I'm not sure how I've managed it but I am now up to 16 colonies, 9 at Ravensden and 7 at Scald End. Some of the new ones I bought, two were given to me and another three were swarms.
For me the most interesting one is the British queen I bought.
British black bee colonies are now virtually non existent having been nearly wiped out by disease in the last century and bee keepers replaced them with European bees. [No Beexit jokes please].
Having evolved over centuries in our climate the British Black bee was much better suited for our environment although apparently they could be a little 'spikey'.
It is still possible to buy BBB queens which I did and managed to successfully introduce her [I call her Victoria] to a queen less colony. The colony was quite small so they were put in a polystyrene nuc box [a small bee hive] and left there for the winter.
Long term keeping BBB's is a bit pointless but more about this when I move her into a full sized hive in the Spring.
The bees had their autumn feed of syrup and this year I have tried different winter insulation wraps for the hives They are made from a plastic material and as well as insulation they are supposed to protect the hives from wood peckers.
I've just done their winter oxalic treatment and I'll do a blog on this later.
Last year I lost two colonies to wasps and to try and prevent this happening again I bought a couple of wasp traps.
It did catch a few but there were very few around this year. Also saw very few wood peckers.
The honey situation this year has been a bit weird.
As some of you might know I have very little interest in honey as regards selling it at markets and haven't eaten any for years. To me the importance of honey production is more to do with the ability of the bees to survive the winter yet people often ask me if its been a good year for the bees when they really mean how much honey have my bees produced. My standard unhelpful response is 'I don't know yet'.
For me the judgement as to whether it has been a good year or not is how many colonies get through the winter. Although bees face all sorts of problems, honey bees are not at risk, but saying that an large number of colonies don't make it through the winter.
On average in this country about 20% of the colonies don't make it, so I could expect to lose 3. Despite the largely uninformed hysteria in the press about bee deaths, there has been a gradual improvement in honey bee winter mortality in the UK.
In America however its much worse with an average of a third of colonies lost, and last year it was 41%.
The main factors that affect their ability to survive the winter are keeping them healthy and having enough honey to survive until the Spring.
The health issue really relates to the varroa mite, hence the winter treatment. Varroa cannot be entirely removed but the oxalic acid reduces the mite numbers.
Obviously the more honey they have going into winter improves their chances of survival.
2016 honey 'production' in the UK was an improvement over the previous year with an average of 26lb honey per hive being produced; a 5lb increase over the previous year.
Yet we could have a very long cold wet winter as in 2011 [when all my colonies died] and the bees just haven't produced enough food to survive leading to a high winter death rate.
I think the figure can be misleading as its the honey we take and ignores the honey in the brood box. It seems quite possible for a colony not to produce any surplus we take yet have enough in the brood box and have adequate feeds to get it through the winter.
To make it more complicated, a warm winter can be as bad as a bad winter. Its been quite warm over Christmas and when I was last at Scald End there were lots of bees from all seven hives flying.
Although bees don't hibernate they go into a torpid state to conserve food. If its warm enough for them to fly they consume more food, reducing their chances of surviving winter.
The National Bee Unit have just issued an email saying:-
In some regions of the UK beekeepers have reported excessive use of food stores due to the un-seasonally warm weather. It would be advisable that you check your colonies have adequate stores and add supplements if required. With the weather being quite variable, fondant is the best option not liquid feed.
So its possible to have a high winter mortality rate ['bad year'] yet high honey production ['good year']
My honey year as regards production has been awful. I'm not the only one as nearly everyone I have spoken to locally have had the same problem, even the large scale honey producers.
For the coming year will I get more colonies? I think you know the answer to that.
I am probably going to get involved in something that will need two new colonies on a new site. They may be needed quite early in the season so I can't rely on getting some swarms or splits from my existing colonies so I may have to buy a couple of colonies. I could move a couple of my existing colonies but I'll see how things go.
Earlier in the year I was talking to a local bee keeper about swarms. He is far more experienced than I am and he said he thought we should just leave the bees alone in swarming season and let them get on with it. After all the bee keeper gets a new young queen in the existing colony and if he also catches the swarm then the colony count goes up by one.
One thing that was obvious was that he is far more in top of his colonies than I am during swarming season [which explains why I lose so many swarms] and as soon as there are queen cells and other signs of swarming he splits the hive so the existing queen is still in the apiary and he gets a new queen in a new colony.To do this you need a lot of nuc boxes to put the new colonies in and I think they are expensive.
Fortunately Noah Deer, the Director of Strategic Development at North Bedfordshire Holdings, recently authorised a substantial investment in a state of the art research and development facility.
To prevent industrial espionage, it is cunningly camouflaged as a garden shed and has been built in a top secret location at the end of my garden.
Because of its confidential nature it is kept under constant satellite surveillance, surrounded by anti personnel mines and guarded by laser guided weapons.
I also have two attack trained cocker spaniels who look cute but would rip your throat out if you so much as look at them funny.
If all that fails there's a Keep Out sign on the door.
I have now have much more space to try and make things and I have also bought some nice new wood working toys to play with.
I have made a couple of nuc boxes and they came out OK. I have made varroa floors for them and ekes so I can put a feeder on top of the nuc box.
These can cost about £40 without a floor or eke but they cost me about half that to make. They might not be so posh as the commercial ones but I don't expect the bees will be too bothered. If they are they can bring it up at our monthly Liaison meetings.
I'm also going to try to make a Top Bar Hive to replace mine that was wrecked by wood peckers.
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| This is what its supposed to look like |
The next blog will probably be about the winter varroa treatment.
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