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.