Winter reshuffle

The weather has finally turned cooler, and damper.  Time to prepare all the colonies for Winter.

This is how I set my hives up for Winter, I have tried several different methods but this has always been the most successful for me. Colonies are able to stay over their brood without interruption and still access food when needed.

The mouse-guards were put in place a few days ago, we live in a very rural area and have had problems with mice invading the hives in past years.  So although I dislike using them, mouse-guards are essential here.                                                    

As you can see from the top picture there is still a huge amount of pollen coming in, the ivy continues to flower very late into the Autumn this year.

The mouse-guards have been in place for a few days and the bees have settled back into their routine, I try not to change too many things all at once.

I have kept a full super for each colony. Any supers still on top of the hives are removed as are queen excluders.  The brood chamber is lifted clear of the floor and a fully capped super takes its place.  The brood box is now placed on top of the super.  This means that the colony is where it should be, at the top of the hive, where it is warmest.

I will give them a few days to settle again, and then I will give each colony a block of fondant.

Getting ready for Winter?

Well here we are, its the 7th October and the it should be getting colder and the bees should be preparing for the upcoming Winter.  Instead its 20C, sunny and the bees are bringing in so much that I am adding supers.
This has been without doubt the best summer season that I can remember, most colonies and nucs sold, most Queens successfully reared and mated and despite my focus on producing colonies the best honey yield.  As always my colonies will be going into Winter as strong as I can possibly make them, and as I do not lose colonies through the Winter I have always believed that the bigger the colony at the start of Winter the more chance it has of surviving until Spring.

This frame is fairly typical of all my colonies, there are 6 or 7 frames like this in each hive, and as you can see in the background the hive is heaving with bees.There are still drones in each hive, there is still drone brood.
I have not seen that before at this time of year, usually the drones have been driven out by mid September.

As each hive is opened the air is thick with the smell of ivy honey and there are clouds of bees in the air, it looks and feels like May.  I was going to put mouseguards on this weekend, but I think I will postpone that for at least a week.

Busy busy busy

In fact nearly as busy as my bees, although on reflection that would be near impossible.  I have extracted more honey per hive this year than any year I can remember.

Considering my hives are being continually worked to provide nucs, starter colonies and queens, and that I am not really looking to produce a huge crop of honey, one of my colonies has already given over 100 kilos. of the sweet sticky stuff.

Each of these nucs, including the special order 14x12, has one of my own newly mated and laying Queens.  Most of the nucs going into Winter have already been ordered for early collection Spring 2014.
This was my first year rearing my own Queens on a serious basis, and it means I will be buying in just two or three Queens next year to provide some diversity of DNA in the apiary.

As you can see from this photo the bees have done their stuff in this small orchard, the apple and pear trees are heaving with fruit, unfortunately the damson and plum flowered when it was still very cold and are almost fruitless.

The hedgerows are full of brambles around the apiary and they are covered in blackberries. We have been picking them now for over two weeks and they still keep coming.



Beekeepers talk of a 'June gap', a month when there is little for the bees to forage, as is usually the case beekeepers have been proven wrong,   again.  This year June was flat out, I was emptying and replacing supers almost on a daily basis.  I refuse to put more than five supers on a hive, even if in theory it is required, a full super at head height is very difficult to manage.  I fell over once with a full super, not a pretty sight.
Not a June gap, but perhaps a late August gap.
It has calmed down considerably over the last few days, giving me time to catch up on getting my records up to date and typing this.

Although it has quietened down, I did notice over the weekend that there was an increase in activity again.  The old pear tree in the photo is not only covered in pears, but also ivy, as are a few other trees that surround the apiary.

It is possible that at the top of the tree the ivy has started to flower, it would be early, but there are an awful lot of flower buds that look ready to burst at ground level.

If the good weather holds on for another few weeks we should take a crop of ivy honey.  It would be a good end to a very good season.

Grafting update

The batch of Queen cells have now been moved into their new homes, nucs and mininucs.  They are due to hatch tomorrow or the day after.  I had a quick peek at one of them to make sure everything is going to plan.










This one was put into a nuc along with a frame of bees from the colony that reared the five cells on the top bar.  It is a nice size and fingers crossed all is well.  I will leave them all alone now for a couple of weeks, by which time they should all be mated and hopefully laying.

Larvae grafting

I have over the last few weeks been grafting larvae to produce my own Queens.  I am using the best colony that I have this year as the donor and two colonies to raise the Queens.  This is very small scale, enough to produce all the Queens I will need for this season and for early nucs and colonies for sale next year.

The photographs are of the artificial Queen cells and the 'hair curler' cage that will protect the the Queen cell once it is capped.


Five Queen cells have been attached to a frame top bar, it has been in the host hive for a couple of days so the bees can clean the cells and make them ready to accept the the donor larvae.

The photograph on the left is of the equipment that I am going to use to carry out the grafting.
The bar with five Queen cells attached, a magnifying headset, larvae are very small objects and it leaves both hands free for this delicate operation.  A frame with newly hatched larvae from the donor colony and on top of the frame is a chinese grafting tool.

A newly hatched larvae is selected and is scooped up using the grafting tool along with any jelly in the cell and then pushed off the grafting tool into the artificial cell.  Some say that the larvae must stay the same way up as it was, others say it makes no difference.  As I do not have enough experience yet I prefer to edge on the side of caution and the larvae are slid off the grafting tool in the same position as they were in their colony.
A damp cloth is used to cover the completed cells as it is very warm here today, 28C, and it would be very easy for the larvae to dry out. This is carried out until all the artificial cells have a larvae.
The frame is then returned to the host colony and the bar of grafted cells is returned to the host colony.

After  just a few days in the host colony, the bees have done their stuff and the Queen cells are close to being capped.  As soon as they cap the cells they will be removed from the hive and the cells unclipped from their bases.  If the cell is to requeen a colony it will be protected with a hair curler cage and placed in the Queenless colony it is to take over.  If it is to make up a nuc, it will be placed in a Queen raising mininuc along with a cup full bees from the colony that have just raised it.

White honey and blond drones

I have an apiary where i keep all my best colonies, where Queens are raised and mated.  All of the Queens in this apiary are related in some way, sister, mother, aunt, cousin.  And yet just one of these colonies produces the lightest coloured drones, I have not found them in any of the other colonies in the apiary, they seem to stay where they were born.

They really are the nicest drones I have seen.  For non-beekeepers, a drone is the male honeybee and is larger than his sisters, the workers.










Another colour oddity has occurred this week, the first honey we extracted crystalised within 48 hours.  Almost certainly contains a large proportion of oil seed rape,  since setting it has been gently warmed and stirred with a stainless steel paddle to prevent it from re-setting.  It came from several hives in different apiaries about 10 miles apart, and yet this honey has all turned out white.  I can only assume the farmers in this area are using a new variety, because this is the first time we have had white honey.

On the plus side it tastes lovely, a very light flavour.  Goodness knows what our customers are going to think.

Its all about the honey

The very cold Spring has held crops back this year, especially the oil seed rape, which plays a huge part of South Lincolnshire agriculture.  Because large patches of the fields were waterlogged over the Winter the crops have grown and matured at an uneven rate, we are in July now and some fields are still in flower and have been for weeks  This has given our bees a much longer season on the osr than any normal year, whatever constitutes a normal year these days.

With the crops maturing late, our hives were just about moving towards full strength at just about the right time.  This has all resulted in producing the best early honey crop we have had for years.
Considering the very cold extended Winter and cold Spring its a very surprising result.
On the left are a few of the fully capped supers we have been taking off over the last week.  Almost certainly all with a high percentage of osr.  But it is all in 10 litre honey buckets now, waiting for it to set.

The first honey

What a strange year its been already, and it is still only June.  A really long dragged out Winter, coldest Spring on record and yet here we are mid June taking honey, five supers to be exact.  All capped, and almost certainly oil seed rape.  In fact in this part of the country, South Lincolnshire, I don't think I have ever had more than a few kilos of clear honey.  The oil seed rape has been in flower now since mid/late May and there are still fields in full flower that look as if they have a couple of weeks left in them.  The wild oil seed rape is in flower in the hedgerows and along the dyke banks and roadside verges, and will continue to flower throughout the summer, right up until the ivy flowers.  So if our honey is not pure oil seed rape, there is nearly always enough of it in the supers to set any other nectar the bees might be collecting.

Fathers day

It was a really nice morning, I was thinking about the relaxing day laid before me, perhaps a couple of hours fishing on the river bank, a full on Sunday lunch.  And then late morning a phone call, that might be someone wishing me happy fathers day, I thought.  But no, it was just what I had always wanted..... bees.  Obviously no respect for a fellas day off, as usual the girls throw a spanner in the works.

However it was a nice swarm.

Colony 'A'

The reason this colony is known as 'A', is not because it is my best colony.  It is my best colony, but that is not the reason, it is because it has been around for so long.  The Queen is very old, a 'blue', and yet the colony came through the winter on eight frames of brood and quickly rose to eleven, the same as last year.  It also collects more honey than any other colony, it currently has four supers on, three of which are full and partly capped, and this despite providing frames of brood to make up nucs and help other colonies grow.  It is also the colony that I have taken the larvae from to start breeding from, the first Queens hatched on June 8th.  I'll know in a couple of weeks if they successfully mated.

As you can see from the photo above, it is heaving with bees and there are four supers full of bees as well.  They also happen to be the mildest of bees, a lovely temperament.  If only all colonies were like this one, sadly not.  Some of the swarms I have collected over the last week or so are the nastiest things imaginable, the sooner my new Queens are able to take over a colony the better.

First swarm of 2013

Later than last year, and much later than usual, on Monday 27th May our first swarm call of 2013.  It was from a 'regular', a house in Spalding once owned by a beekeeper, now by his daughter.  It has a colony in each of its chimneys and over the years has swarmed and occupied most of the neighbors chimneys and soffits.  I pick up two or three swarms a season from their gardens,  this one on a low branch of an azalea bush.  I just put a hive on the ground, pushed it towards the swarm, and within ten minutes they had all run inside.  I wish it was always that quick and simple.  Usually I am at the top of a ladder, balancing on one foot, at full stretch reaching for the branch with a swarm on just beyond the tips of my fingers.

As the weather has turned for the worse again, I have not been able to have a good look at them yet, but they are coming and going, so at least they have decided to stay.

The first of my Queens are in production now and one of them should be ready to take over this colony as soon as she is mated and laying.

What a week

Been a bit of an up and down week, mostly down, but that leaves a lot of upside.

Had a call from a friends wife, he had been taken to hospital and was worrying about his six colonies.  I had to wait for a decent day, but managed to go through them last weekend. One dead, starvation by the looks of it, two drone layers and three very small colonies. This was their first inspection of the year, so I put them into summer mode for him and left his wife with the notes.

The following Monday/Tuesday a batch of Queens was due to turn up, but didn't, nor Wednesday or any other day.  This was my first order with this supplier and on contacting him to find out what was happening was told,   'Take it up with your local postman or post office distribution depot.'   I have generally found the beekeeping community to be really nice people.  Lesson learned.  As a pensioner, the total loss of a batch of Queens is a big hit for me.  Luckily they were to improve my own stock and were not intended for any of my customers.

Then this weekend, only just warm enough for an inspection, seven days after the last one, Swarm cells in my strongest hive, one of them an enormous thing, already capped.  The Queen was still there though, I would guess just waiting for the weather to improve.  It took me by surprise, and I closed up quickly while I had a think about what to do next.  Although there are capped drone cells in most of my colonies I have not yet seen a drone.  Bees do some maddening things at times.  I was going to breed from this colony this year.  It was my strongest colony last year and produced more honey than any of my others.  I didn't want to waste any early opportunity so in the end I decided it was worth the risk to remove the largest Queen cell along with a few bees and put them in a mini nuc.  All the other Queen cells I broke down and will revisit this colony in a couple of days.  Hopefully with a couple of new frames to work they will settle down.

You spend all Winter worrying about your bees and longing for Spring, and then all hell breaks loose.

Just a quick look

The weather has been so bad and is forecast to be the same for at least the next few days, in this knowledge I decided to take  a quick peek into a couple of hives.  It wasn't warm enough and it was too windy, but I was getting increasingly concerned at what I might eventually find, so I caved in, put on my suit and chose two hives at random

       .

There has been so little flying that it was not possible to know what I was likely to find, but to my absolute surprise both hives are heaving with bees, brood and stores.  I have no idea where or when they collected it all, but I have had to remove a couple of frames of stores to give the queens some laying room.

If all my colonies are in this condition I will consider myself extremely lucky, And with the early queens arriving over the next few weeks I just need a couple of reasonable days so that I can introduce them into my nucs.

What a difference a year makes

Two photos taken a year apart of the same damson tree.  The one on the left was taken on 26 March 2012, and the one on the right today, 4 April 2013.  On the face of it similar days, sunny, blue skies.  But on that day late March 2012 it was a warm 17C, and calm.  Today it is hovering just above freezing with a howling north easterly.

I am sure that all my colonies are going to come through this dreadful weather, but what concerns me is the size of those colonies, its a worry.  Until I am able to inspect the hives its impossible to gauge the strength of the colonies, some may need moving down to a nucleus box to make it easier for them to maintain temperature.  Promised good weather for next week, fingers crossed.

4 April 2013

26 March 2012

So, this is Spring

I can't remember or imagine a worse Spring for the bees.  Looking at the forecast for the weeks ahead there appears to be no end to this slow motion train wreck that is our weather.  I have willow, (which is usually the first main crop of the year for my bees), surrounding my apiaries, sort of in flower, but it is way too nasty out there for the bees to be able to get to it.  In past years I have had bees in huge numbers taking willow in late January.

Judging by the numbers of phone calls and e-mails I am receiving it looks as if there is going to be larger than usual Winter colony losses this year.  I ordered my early queens in November 2012 for delivery in April 2013, so as usual I have limited numbers.  I doubt if I will have English bred queens this year until mid-late May,  so I have stopped taking orders for my early colonies and nucs, just for the time being in case any of the people I mentor have last minute losses and require replacements.

The next weeks are critical.  This is always the most dangerous time for a colonies.  As they comes out of their winter dormancy period and start the Spring build up. Most of the workers are very old now and there are a lot less of them than there should be in a hive right now.  As always all my colonies have had fondant available from November onwards, and they are still taking it in large quantities, but there are limits to what any colony of bees can handle, no matter how well looked after they are.

It must be a horrible feeling to lose a colony to starvation, not something I want to experience.

Oxalic treatment

The cold spell of the last few weeks is about to break, so this is probably the last chance this year to carry out the oxalic acid treatment on the hives.  I measure out the acid using a jewelers scales.  The recipe for this is clearly stated on the back of the pack of crystals and should be adhered to, absolutely.

The crystals are mixed into a 1:1 sugar syrup solution, 5ml per seam of bees is the recognized dosage, so I use 5ml syringes, ten of them are filled before taking the top off the hive.

One 5ml syringe full is drizzled along each seam of bees.  As each seam is completed I leave the empty syringe at the end of the row of bees, so I know which have been treated.

The whole operation should only take a few seconds, the crownboard and roof back on as soon as possible.

The empty syringes are refilled, and the routine moves on to the next hive, hopefully the bees have minimal harm and they will be carrying a lot less passengers.

Winter has arrived

Well after the very mild weather just before Christmas, I guess it was going to happen sooner or later.  It is freezing -6 C last couple of nights.

However it does mean that I can get on with building some of the kit for next season without feeling guilty about all the jobs I have to do outside,  I am working on the second batch of hives, so far, three floors, three broods, two supers, two roofs and a shedload of frames.  The first batch of four are complete, all have deposits on them are stored away in the dry and will be ready for collection mid - late May 2013, with colonies installed.  From the amount of interest I don't think this second batch will be available for long.

I am glad I did not rush to trickle oxalic acid on my colonies before the new year, another week of this weather, and that looks likely, will be the ideal time to carry out the treatment.