Bee News

An update on how the bees have been doing recently.

Despite me saying I would manage swarms better this year, it hasn't been a great success. Although I managed to get the swarm that only went a yard at Scald End, two colonies [possibly more] at Ravensden swarmed and they both were so high in the trees there was nothing I could but watch them leave.

This may come back to bite me in the bum but I think the swarming is over and there haven't been any queen cells, a sign of potential swarming, for a while.

I still try to check on a weekly basis and the last time was during some really humid weather, which bees hate, and they didn't enjoy it. Neither did I.

There is one colony at Ravensden that is beginning to rival the famed Bedford Bastards I had and even allowing for the weather they made it clear they didn't want me around.
I normally wear my bee suite and use rubber Marigolds but they were so pissed off, I went home to put a thick shirt on under my suite, used my leather gloves and put on gauntlets to protect my arms.
Even then it wasn't a pleasant experience and after it was over I gave the suite a proper wash. When bees sting you they leave behind a sac containing the attack pheromone and these get embedded in the suite. Too many of them and you become a walking target so the suite  and gloves have to be washed from time to time.

Apart from keeping queen cells in check and putting supers on to give them space to expand into, I did split some colonies, most of which seem to be OK. This does mean my intention not to have any more colonies has gone out the window.

There was a hive I was worried about at Ravensden. It only just made it through the winter and was really struggling. However I fed it and gave it some tonic and its completely transformed. Its now managed to fill all its brood frames and I put a super on it a while ago.

I'm very, very pleased.

There is something called the National Bee Unit. This is a government run scheme to which bee keepers register and it issues advice and help on bee matters.

Last Spring they issued a warning about possible starvation due to the wet weather and a week or so so they issued another email headed 'Starvation Alert'. The email started 

Beekeepers may wish to monitor their colony food levels closely, particularly in any splits, nucleus colonies or colonies where the entire spring honey crop was removed. In some areas of the UK, our Inspectors are concerned at finding colonies that are starving.

it then went onto say

However, in other areas of the UK the blackberry, lime and clover is now out and colonies are starting to bring in an excess crop, so it is also important not to feed unnecessarily and risk adulterating honey with sugar syrup.

Unfortunately it didn't say which area was which. Even with the near total absence of Oil Seed Rape, there is a lot of clover and lime around and the blackberries are beginning to flower so I don't think I need worry.

I have been without honey for a while now but a few weeks ago I did the first extraction of the year.

Not my favourite job but a reasonable amount was produced and enough to maintain the Farmer's markets for a while. I had to cancel the Beds Young Farmer's Rally and a couple of other smaller events but the honey arrived in time for me to do the Open Farm Day at Scald End where some of my bees are kept. Despite the wind damaging my gazebo it was a great day and I strongly recommend you come next year. There's lots of farm machinery to clamber over and I was next to a monster vehicle whose tyres must have been 8ft in diameter. Lots of cute animals and I am particularly fond of little piglets.

I took along my small observation hive with a marked queen and as usual it attracted huge interest. The kids in particular were fascinated.

Leaving the best news to last, I have seen the Beast!!!!

The regular reader of this blog will know of the hive at Ravensden I call the Beast. It has the only queen I have had that has managed to maintain two brood boxes rather than just one and on each inspection both boxes are full of brood. This translates into lots of bees which translates into honey and she produced a full super for extraction with other frames and another two supers not far off being full.

The problem with a double brood box colony is that it obviously takes twice as long to check and given queens are notoriously shy and difficult to see, I have never managed to track her down and mark her.

At the last visit I thought I would just give it a quick look over and took the supers off. Second frame in and there she was, walking purposefully across the frame in open view.

I always have a queen catcher with me in case I see the queen.

It works by having the blue mesh on top of the catcher in the photo open and putting the catcher over the queen. The blue mesh is then slid back catching the queen. The internal tube is then pushed upwards but this can't go high enough to squash her, and she is stuck between the foam on top of the tube and the mesh. If you do this when her back is upwards you can keep her still to apply the paint to her thorax. She's then left for a couple of minutes for the paint to dry otherwise when she is re-introduced the retinue bees whose job it is to look after her, will lick it off.

In my excitement I managed to put the catcher on her upside down and predictably when I lifted the catcher, she shot off to hide in the gap between the frame and the comb. Flipping the frame over I saw her emerge on the other side of the frame and I managed to catch her again. Paint was duly applied.

I don't know if its my imagination but she seemed huge to me, and dwarfed the little worker bee that was also trapped.

It is a huge benefit to have a queen marked. It can make inspections easier, swarm control much more controllable and because she is easier to find, raising other queens from her is easier. Whether or not I will do this this year to something I will have to think about.

Some wasps have started to make an appearance. Fortunately they weren't too much of a problem last year but I will get my wasp traps ready for them.

Clearing the Bees

Once the bees have capped an entire super of frame its ready for extraction.

The bees need to be removed from the supers and as with all things there are a variety of ways to do it.
One way is to use porter escapes.

These are one way exits and the springs allow the bee to pass through but not get back.
They are put in a crown board below a super and as the bees leave they cannot get back in and the super gradually empties

Trouble is this can take up to 24 hours. There are variations of these that have wider escapes but I've never got on too well with them  so I use a quicker way that doesn't seem to disrupt the bees too much.

This is how I do it.

Why do bee keepers smoke their bees?

Because they can't afford cigarettes.

Sorry about that.

I have been asked a few times why bee keepers smoke their bees and it is part of the bee keeping stereotype for bee keepers to be dressed up like something from Ghostbusters, puffing huge  clouds of smoke at their bees.

The reason its done is that it calms bees down and works in two ways.
Honey bees are forest dwelling animals and to them smoke signifies fire which means they need to get away quickly.
As is the case when they are swarming they might not be getting any honey for a while so they fill up their honey stomachs and they quickly leave the top of the frames to get some honey.
They increase in size by about a third and become quite drowsy.
When they frames are taken out they can be seen, heads in the comb slurping it up.

The other reason is to do with pheromones which are chemical substances they secrete and which act as a communication system for the bees.
If the hive is being opened, or attacked as they see it, they issue an attack pheromone, which triggers their defence response.
If there is smoke around the pheromone is harder to detect and they become less defensive.

Its tempting to use smoke as a bit of a 'cosh' to keep them quiet. I don't have any particularly difficult bees so try not to use too much smoke. Once I had some bees that I called the Bedford Bastards who were so defensive I was often tempted to use a flame thrower on them.

If I am doing something quick or non interventional like checking feeders, I will do this without smoke. A bee keepers truism is 'know your bees'. and if you have defensive bees or have to do something when the weather is unhelpful, then I don't see any reason to be brave and will use some smoke.
For some reason generally the bees at Scald End seem calmer than the Ravensden bees and recently I inspected all the SE bees without wearing gloves and used minimal smoke.

Time to extract the honey

After a few months without honey, it looks like its time to extract some.
People who I have spoken to about this seem to think extraction must fun, 'reward for all the hard work' etc.
It isn't.
Its hard work and everything gets covered in a film of sticky honey and is probably one of the reasons I don't eat honey.

Honey extraction isn't an ongoing process, unless you have a Flow Hive of course, and normally its done twice a year in May and August.
The actual timing depends on how quickly the bees fill the frames and the flowers they have been extracting nectar from.
All honey crystallises and the rate it does so depends on the nectar. Honey from Oil Seed Rape is notorious for going hard very quickly and so you have to keep a close eye on the frames so as soon as the frames are capped they are taken out of the hive and the honey extracted. If you don't, you find the honey has gone hard in the frames and its a pain in the [....] to deal with.
You have to cut the comb out of the frames, warm it until it melts, let it cool to leave the wax on top and the liquid honey underneath.
There has been very little OSR around the apiaries and the honey looks to be nice and runny.

There are two stages to the extraction, clearing the frames of bees and then the actual extraction.

However firstly, some basics about honey
Honey is made from nectar collected from flowers. The bees 'drink' the nectar using their proboscis

The nectar is stored in their 'honey stomach' which is separate to their 'normal stomach'. There is a valve between the two stomachs and if the bee wants food the valve is opened and nectar passes into its stomach. Its a one way valve so it can't return to the honey stomach. I get very irritated when people say honey is 'bee vomit'.

Nectar is far from the finished item and the first stage of the processing is when the bee adds enzymes from glands in their mouths to the nectar to change the nature of the sugars in the nectar. They also make the honey acidic adding to its anti bacterial properties
When full the bee returns to the hive and the nectar is transferred to other bees waiting in the hive.

The foraging bee then leaves the hive and the nectar gets stored in the comb inside the hive.
As nectar is still quite liquid the bees build the comb at an angle of ~ 14⁰ to stop it running out.

The water content in nectar is quite high, about 80%. Unless this is reduced the honey is liable to ferment and also the bees do not want to take on too much water in winter as they cannot leave the hive in winter to get rid of it.
The inside of a hive is quite warm and the water starts to evaporate and the bees fan the nectar with their wings to help the evaporation until its about 17%
Once its just right the bees then cap over each cell with wax to make a sealed container of food.

Next blog will be about clearing the frames ready for extraction.