I like bees........and I like owls

but which one would win, well actually it wasn't much of a fight.  This was a little owl nest box before a swarm decided it was more deserving of the space.  As you can see they were sitting on two eggs at the time and I would guess not far from hatching, but there is not much that can resist bees if they want your home.

I removed the front of the box to gain access, the bees had been in occupancy for about a week and had 5 or 6 combs filled with honey.  As always with these removals its a very messy business and you end up with a lot of very upset bees.

Wannabee a beekeeper 1, the hive

Over the few months that I have been running this blog I have received a lot of mails from people who would like to become beekeepers, have read the books, been on-line, but still do not understand the mechanics of how a hive goes together or how the whole system works.  So here goes, THE HIVE, bearing in mind that I only use British Standard Modified hives and that the way I construct hives and keep bees, is not the only way.

The photograph on the right is a hive Jim, but not as we know it.  It is the parts that make up a hive in no particular order.

The Floor.

This one is a fairly typical modern floor.  It is known as an OMF (open mesh floor) or a varroa floor, and it comes with a correx sliding tray so that it is possible for the beekeeper to do a head count on the numbers of varroa falling through the mesh onto the tray.

The Brood

This is the brood chamber or sometimes called the deep, called the brood because it will contain the Queen and all the eggs, larvae and metamorphosing bees that make up the brood. Called a deep because it is deeper than a shallow.  I use plastic runners for both boods and supers
The floor is constructed in such a way that when the brood is placed upon it, the entrance is formed.

The Queen Excluder.

The Queen excluder comes in several types, the one shown is a plastic slotted, there are metal slotted and wired excluders.  My preference is for the wired excluders, they seem to be the least offensive to the bees, but much more expensive than others types.

The Super

The super is placed on top of the queen excluder, super because it is superimposed, shallow because it is shallower than the deep.
This is where the bees will store their honey.  Supers are added as required through the season, one on top of the other, at the moment some of my hives have four supers on.

The Crownboard

The crownboard tops off, crowns, the working parts of the hive, it can be as simple as a flat piece of ply, this one has two slots that are made to accept Porter bee escapes, but as I don't use Porters I just cover these slots with a thin piece of plasic.

The Roof

The roof weatherproofs the hive, this is a 100mm edged roof with a galvanized top.  I don't have any form of top ventilation, ever, so  I block off the ventilation slots that are machined into the woodwork.

I give you THE HIVE



The parts of a hive sit one on top of the other without fixings of any kind, that is not to say that the bees will 'glue' them together pretty quickly.  Any slight imperfections in the join between parts of the hive will be filled with propolis, but that is a whole other story.

New homes

At long last colonies and nucs have made up for the dreadful weather in April, and are ready for their new owners to collect.

Complete working colonies are moved into brand new hives

They are then clamped with ratchet straps and when its late in the evening and the last of the flying bees have returned home, the entrance will be sealed.

This one has been sited in its new location on the outskirts of Huntingdon and has just been opened.  This colony has gone to a returning customer and I hope that they work as hard for him as the one he had last year, which has already given 40lbs of honey this season.

Stolen Hives

Sometime last night, Wed 30th May. I had two nucleus hives stolen from a farm complex on Holbeach Fen.  The boxes were brand new.


The only consolation is that they contained old queens, one white one blue and they both headed ferocious colonies, which is why they were in nucs while their hives are being requeened.


I hope when they are opened they cut in half whoever took them


i'll post a couple of pictures of similar nucs when the rain stops.






I spent the day clearing the site, miserable weather, so I won't lose too many flying bees.  All the hives here had newly mated queens and being bumped around the Lincolnshire countryside in the rain is not the best start they could have.
This apiary was my nursery where I raise all my nucs and new queens.  It means that I will be producing a lot less colonies in the future.  
Its a sad fact that this theft would have been carried out by someone who calls himself a beekeeper, but being a beekeeper is more than just wearing the suit.

Drone culling

Drone culling is one way of reducing the numbers of varroa mites in a hive and is something I do throughout the active season.  Once a colony has reached the 6-7 frames of brood stage I remove one of the outer frames and place a super frame in the middle of the brood chamber, maintaining the 11 frames I use in a national brood chamber.  Because this frame is shorter than a normal brood frame the bees will construct 'wild' comb on the bottom of it and invariably the wild comb will be drone.  Once the majority of the drone has been capped I cut the wild drone comb from the bottom of the frame and place the frame back in its place in the brood chamber, ready for the cycle to repeat.  The removed drone comb will be checked for varroa before being recycled.

The life cycle of drones is better suited to varroa than either workers or Queens, so they prefer to lay their eggs in a drone cell, by removing this wild drone comb on a regular basis it is easy to monitor the levels and reduce the numbers of varroa.