General Bee Stuff

The Bees
At the risk of this statement coming back to bite me in the bum, they seem to be doing OK.
The autumn varroa treatments have been completed and they are in the middle of their autumn feed of syrup.
Its seems a little odd that some of the colonies quickly slurped up the 2/3 pints of syrup I have given them each yet a few others haven't touched it.
This will go on for a few weeks yet and then I will switch to the fondant that I ordered.

The bees at Ravensden are on the route I take The Boys for their walks so twice a day I just have a quick look in to the copse to see what they are up to.
I do enjoy the regular inspections and its a shame this now won't start again until March/April next year unless something dramatic happens. I won't disturb them just because I fancy a look/see so I will have to content myself with visual checks and its encouraging to see them very busy.
I have no idea where they are getting it from but they are still bringing in yellow pollen so the Queens are still laying.
A little while ago I combined two hives as one of them was struggling and wouldn't have made it through the winter and I pleased to see  a large amount of activity in the combined colony. The down side is that this colony now has two brood boxes [like The Beast] which are a pain to check.
Here's a short video about some of the colonies.

All the supers have been bought back and stacked up and this will be one of the winter jobs to replace/repair broken frames and get foundation put in ready for next year. They also need to be sprayed to prevent parasites setting up shop in the frames.

From time to time I am asked about what I call cut comb but is also called honeycomb or comb honey. Its basically a rectangle of wax cut from the frame with the honey still in it.

Inexplicably a lot of bee keepers consider it a 'premium product'. I consider it 'revolting'.
The frames have to be specially set up to produce it and I did  few and rather to my surprise its proved quite popular so something for next year is to set up more frames.

My main objective for next year is to populate my Top Bar Hive.

I had hoped to get a swarm to put in it but surprisingly it never happened.
I could wait for a swarm next season but rather than muck around I intend buying what is called a package. This is a box of 'loose' bees, usually about 3lb, with a queen in a queen cage. You normally use a package as normal frames don't fit in a TBH.

I don't know anybody locally who sells packages so I might have to get it from a company I know in Sussex. Unfortunately it means I have to drive there to pick it up.

Asian Hornet
Bees can be forgiven for thinking that life, like history, is just one bloody thing after another.
Climate, insecticides, varroa and habitat loss and now Asian Hornets can be added to the list of things they have to put up with.

Widespread in France a single hornet was found in Somerset last year and three days ago a confirmed sighting was made at Woolacomb, North Devon.
Reassuring noises are being made by the authorities but it all sounds a bit Canute like. They spread very quickly in France and will no doubt do so here and bee keepers will have to start thinking about what they can do.
Asian Hornets are nasty things and their favourite snack is a honey bee.

Still out of adversity comes opportunity.
Shortly after the announcement was made one of the more 'stack 'em high, flog 'em cheap' bee keeping supply firms sent out something to all their email subscribers attempting to flog their Hornet trap.
The email had the heading
Asian Hornets sighted in the UK!
They rapidly issued another email to their 'esteemed customers' saying some browsers translated the emoji wrongly and it should have been a grim face emoji not a smiling one which might suggest they were happy with the sales opportunity.
I use Chrome and I checked the email in Explorer and it had the smiling face as well. Perhaps users of more popular browsers didn't have the problem.

It also gave the Independent to go all Daily Mail'ish and run the headline

Originally the Independent showed a picture of the wrong type of wasp

The Express followed with

This despite the National Bee Unit saying

The Asian hornet is smaller than our native hornet and poses no greater risk to human health than a bee.


I understand tomorrows Daily Mirror headline will be:-

Introducing a new Queen

I often start a blog, possibly finish it but then forget about it.

This is one of those blogs,

Although our Queen seems to live for ever, honey bee queen have a shortish life.
She can live between 3 and 5 years although once she reaches 3 she starts to be lose it a bit and she starts laying just male drone eggs rather than a mixture of drones and workers, which is not a good idea ,so she has to be replaced.
Also she can just die or perhaps a queen doesn't return during the swarming season.

It is possible just to let the bees develop a new queen on their own but I decided to use some of the vast cash reserves North Bedfordshire Honey has accumulated in its secret offshore tax haven to buy two new ones.

Click here to see the video.

Autumn Feeding

Now the 'retail' honey thing is out of the way, its now time to concentrate on 'bee' honey.
A healthy hive can produce three times the amount of honey it needs but poor weather, bad winters and disease can mean the bees may need some help to get through the winter.

The varroa treatment has started and I need to think about what feeding may be necessary.
Autumn feeding is usually some form of syrup. Although its just sugar and water you wouldn't believe the debates on the forums about what mixes to use.
As far as I am concerned you use 1 lbs sugar to 1 pint of water in early Spring and 2:1 later. In winter I switch to fondant blocks.

There are a bewildering array of different feeders you can use.
At the top end of the market there are Ashforth feeders which holds two gallons.

These are put on top of the brood box and the bees come up through a slot to feed. I have two of them, one that only fits the WBC hive and the other will be put on The Beast.
Very nice but they are £50 each. I have eighteen hives so not having £800 handy, I use plastic contact feeders.
The ones I use are called rapid feeders and hold four pints, so obviously need filling up more regularly, but they only cost £3.50.

In each apiary I will have a 25ltr container of syrup to keep the feeders topped up so I buy a few 25kg sacks of sugar from Bookers.

How much to feed them?

As in all things opinions vary. I know two very experienced bee keepers who belong to the Association, one gives a gallon per hive and that's it, the other feeds as they need it. I'm of the latter school of thinking.

Steam Wax melter

Throughout the season you build up a pile of normally skanky wax comb from damaged frames or from extracting the honey

The local beekeeping association has a scheme where you can trade in your unused wax and they in turn sell it on to an organisation that then gives it a discount on the wax foundation sheets we buy from them.
However before we pass the wax onto them it has to be cleaned. There are many methods of doing this and normally you melt the wax with some sort of bain marie and then strain it through a pair of tights, first making sure no one is wearing them, into a plastic container.

If you can afford it you can buy steam wax melters which do what the name implies

The association recently bought one for use by any of its members and I wondered about making one and in the words of that irritating arse Jeremy Clarkson, thought 'How hard can it be?
I wandered through YouTube and a lot of home made ones used the steamers you use to get wallpaper off. I had one of these so I thought I would give it a go.

Apart from trading it in I use the wax to make candles and furniture polish and add it to propolis to make a cream. More of which in a future blog