2020 Beekeeping

             Not the traditional start to my season nor the usual time, it will be another month at least before I would normally consider opening my hives for the first time.  But this week I have had two calls to remove bee colonies, the first from a garden shed, the bees had been there from last summer but unfortunately the shed had been crushed by a tree that had blown over during one of our recent storms. It was out of my area but was able to put them in touch with a nearby beekeeper, so hopefully that all worked out.

The second call, just yesterday, was to a colony that had taken residence in a little owl nest box last summer.  Its the second time I have removed colonies from this box, the last was five years ago.  On both occasions there were fertile little owl eggs in the nest.  Not much a pair of owls can do if bees decide to take over their nest site.

With the front of the box removed you can see the amount of comb and bees.  The box is about a  300mm cube.  There is capped honey and larvae, and eggs.  Cutouts are not my favorite job with bees, its extremely messy and usually causes lots of damage to the colony.  All of the comb in use was moved into a nuc, Some of the comb was empty so that will be melted down.  I strapped the nuc down to a tall pair of steps and left them for a few hours. On returning all but a small number of bees had moved into the nuc which I closed up and moved to one of my apiaries.

The owl box was cleaned up  and the front replaced, hopefully the owls will  return and raise a family.

Just a quick update on the owl box colony from yesterday, this is them today, very active despite its only 10C.  They will move into the hive they are sitting on once the weather improves and they have increased their numbers.

2019 and swarms

I have not been well for a while and have had to let the blog slide. I have also reduced the number of colonies I maintain and the number of new beekeepers I help. But as I am back on the mend it is time for me to pick up where I left off. 2019 now and a late start for the bees. these mild damp overlong winters are of little use to a bee colony, keeping them active with little in the way of forage.However as usual all mine made it through even if a few were  little on the small side. with reasonable weather through the OSR harvest all are up to speed.
Swarms are also late this year, almost without fail my first swarm call would normally be in early May, this year it was very nearly June and typically difficult having buried itself in a leylandii hedge. A couple of scooped handfuls and a hive left nearby overnight encouraged them to move in, sad to say this swarm had lost its Queen along the way but now has a frame of eggs from this years breeding colony. I must remember to take my phone so I can post some pictures.

Busy, busy, busy

They say, 'as busy as a bee', but I think it should be, as busy as a beekeeper.  This last month has been pretty much non-stop on the beekeeping front. Extracting all the oil seed rape before it sets on the frames and just about wrecks them, making sure non of my colonies swarms, which raised an interesting incident a few days ago.
I am breeding from three colonies this year.  They are all sisters from my best Queen the year before, calm, good layers , hard working.  All were showing the early signs of wanting to swarm.  I don't wait, I artificially swarm (A/S), which I did with all three.  So I now have six colonies, three with the original queens and all their flying bees, but broodless, sited in their original location.  And three with all the brood a single remaining queen cell and all the house bees, still located in the apiary.  Four days later as I was preparing to go through the hives at this apiary, when what looked like an incoming swarm appeared in the sky and landed at the top of an apple tree, I quickly raised a ladder and recovered the 'swarm' into an empty hive and then proceeded to go through the six A/S colonies.  On opening the second of the hives that should have contained a Queen and all the flying bees from one of the A/S I found the hive almost empty, most of the brood frames contained some honey but no brood.  The 'swarm' up the apple tree was in fact my colony that had vacated a hive after being there for four days.  I swear they will drive me off the edge one day.

The oils seed rape is all over now apart from the wild stuff in the hedgerows, so I was surprised to see a lot of bees in one of my apiaries stained yellow, until I saw this just a half mile from the apiary.

I am standing on a slightly raised piece of ground taking these photographs, it looks just like osr, but is in fact mustard and there is about 50 acres of it.  Its the first time I have seen it grown anywhere near me and had to look the leaf shape up on the internet to be sure.  The bees are obviously all over it judging by their colour, which makes them look very wasp like.

2014 swarms

28 April
Like everything else this year the swarms have started early.  I had a call from an elderly lady in Spalding to say that a swarm had landed in her garden.  I receive a call from either her or her neighbors at least once a year.  A beekeeper used to live in one of the properties years ago and all the chimneys in the local area have colonies in them.  They seem to survive varroa, although I have no way of knowing how long each colony has occupied the chimneys.

It was a fairly large prime swarm and it took residence in a dwarf weeping laburnam tree, at least thats what I think it is.  I crawled under the branches and took this lying on my back, not an easy task in a beesuit.

I placed a hive on the ground directly underneath the swarm and gave the branch they were clinging to a sharp jolt.  A reasonable proportion of the bees fell onto the crownboard, which had the top feed holes left open, and immediately started to make their way inside.

Not a great photo of the hive but it was a very dull and overcast day and the flash went off.  It was such a dull day I was surprised to take a swarm call.
I left the bees to it and returned later that evening when they had all made their way into the hive.
The colony has now been relocated to a quarantine site,  I will check on them in a couple of days to see if the Queen is there and laying and I'll mark her pink, I use pink to mark swarm Queens as I find it the easiest colour to spot.
It will be requeened as soon as my first batch of homebred Queens is ready.



30 April
Another swarm from a regular in Pinchbeck village this time, about 3 miles from one of my apiaries.  This one again from their chimney and again low down, this time in a privet hedge.  And again a reasonable size.

Same procedure as last time.  And it will be requeened asap.


I have been asked why I requeen swarms.  There are several very good reasons to replace swarm Queens, I have no idea how old they are, or if they have unsuitable characteristics in their dna, bald or chalk brood for instance.  It would be months before I could determine the colonies temperament. I am not sure what it is like in other parts of the country, but over the years I have found in general that swarms are becoming nastier.  So it is much quicker and easier to just replace the Queen with one of my own, with known qualities.

1 May
Late yesterday, around 8 pm I had a swarm call from a local contractor.  He has a huge old cedar tree in his garden that over the years has developed a lot of hollowed out areas. all of them have colonies in.  I think I collected three or four swarms there last year.

Again not a great photo, nearly dark by the time I arrived.  I shook them down into a hive and left them overnight.  I went back this morning they were all tucked up inside the hive, don't blame them, its a miserable day.

Off we go again

And so another beekeeping season begins, already a complete contrast to last year, which was an extremely cold and very long Winter.  The oil seed rape, which is my main crop only started flowering in June, when it should flower from early May onwards.  This year the oil seed rape has just started flowering, a good month early.  I will take some photos of the fields that surround my apiaries over the next few days and post them on here.


A good early order book this year and the first batch of nuc boxes are ready for their colonies.  All my colonies are going very well already, and some have capped drone cells, so I would guess that there will be drones about in a week to ten days.  As long as the weather holds we will be able to start Queen production very early this year