Bee News
swarm cells
The Welsh Assembly Government have just issued very helpful booklets on what to do if swarm cells (also known as queen cells) are found in the hive. This picture is from the booklet and illustrates what we are looking for on our hive inspections from now until July. These cells usually indicate that the hive is preparing to swarm - a sealed cell means it may have done so already. On our last hive check all looked promising in the hive, lots of sealed and unsealed brood (bee lavae), stores (food) and though we didnt notice the queen we know she is there as eggs were present...so we added a super (top box) making sure, well in advance, that they have plenty of room for when all the new bees emerge. A congested hive is one reason why bees may swarm - a poor queen is another and sometimes poor weather. A good nectar flow tends to hold back the swarming urge. As we have had a run of lovely sunny days with an abundance of hawthorn blossom, gorse, catkins and dandelions maybe the bees will be too busy to swarm. We will check every seven days to be sure. If they do swarm, unless its captured and rehived, we lose half of our bees which would lessen the probability of a good honey crop later this year ...
Treating the bees with Oxalic acid
Preparing the bees for winter by ensuring adequate food supplies, reducing the hive entrance to avoid predators and treating with Apiguard (an anti- varorra treatment) are the first stages of good winter bee management. The final stage is to apply Oxalic acid to the bees in early January to kill off any existing varorra mites present on adult bees. This ensures minimum winter loses and maximum health for the hive in the coming Spring. We went along to the CBKA apiary meeting at Tal y Cafn, Conwy to see how it's done. It has to be done quickly, the bees don't like disturbance this time of year and it's not fair to let out all their heat from the hive. It's also important to use the correct dosage - too much can kill the bees. The acid is dissolved in a sugar solution and sucked into a syringe. The hive roof and crown board are carefully removed then 5ml, per seam of bees, is applied. A quick check to see if they have enough food and then the crown board and roof are replaced. And that's it. Then it started hailing. We treated our bees the next day. They seem to have enouh to eat but I bought some sugar fondant as an emergency feed should it be necessary next month. We also supplied them with extra roof insulation. Garry Logs provided us with this picture of the bees being treated at the January meeting.
nothing to do with bees but...
We'd like to show off our new pets. Free to a good home - who could resist. They are Kunekune pigs and apparantly very good grazers. They eat grass over spring and summer, keeping the lawns nice so that will be their job - organic lawn mowers. They have strong characters, are intelligent and love having their backs scratched. Its a bit of a distraction from work!
hives in Spring
we inspected the bees in April and all was well but since then tempers seem frayed and we cant get anywhere near them...which is a shame as its swarming season. It could have been because I thoughtlessley wore black plastic gloves. It dawned on me later that they hate dark colours, maybe an innate memory of bears, one of their earliest predators. So, I bought some yellow Marigolds but again as soon as we opened the hive they showed signs of fury! Trying to be brave and think of African honey bees which are much more aggresive that the little British honey bee I made one more attempt but retreated hastily. Silly really as the bee suit offers all over protection - will have another go at the weekend....it has been windy and they dont like that so we shall see. Meanwhile we have been revising the methods of rehiving a swarm.
March - The beginning of the bee keeping year.
With St David's day heralding the promise of Spring we look forward to our second year of bee keeping. We have given the bees some sugar syrup as there is little in flower at the moment. We lifted the roofs from the hives and placed the feed buckets over the feed holes in the crown boards. The crown board covers the frames of bees enabling the bee keeper to remove the main hive roof without letting out all the heat. The queen will have started to lay eggs and the workers have to keep the brood temperature at 35 degrees C. That's hot!
snow covered hives Feb 09
Februarys snows have followed a mild spell during which the bees aired their wings in flight and settled on the snowdrops. For the time being though they will remain inside until the big thaw.
winter buzzzz
After we finished the winter feeding we attached mouse guards to the entrances of each hive. These are strips of metal with pencil width holes enabling bees to pass through but not mice which could eat the comb. In this frosty weather the bees remain in a cluster and little activity takes place.
the honey harvest
We decided to take five frames of wax-capped honey from the bees so leaving them, together with a gallon of sugar syrup if needed, plenty of stores for the coming winter months. Just these five frames gave us 9 pots of delicious, floral, pure golden honey. Not quite the 30 or so pots we'd imagined harvesting at the beginning of this bee keeping year but never mind. What hard working bees! With only a few rain free days during the main nectar flows (May and July) we think they've done really well. Our admiration and affection for this species deepens. Our next job is to see them safe through the winter by treating them for the Varroa mite.
heather and honey making
Heather is an important food source for bees in August and makes delicious honey. We are lucky to have hills covered with purple heather just over our garden wall. August and September are the months to remove the honey crop begging the question "how do bees turn nectar into honey?" Answer - They use their long, straw like tongues (called proboscis) to suck the nectar out of the flowers. This nectar is stored, as they go from flower to flower, inside one of their two stomachs (or sacs.) When the stomach is full, the bee flies back to the hive. While inside the bee's stomach the nectar mixes with proteins and enzymes produced by the bees, converting the nectar into unripe honey. The bees then drop the honey into the hexagonal cells of the beeswax comb. To prepare for long-term storage, the bees fan their wings to evaporate and thicken the honey. Pure nectar is 80% water and honey only about 14-18% water. Then the bees cap the honeycomb with wax produced by their wax glands and move on to the next empty comb, starting all over again. So, the honey we eat is a plant product called nectar which bees have regurgitated and dehydrated to improve its nutritional properties. When we remove half of this years ripe honey crop we will replaces it with a 5 litre bucket of sugar syrup so they have plenty of food for the coming months. We will be extracting our honey in early September.
swarm collecting
Why aren't the bees going by the book? We looked out for swarm cells in each hive, the bee inspector came around and saw nothing untoward. They had plenty of room, lots of food but they still swarmed anyway during this first very hot weekend. I caught one swarm and most of the casts. I spent a whole day in and out of my bee suit. One clump of bees was in a tricky place so I had my cardboard box held to my chest as I balanced myself in the apple tree. I attempted to shake them into the box. Half landed on my head - then my floppy hat which I wear inside the bee hood slipped over my eyes and face. I was stumbling around the orchard inside a cloud of confused bees feeling relieved the leafy bushes blocked the view from our neighbours kitchen window!! I decided I needed to go back to a Conwy apiary meeting to enhance my skills.
spring inspections May 2008
Every seven days now we are carrying out bee inspections to optimise the health and happiness of our little friends. This involves opening up the hives and, one by one and very carefully, taking out the frames of bees to see what's going on. The questions we ask ourselves while we do this are - do they have enough room, are there any eggs (to show the queen bee is present and laying,) are there plenty of pearly white larvae, food stores and healthy bees. We started our inspections a little late, I got stung on the head, and we missed the clue that one colony was about to swarm, probably due to being congested in the brood box (thats the bottom box where the queen lays eggs and workers look after the brood.) Luckily, we caught the swarm and managed to home them in a brand new "nucleus box" with a frame of stores to keep them fed and busy. Early May we put on the supers (the top box that sits on the brood box) with a queen excluder in between. This keeps the Queen in her place in the brood box so she doesn't fill the top boxes for honey stores with eggs. Our huge hawthorn bush, covered with white blossom, and the sunshine yellow dandelions are important food sources for the bees in May.
Feeding the Bees - 25th March 08
In Spring the bees should have a lot of lavae to feed so their stores can diminish quite rapidly - we noticed, on a couple of sunny days this month, bees carrying pollen into the hive - an indicator that there is brood to be fed. Worrying (probably without cause) that the bees will starve we fed them with a little sugar syrup made from one part water one part sugar to keep them going through these rainy days.
bee news 11th February 2008
Our bees are taking advantage of the recent sunny weather and are out on whats known in beekeeping as "cleansing flights." Returning to their hives with pollen is a good sign that the queen is egg laying. The pollen is carried in pollen sacks located on their hind legs. Snowdrops and Gorse are a good food source for bees this month.
Bee News October 2007
We have just bought some heather beeswax from Peter McFadden of the Conwy Beekeepers Association. Peter takes his bees to the heather every September. It's a beautiful deep golden colour and has a lovely heady aroma. We shall be using it in our scalp cream and a new product - a honey, kukui nut and avocado hair food (in stock soon.)
Next year we hope to be using some of our own beeswax and honey. Beekeeping is new to us so fingers crossed for a good honey season next year. We have two hives, now made secure and predator proof for the coming winter months. The bee hives have open mesh floors for good ventilation so we have now put bee blankets over the crown boads to keep in the heat.