First orders !!!, Last swarms ???

What a year, I have never known anything like it.  Bees virtually starving at the height of the season, now the ivy is coming into flower a month early and the girls are going for it, all my colonies are heaving and supers filling.  No swarm calls for over a month and then two on Sunday 19th, that is just about the latest I have ever collected a swarm, surely coming to the end now, there comes a point when even the bees must realise that its getting too late for a swarm to survive and the princess to mate.
Its too late for the swarms I collected to follow my normal procedure, by the time they go through a brood cycle it will be late September, way past the time of year I would consider uniting.  So they will have to manage the winter as they are and be requeened in the Spring, one of them has eggs already, I will check the other tomorrow.

And I have just had the first orders for colonies for early May 2013, I don't even start to advertise until November.  Its easily the earliest I have taken orders. The advantage early orders get is that they can choose their colony, do the last few inspections of the year with me, be there when I treat with oxalic acid, decide if they would like to keep the overwintered Queen or have the colony requeened in April, and they have a price fixed at this years rate.  It helps me loads, judging how many hives I need to construct and how many Queens to organise for next year.  I will be producing Queens in numbers next year, I usually only keep enough to get me through the year, but next year I will be producing a surplus to sell.

BBC CBeebies

The site at 8.15am

On Sunday we manned the stand for our local beekeeping club, Boston.  It was a CBeebies day.

We arrived at 8.15am to a fairly calm and organised site nearing   completion for the one day event in Kings Lynn.  Amy was running the show and seemed relieved that we had arrived, but she was very organised and soon sorted everything we needed.

Our marquee

Dawn andAmy

All our kit

All The kit was offloaded near our allocated area,  opposite the newts and beside the slugs and snails, don't ask, I didn't.

Candle rolling

My wife Dawn was in charge of candle rolling and I was to look after the
observation hive and honey tasting
Set up was straightforward and by 10am when the first batch of 500 children with their parents were let in, we were ready, or at least I thought we were.  By 11am they were three deep around the stand and I was beginning to feel a little shell shocked, at 4pm we ran out of everything, by 5pm when it finished my brain had melted.
I didn't know that many children existed and they kept coming, thousands of them.  We actually managed lunch at 5.15pm,

But it was a great day and a fantastic way to get children involved.

Uniting

Joining two colonies together, or 'uniting' is done for various reasons, a colony has become queenless and there are no spare queens available, or it is too late in the season for the colony to build before winter.  uniting may give one large colony a better chance of going through winter rather than two medium colonies.  Re-uniting after an artificial swarm, 'AS.' Or the reason I usually unite is to absorb swarms into my apiary.
All the swarms I collect are treated for varroa and isolated from my other colonies, they go through at least one brood cycle to make sure they are disease free, they will then either be requeened or united into one of my colonies, depending on time of year and availability of new queens.  It has been a particularly difficult year to produce good quality well mated queens, so just about all the swarms from this year are being united into my overwintering hives.

This is the way I unite, it is not the quickest and not the way most books or other beekeepers will do it, but it has over the years been 100% successful for me, with minimal loss of bees in the uniting process.  On the right in the first picture is a working colony with a Queen in, Queenright, Q+ are the ways to show a colony with a Queen.  On the left of the first picture is one of this years swarms, the Queen has been removed.  Between the two hives is a crownboard that has been modified to work like a Snelgrove board, the feed holes have been covered in varroa mesh and there is an adjustable opening in one side of the board.  It isn't a Snelgrove board exactly nor is this the purpose a Snelgrove board was meant for, which was a form of swarm control.

The board is placed directly on top of the
Q+ brood chamber.

The Qless brood chamber is now placed directly on top of the board with the entrance open and at right angles to the Q+ entrance.  The bees can smell each other through the mesh but are not able to do each other harm and they can remain like this if necessary for weeks.  The pheromones from the Q+ passing through the mesh seem to suppress the urge for the Qless colony to produce a drone laying worker, or at least I have never had a colony in this situation produce one.

Once the two colonies have had a few days to get used to one another I replace the board with a thin piece of card that has been slashed with a craft knife.

It takes the bees a couple of days before the bees eventually break through and by this time are already one colony.

You can now either run this as a double brood colony or shake all the bees into one brood,  This will depend on time of year, weather, and your own preferences.

I normally keep very large single brood chamber colonies, I manage my bees to be on 11 full frames of brood throughout the summer.

The Heckington Show

I spent a really enjoyable day on Saturday at The Heckington Show on  the bee stand.
Considering Heckington is a village in rural Lincolnshire, it is a huge show which runs over a full weekend.  It has been going in excess of 100 years and judging by the numbers there on Saturday will continue to do well.

The bee stand was continually busy from the time the show opened until I caved in at around 5pm.  So many inquiries it was difficult to fit in the odd cup of tea, and the odd cup of tea is an essential as far as I am concerned.

The observation hive was a great favourite, everyone trying to spot the Queen, especially the children, and although the Queen
was marked she still proved illusive.

An incredible amount of interest, no doubt driven by the media focus on bees and their plight over the last couple of years, its nice that people care enough to ask how the bees are coping.






Its very rewarding helping and passing on knowledge to new beekeepers and those wishing to become beekeepers.
With luck I will be at the show again next year
and will see some of you there.

Wannabee a beekeeper 3, The Bees

As a new beekeeper, your first colony is very exciting and therefore deciding on which option to go for requires a lot of thought.

I collect quite a few swarms during the course of a season, they are isolated from my working colonies they are treated for varroa and requeened.  For this reason I have always been opposed to beginners collecting swarms, as age of Queen, temperament of the colony and level of desease/varroa are all unknowns and not something that you should have to deal with as your introduction to beekeeping.

Do you purchase a Nuc ( nucleus), a mini colony ready to move up to a full hive, should it have a new season or late autumn overwintered Queen.  Top right is one of my stock 5 frame nucs, they will have starter colonies installed late in the year with a new Queen.  These are overwintered and form the basis of my earliest nucs and colonies. I also produce early nucs with current season Queens.   With a nuc a new beekeeper can grow in confidence as the colony expands, and if acquired early enough may produce a crop.

or

Do you buy a colony that has recently moved up from a nuc and is now on 6-7 frames of brood, very soon it is likely to require a Queen excluder and the first super, with the right weather conditions and a good flow it will be thinking about swarming.  Its a fast learning curve with this option, things move very quickly in the hive and the bees don't wait while you stumble over decisions.  A mentor who can help you through the first season is an essential.

or

Do you purchase a full working colony at its height. This is for either the brave or foolhardy, possibly both.  There will be 60-70,000 bees, 11 frames of brood, supers filling.  You would have to deal with probable Queen cells, artificial swarming and then uniting, no amount of book reading or course attending can prepare you for dealing with a colony in full flow on your own, it has to be experienced and for a beginner it would be daunting.


Wherever you buy your bees from, you should visit the apiary, at least once.  You should handle the bees you are going to buy, the actual colony.  The beekeeper you buy them from should be happy to mentor you through your first season or at least be at the end of the phone if you need help/advice.