Tour of the Ravensden Apiary

The season is now under way and I've had a look at all the hives and the vast majority of them are doing fine.
I will soon have to be making weekly visits to the apiaries in Ravensden and Scald End to keep an eye on things during the swarming season.

I have had a number of visitors to the apiaries and I wondered if either of the Regular Blog Readers might be interested in what goes on so I have done a 'Tour of Ravensden' video [see below] and will do one for Scald End.

Also I will do a blog on what goes on during a hive inspection.

First inspection of the year

Its been months since we last met.
Months during which I gave them their Autumn feed and worried about them. I then gave them their Autumn oxalic acid treatment and worried about them.
Then it was their winter fondant feed and I worried about them. Following this was the oxalic acid vaporiser treatment and I worried about them. For the last few months I have been topping up their fondant feed where necessary. And worried about them.

Over the last month or so they gradually started to emerge. Pollen started to be bought in and I started to worry a little bit less [pollen is used to make food for the lavae so it means the Queens are laying].
Although the swarming season doesn't start for another month or so, it is recommended that for vigorous colonies you add a super now with clean frames and fresh wax foundation. This is not really for honey production its more to give them something to do so swarming is delayed - they are given a lot of new space to expand into and a trigger for swarming is when the hive becomes too congested.
Four of the hives at Ravensden looked pretty busy so last week I added supers but didn't go through the brood box as it was still a bit too cold.

However the weather has gradually improved so today was the day for the first inspections.
It turned out to be a bit of a team effort as Stacey and Matt who I met at market I do, came along to see the bees.
Things didn't start well as Matt was stung before we put our veils on and as I put some sting relief on the sting, his glasses were knocked off and I stood on them.
However we carried on and after some introductory stuff looked at the first hive.

The WBC hive has been the most active hive and had a super added. Also the bees are pretty calm so a good choice for Matt and Stacey's introduction.

The super had bees in it and they had started to draw out the comb.
We then took off the super and queen excluder so we could see the brood frames. Usually the outer most frames are the quietest but we could see bees occupying all the frames.
The frames were pretty well stuck down with propolis but we get them out for checking.
Although we didn't see the queen there was lots of open and closed brood and drone brood.

We didn't have time to check all the hives so next we had a look at the Poly Nuc Box with the Black British Queen in it.
The Long Term reader of this blog will know that last year I bought a Black British Queen. Native Black British bees were nearly wiped out about 100 years ago but there are small areas of the country where they still exist.
Out of curiosity I bought a BBQ, made up a Poly nuc box with bees from Ravensden colonies and introduced the British Queen, who I call Victoria. They accepted her and as it was late in the year I decided to keep the colony in the Nuc box as Poly nuc's have very good insulation properties and winter was coming.
The first bees to emerge this year were the Black British bees who had a reputation for being hardy and hard working, if a little 'spikey'.
I decided it was now time to transfer the bees into a full sized hive and Matt and Stacey carefully took out each frame from the Nuc and put it in the big hive. There was plenty of open and closed brood cells. Also a lot of very black bees.
As Matt took the middle frame out there was Victoria resplendent with a blob of white paint on her back [this means she hatched last year] scuttling across the frame. Luckily both Matt and Stacey saw her.
When I got her I wasn't sure she had been marked and I'm really pleased she has been as several jobs I will be doing are made much easier if she is marked.
All the frames were transferred and frames with new foundation put either side of the full frames for them to expand into.
When I went back a little while later there were lots of bees fanning at the entrance to the new hive.

Fanning involves sticking their bum in the air and flapping their wings. They secrete a pheromone, called the Nasonov pheromone which basically tells the bees 'this is our new home,come in. its lovely The Queen's already here,' and is wafted around by the beating of the bees wings and tells the bees where their new home is. They also use this pheromone when they are swarming.
So all in all a good start and thanks to Stacey and Matt for their help.

Now the work really starts. Over the next few days I will start checking the other hives at Ravensden.
At the moment my Land Rover is lacking an MOT so I can't get to the bees at Scald End. Hopefully it will pass its MOT on Tuesday and I will start putting supers on the hives there. Also two of the hives at Scald End haven't been properly looked at for probably years and need a thorough going through and I will probably have to change all the changes for new clean ones.
On top of that there's a lot to do/buy/make to get ready for swarming season and the new approach I am taking this year.

Top Bar Hive

The Long Term Reader of this blog will know I had one of these things which was wrecked by woodpeckers.
They are used a lot in Africa and one of the reasons they are popular is that they are allegedly easy to make, So I downloaded some plans and had a bash.
It wasn't too bad although I'll do somethings differently when I make the next one.

Although they are popular with the Natural Bee Keepers, I don't think they are too practical but its different and worth a go.
I'm not too bothered about any honey it may produce as I have other colonies that will hopefully do that for me.

I'm not the best bee keeper in the world

I'm not the best bee keeper in the world and rather than being expert I consider myself to be an enthusiast.
Saying that I don't think I'm terrible, I speak to other bee keepers, read magazines, follow blogs and even go to meetings, but I do make mistakes. Its a widely accepted principle among beeks that you never learn everything you need to know.
At markets I have often spoken to people who seem to think bee keeping is just sticking the bees in a hive and 'letting them get on with it' and Monty Don of Gardens World fame said as much in an interview.
Hopefully I'm in a reasonable mood and try to smile as I say 'its not quite that easy .....' and wonder if they look after their pets in the same way. ['Tiddles our cat is coughing up blood and hasn't eaten for a week, we'll let her get on with it'] and if Monty Don chucks a few seeds on the ground and lets them get on with it.

But I do get things right and I have to say somehow I have managed to get something very right.
For me the judgement on whether or not I have had a good year [a very common question] is not how much honey the bees have produced but how successfully they have survived the winter.
In the UK over the last ten years the average loss is about 15% and last year in the South East the figure was 23% which means I should lose 4. In America things are much worse and losses of 40% are common.

Some how I have lost ...........none.

A couple are on the small size but should be OK.
How have I managed this? No idea.
The winter hasn't been too bad but a mild winter might be a bad thing as the bees would be active and consume stores more quickly.
I have been more vigilant with their Autumn and Winter feeding and I have used my oxalic acid vaporiser for the Winter varroa treatment which a recent article said is a very successful method and doesn't affect the bees.

Although I'm very pleased, there is a down side. One of the things I've never been very good at is swarm control. Swarming is something that happens from May and is the process by which a colony splits in two and half the colony leaves the hive and settles in your neighbours garden who then proceed to have a nervous breakdown [the neighbours not the bees].

There is a multitude of ways, with varying degrees of complexity,  of managing this and I've never really got a handle on it.
However last weekend I went to an Association meeting about it. I was hoping to find a single method that I could deal with and was delighted when someone went through a fairly simple process and gave out a handout with diagrams, timings etc. Just what I needed.
However it means:-
[1] having a huge amount of extra equipment.
[2] potentially doubling the number of colonies you have.
I'll worry about this later.

Bumblebees are looking for a home

In the last week or so I have seen the first bumblebees flying around.
These will be females looking to establish a nest so its time for me to get the bumblebee house I bought last year ready.
It is quite a simple thing and I tempted to make some myself as its just a box with straw, paper, kapok and The Special Ingredient.
It will be facing the field at the end of my garden along with the solitary bee boxes I have put together.

I spoke to the farmer recently about the field and he told me he intends re-seeding it with wild flower mix. This produces a number of different varieties of flower throughout the year which is good news for my bees; honey, bumble and solitary.

H'ive been framed

Even in the crazy Hollywood, rock'n'roll, showbiz life of a bee keeper there are ordinary tasks to be done.  During the winter one of them is sorting out the frames in the hives and either replacing them or putting new foundation in.

In most 'box' types of hives there are two types of frame; the larger brood frames that are in the brood box at the base of the hive and smaller super frames in the supers that are stacked on top of the brood box. The supers have the honey we take.

Super frame

Brood frame

Brood frames can get very dirty with the build up of faeces and  pupae chrysalis' and often the wax in supper frames can be damaged when honey is extracted.
The frames themselves are fairly simple things and as they are made in their tens of thousands, its not worth making them yourself..
A pack of 10 brood frames and wax would cost about £25 but half that if you join the Bedfordshire Beekeepers Association who have a trading scheme that means you can buy standard items like frames, foundation and jars much more cheaply.
'Natural' beeks will often not use wax foundation at all and leave the bees to make the comb themselves and this is often the approach used with Top Bar Hives.

Things look good for the survival rates of the colonies and if they all have a good honey year I will need quite a few supers and also I've been making small nuc hives that need brood frames, so recently I've spent a lot of time making up frames and here is a video on how I do it.

The season starts here

For no particular reason I take the bee keeping season to start on 1st March.
Its still too cold to do a full inspection on the hives but in the next week or so I might lift the crown boards [the roof under the roof of the hive] to see whats going on and how they have dealt with the winter. I'm always a little nervous about this after my catastrophic winter of 2011/12 when all five colonies starved.

Dead bees

I have been much better with the winter feeding this year and the Scald End bees scoffed the fondant I put on with Tillia 3 weeks ago and they were all replaced yesterday. The Ravensden bees have also been taking the fondant.
Speaking to a local bee keeper he said his bees never touched the fondant he put in the hives but except for one small colony the others seem OK.
Is this because my bees have eaten their stores or are they just lazy and prefer to feed on the fondant which is just above them?

The high winds were a bit of a worry. The Ravensden bees are in a copse and so protected from the wind but the Scald End bees are more exposed. When I got there one hives had had its roof blown off but other than that things were OK.

There is no rational reason for this but I've painted the hives and supers different colours. Its not uncommon to do this and there's suggestions it helps stop the bees from 'drifting' where bees go to the wrong hive.
Bees have colour vision although can't see red. [unlike me].

The swarming season doesn't start until May but I've been getting ready..
Last year I was only involved in 4 swarms. One in Stevington was at the top of a tall tree and I don't do heights so in case the same thing happens this year I have made a bucket on a stick. Its a water machine container with the bottom cut off and mounted on an extending pole.
Also, although in a way I hope I don't have to use it, I have made a bee vac which is what it sounds like, a modified vacuum that enables you to get to a swarm thats in a difficult place, under floorboards, chimney etc. The suction on the vac is reduced so the bees are harmed.
More as the swarming season approaches.