March News

I only make one New Years Resolution, which is not to make New Year's Resolutions.
With the bees its slightly different in that I make New Season Resolutions knowing I will probably never keep them.
This season I thought I would have another go at queen rearing.

This came about after I attended a seminar on queen bees and the presenters, all of whom had been doing it for years, assured everybody it was easy. In principle it is easy, although very time critical,  but I have failed on both occasions I have tried.
To have a supply of queens on hand is very handy if an existing colony becomes queen-less Although you can buy queen bees they can cost between £35 and £50. You are supposed to introduce a new queen to a colony every three years and that can be expensive.
The queens are often from abroad and its considered a good thing for the stock of English  bees if we can rear our own local bees.
Bee diseases  can be spread by the export/import of bees from abroad so bee keepers are encouraged to use 'local' bees.

As with most things there are various ways of queen rearing. The traditional way is called grafting where you use a small stick like thing to get a larvae which then is put in a plastic cell to develop.

I tried this on a course I was on and I don't have the ability, patience or eyesight to do it.

My preferred method involves getting the queen to lay eggs in a special frame and for the eggs to be transferred to another frame to develop. The new queens are then transferred to small hives called nucs.

More on this later.

To be able to rear queens and also to manage swarming, its very useful to have your queens marked.

Queens are marked partly to make them more visible and also to show how old she is - different colours relate to the year she hatched [this year is red].

I've never been too bothered about this but have a couple of marked queens I use to take to markets in my observation hive.
Finding them isn't the easiest thing to do  and as they don't like light they will scurry off to hide in the dark. However once seen, I am OK in catching and marking her.
There are various techniques to find her but recently I came across something on YouTube that I have adapted and should work OK. Essentially it is a sort of simple box with a queen excluder under it. You shake all the bees into the box and the worker bees can go through the excluder into a brood box below it, leaving the queen behind
More of this later as well.

What have I done?

At the seminar I met someone I hadn't seen for a while and we got talking about swarms. The Bedfordshire Beekeepers Association have a scheme where people with a swarm can contact somebody locally from the Association who will come and get it. Details are here.
It turns out Helen is a Swarm Collector but she is a teacher so isn't available much during the day.
I think you can see what's coming.
Yes, I've agreed to be available if she can't make it.
This is possibly in the Top Ten Stupid Mistakes a bee keeper can make. I will now get a stream of phone calls at any time of the day about a swarm of wasps/bumblebees/solitary bees/ants/ "insecty things" that are in chimneys/lofts/walls/basements etc.

The swarms the Association collect are given to new bee keepers but it seems this is not as easy as it sounds and often the swarms are unwanted. The conventional way of dealing with a surplus of swarms is to combine them and let the queens fight it out to produce one colony
For no rational reason this doesn't appeal to me so I thought I might try and find a new small apiary nearby for the swarms and also somewhere parts of the queen rearing can be done.
A few days ago the Association sent round an email saying someone in Kempston had a small field he would like someone to keeps a few hives on. Perfect.
However I waited to the evening before phoning only to find out someone had beaten me to it  [#$%&*"!!]. The search continues.

The dull jobs continue.

I have finally cleaned out all the frames and started to put the wax sheets in them. Unfortunately the Association have temporarily run out of foundation and just to get the job done and dusted I had thought about buying it elsewhere until I remembered the Association sells it at half normal price.

All the feeders have been cleaned and I have taken a batch of them up to Scald End ready for the Spring feed. I haven't been to SE for a while due to the weather and when I checked them they all needed replacement fondant.
Despite being a few degrees above zero, Colony 3 had to reinforce its reputation of being absolute nutters and a few dozen thought they would come out to see what was going on and despite the cold were outside for ages.
Changing fondant isn't an intrusive job and it was very cold so I didn't suite up. Got my first sting of the season.

The Markets start again.

The markets at Potton and Bromham start again from March. My interest in markets continues to slowly decline and had I known when I started doing them what was involved, I probably wouldn't have started. Bits are OK but preparation, set up and clearing up are a PITA.
Problem is I am now in the position of having too many bees to just sell/give to friends/family/people in the village and I have to get rid of the honey somehow.
Apart from Potton and Bromham the only other markets I will do this year will be the Bedfordshire Young Farmers Rally and the Open Farm Sunday, both of which are at Scald End farm where I keep some of my bees.
The Open Farm Sunday [10th June] is a national event and its family's to see what goes on a farm and has all sorts of attractions. Last year my grandsons came and they loved it with animals to see and machinery to clamber over. Next to my gazebo was a huge red tractor with wheels taller than me that I wanted to climb about on but was told it cost about £1/4M
The Beds Young Farmer's Rally [19th May] is a big event and when I did it the first time was stuck somewhere that was principally a trade stall area. The food stands are usually in a big marquee but I prefer being outside. Still did pretty well though.

The recent snow is a bit of a worry. I have replaced the fondant where necessary but by now things should be getting better. A small colony hasn't made it and I have worrying memories of the year where all the colonies I had at the time starved.

Dead bees