Getting your retaliation in first

The swarming season approaches and I never cease to be amazed at the endless discussions/ debates that bee keepers have about swarming.
It is an entirely natural process that happens every year usually between May and July. There is something on my web site about it here.
I think the reason bee keepers are obsessed with it is that an unplanned/controlled swarm can reduce the honey yield.
As I have no interest in honey I'm not too bothered.

There are two types of approach to managing swarming - proactive and reactive.

Proactive, or getting your retaliation in first as I call it, is doing things before the swarming process starts.
Reactive is what you do when the swarming process has started and you try and control it.
Most years I hope to do the former but finish up doing the latter

Probably the main trigger for swarming is a lack of space so the simplest proactive thing to do is to give them more space and the easiest way of doing this is to add a super to the hive. Supers are where the bees produce 'our' honey and filling this up with hopefully reduce their swarming instinct.
The weather has been a bit odd lately but I thought I would have a quick look at the hives to see what is going on before it became cold again.

Click the button to see the video.

Apologies for shaky camera, although I always have my camera with me, I didn't intend videoing anything so didn't have my tripod with me.

Spring Bee Feeding

The last blog about the WBC was a draft and shouldn't have been published - sorry!!!

The weather improves but there still a need to take care of the bees.
The bees are becoming more active and the queen is starting to lay again. There will be a huge increase in the population of the colony and the risk is that there will be insufficient forage to support the increasing number of mouths to feed and the colony could fail.
This happened to one of my colonies last year.

So the food available to the bees still needs to be monitored.
In winter the bees cannot fly and get out of the hive so dysentery is a risk if they are fed something with too high a water content so are fed with baker's fondant.
 In spring they are fed a syrup solution of 1lb sugar to 1 pint of water.

Click the button to see the video.

Warre Hive - The Roof

The roof is the last thing to do.
The original plans I used weren't too brilliant but I found some more and it wasn't too bad to make.
Click the button to see the video.

March Update

Slowly the weather gets better and the bees are starting to fly. Their initial flights are what are called 'cleansing flights [they poo a lot].
They don't go far from the hive but gradually start looking for forage. The first bee visited my shed to see what I was up to on the 12th Feb.
They start to fly when the temperature is about 10C but the hive cannot be opened until the temperature is about 15C.
I will take the winter wraps off  and remove the entrance reducers sometime next week.

Spring Feeding

As the bees start to emerge from the winter the concern for bee keepers is that the bees will have nothing for forage and their winter stores will be very low if not gone altogether and its not uncommon for colonies make it through the winter only to starve in the Spring. It happened to one of my colonies last year
Therefore its advisable to give them a kick start by making food available to them.
Usually this is done by feeding syrup but because they can fly and therefore excrete, the syrup is a 1:1 mix - 1 pint of water to 1 lb of sugar, rather than the thicker 2:1 mix in winter.
I buy 25kg sacks of sugar from Bookers and have spent a few evenings making the syrup up and putting it in 25ltr dispensers that will be taken to the apiaries.

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They are very heavy but at Scald End and Stevington I can drive right up to the bees to drop them off.
Ravensden is more problematic as access with bulky/heavy items is more difficult.
This year I will be adding something called Hive Alive which adds natural nutrients to the syrup and also has the benefit of preventing the syrup from fermenting.

Snelgrove boards

As I said in a previous blog, this year I will be using the Snelgrove method of swarm control.
An advantage of this method is that you don't need to have as much spare equipment such as roofs and brood boxes as other methods, but you do need to use a Snelgrove board.
These cost about £25 each but they aren't complicated so I bought a sheet of plywood for £21 which makes 10. In all I probably spent about £30 - £3 each.

Although I know the basic principles of the method, I bought something called 'A Simple Guide To The Uses Of A Snelgrove Board'. The author appears to have a different idea of what the word 'simple' means as it is 20 pages long.

I will do a blog about this about April time.