See the bees

From time to time I am asked about bee keeping and I advise people to 'try before you buy.'.
Bee keeping is more expensive, more time consuming and more physical than people expect so I think it a good idea to have a trial go before you commit yourself.
The Bedfordshire Beekeeping Association have apiaries in Bedford and Luton where potential bee keepers can see what goes on with the guidance of an experienced bee keeper.

Often people are interested in the bees without necessarily wanting to take up bee keeping and I offer a visit to one of my apiaries where they can have a look round and handle the bees.
Recently I met someone at Bromham Market who is interested in wildlife photography and wanted to photograph some bees. We are arranging a date for him to come to Ravensden to take some photographs and hopefully these can be put in a blog.

The season is now fully underway and if anyone is interested in visiting my apiaries let me know.
I have a leaflet about this that can be downloaded from here.

Do not try to contact me via Facebook. 
Facebook is merely somewhere where the blog is published and I don't look at Facebook or get Facebook notifications.

The season has started!

At long last the Beast from The East and The Pest From The West have gone and the rain is becoming drier.

The last couple of days have been quite warm and there's lots of activity in Ravensden. After a gap of two years, the field behind the Ravensden bees has Oil Seed Rape which is coming into flower and accounts for the huge amounts of pollen the girls are bringing in.
Its not everybody's favourite crop but I don't care and if the girls like it and it gives them nectar and pollen, then its OK with me.

Today [17th] was warmer [~17C] so I had a go at the new queen finding process I am going to use.
It was an experiment before I do a video of it and I nearly got to the end without finding her. I assumed she had sneaked past me somehow, then she suddenly appeared. Needless to say I hadn't got my queen catcher handy but after a few panicky moments she was caught and marked.
I don't know when she hatched but she has been marked white as this colour refers to last year [this years queens will be red]. I managed to get more paint on me than I did on her!
There was lots of brood, both worker and drone, and I added a new brood with new frames for them to fill.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the start of a hot period so I will try and do the other Ravensden bees this week.

As its been so wet I haven't got to Scald End for a while but will have a go next week.

Bee deaths

It looks like I have lost three colonies.Statistically this is OK [average is about a third, in America its 40-50%], but three is three too many.
The County Association issued something saying they are  'hearing of winter losses that are a lot higher than normal.'

Wasps

A couple of days ago I noticed a dead wasp on the landing board outside a hive. Today I found a live on inside an empty hive. Wasps also suffer from bad weather and will attach hives if they are hungry.
I will put up wasp traps in the apiaries and have the entrance reducers ready in case the wasps get a bit too inquisitive.

Hornets

Last year Asian hornets were found in the Devon Although no worse than normal hornets for us, they have a weakness for honey bees and they snip of a bees head and give the carcass to their young for food. They can kill an entire colony.
The nest was found and destroyed but there has been another one found on a cauliflower in Bury in Lancashire. The 'odd looking insect'  was spotted by a member of the public who took some photos.
It turns out the cauliflower came from Boston in Lincolnshire.
The National Bee Unit are investigating both areas.
No doubt the NBU will do everything it can but I have visions of this:-

King Canute

I'm getting very broody

There are a huge number of different types of hive but they are mostly variations on the 'box hive' where a larger lower brood box contains the queen and the smaller upper boxes called supers contain the honey for extraction. To prevent the queen from getting into the supers there is a queen excluder on top of the brood box that has slots small enough for the worker  bees to get into the supers to deposit honey but will not let the queen get through.
The most common type of hive in Europe is called the National but there are larger versions particularly in America.

A lot of commercial honey producers use larger hives to give the colony more space for the queen to lay eggs that increases the honey yield. Most beeks start with a National hive and to switch over to bigger hives can be an expensive and time consuming process. I know someone who switched from National hives to a bigger version with different sized frames and it took a couple of years and he was also left with a lot of useless National equipment.

However there are alternatives to changing all your equipment.
One is to adopt what is called 'brood and a half' This means a honey super is put on top of the brood box and the queen excluder put on top of the honey super. This increases the area for the queen to lay eggs by a half. Normal honey supers are put above the queen excluder.
Another is to go 'double brood' where you give the queen two brood boxes with a queen excluder above them and honey supers above the brood boxes.
The disadvantages of these methods is that it makes inspections more complicated and the thought of having 5 supers above two brood boxes and having to check the brood boxes isn't fun.

A couple of my colonies have two brood boxes but I've really got too many colonies to consider switching them all to another type of hive and was considering brood and a half.
Then an email arrived from the Association saying a bee keeper had equipment for sale And it was all National!
It can be a bit dangerous buying second hand equipment as you might not know why its being sold and the equipment could have disease.
However I knew the beek involved and he is an expert. He had also scorched the kit with a blow torch to kill any bugs.

I have 12 colonies that need another brood box.
He had twelve brood boxes.
He had even painted them the same colour I paint mine.

Yes I did.

Getting them is a bit of a opportunity for me.
Giving the colonies this extra space will reduce the possibility of them swarming which they do when the colony is filling the hive.
Also when I'm doing them I can take the opportunity to catch and mark the queens using the device I mentioned in a previous blog.
Finally it gives me the chance to change some of the skanky brood frames. Brood frames get very dirty with crap and general muck, and the pupae spin a chrysalis around them that is left behind when they hatch and the queen won't lay an egg in a cell unless its perfectly clean.  Because of this you are supposed to change a third of the frames each year and I have inherited two colonies that probably haven't had any hanged in years.

The down side is its a huge amount of hard work.
I'll let you know how I get on.