is worth noting he numbers for future ref, for deciding which Queen to breed from as this is one of the factors we should take in to account. Counts as follows.... would be interest to know what a typical count is after treatment.

Hive - varroa count
12 - 40
18 - 32
17 - 43
14 - 30
20 - 55
2 - 6 good hygiene
8 - 80 - double hive bit more of a guesstimate as did half and double it.
6 - 55
15 - 52
10 - 39
7 - 6 good hygiene
9 - 7 weak hive - but not too bad
5 - 27 this hive was eating the food best and had 1/2 gone so is the only hive I would wonder if they would run out.
13 - 21
1 - 48
4 - 39
3 - 70

As you can see from the two images it is not always that easy to count how many varroa are in the 2nd image?

lydney apiary: oxalic acid & Candy

Well I have happy to report that all the hives are still alive at the lydney apiary. All have now been treated with oxalic acid. Many now have their 2nd block of candy as they had mostly eaten their first block. The hive which we hope to use for queen rearing the double brood looks strong so an ideal hive. Only hive 9 looks weak so we are not sure if it will survive. The mower has been taken for a service, so everything is getting ready for the new season to start.

there was much chat about various aspects of beekeeping, and there was going to be some discussion on the dean forest website about some idea involving baby oil to help keep the vaoroa board clean.

Will report back in about 1 week after we have checked the number of varroa that has been killed.

Dean Forest Beekeepers New Website

Well thanks to the very hard work of one of the members dean forest has an excellent new website which is at www.deanforestbeekeepers.co.uk It is so full of information that I don't know where to start. One of my favourite areas is the forums, and I cannot wait to see what interesting topics get discussed there. I also hopping to see lots of photos on there of bee related things. Anyway it is well worth a visit.

change in entry qualifications for Basic Bee examination

Recent received a copy of a letter sent by Jim who amongst the many jobs he does for the dean forest bees runs the basic beekeeping course. I was appeal and shocked to read in the letter the the BBKA have changed the entry requirements before you can be assesed for the basic examination. Jim's letter is below, and having taken the course last year I could not agree with him more every beekeeper should aim to do a course or get regular help from an experience beekeeper before keeping bees, and the BBKA seem to have moved away from this..anyway here's Jims letter

As Trainer for the Dean Forest Branch of Gloucestershire BKA, about to start lectures for this year’s basic course, I am very concerned about the change the BBKA has made to the conditions of entry for the Basic Assessment. In past years “the candidate shall have managed at least one colony of bees for a minimum of 12 months or have attended a course in practical beekeeping”. This year the alternative choice to attend a course has been removed.

As there is no mention of a course in the prospectus, candidates could present themselves for the Basic, having received no formal training whatsoever. I attended the BBKA Forum on 3rd October 2009 which focussed on education. Is this one of the outcomes of this forum?

One of the aims of the BBKA Forum was to improve the quality of demonstrators and trainers. This change in entry conditions is a vote of no confidence in all the voluntary trainers giving up their time to promote the art of beekeeping. This change will also discourage new beekeepers from taking their Basic. Let us also remember that this assessment is meant to be “basic”. An extra hurdle has been introduced. Beekeepers will hopefully take a course early in the year, obtain their bees, and then in the second year probably have to take a refresher course to cover the oral part of the basic, which is two-thirds of the assessment. This will be added work for the trainers and demonstrators.

In Ireland, under the Federation of Irish Beekeepers (FIBKA), newcomers are given the opportunity at the Gormanston Summer School to attend lectures and demonstrations for three days, and then take the FIBKA equivalent of a basic assessment. The standard of the Irish basic is much lower than the BBKA version, but it does ensure that potential beekeepers can start their new hobby with the requisite knowledge.

I have been training beekeepers for three seasons, with all my candidates achieving passes at the Basic Assessment. The potential beekeepers, who attend my course, receive 12 hours of lectures, with detailed handouts, and then attend 6 practical sessions of 2 hours each at the branch apiary, where they practice handling bees under instruction.The candidate performs most of the work and learns to handle the bees correctly. In addition we run weekly apiary meetings where potential beekeepers are team members managing their own hives within the branch apiary.When they get their first nucleus we also provide as much assistance as they need. There have been a mixture of experienced beekeepers and newcomers. I find that the experienced, who have received no formal training, have the most difficulty handling bees as they have developed bad habits. Their knowledge of modern practices, especially Integrated Pest management, is also lacking.

By changing the conditions the BBKA will make it more difficult for beekeepers to take their Basic Assessment, and have added to the workload of all the voluntary trainers throughout the country. It may also put the bees in danger. If someone, who knows nothing about bees, just buys, or is given as a gift, a hive and bees, the bees are very often unknowingly mistreated. It is then that members of the association are called upon to sort out a crisis, or the bees are left to die at the end of the first season, due to lack of knowledge of the so-called beekeeper.

Ivor Davis wrote an article in the BBKA News in December 2007, and I quote:

“The Basic qualification is much like the driving licence – but for honeybees. Once you have taken it (and the pass rate is well over 95%) it shows that the beekeeper is competent to keep bees.”

There has obviously been a change in opinion since this article was written. This clearly states that the Basic qualification shows the beekeeper is competent to keep bees, not that beekeepers should keep bees as a pre-requisite to taking the Basic Assessment. With a pass rate of 95%, what was wrong with the previous conditions of entry for the Basic Assessment?