May Update

Bees doing well ['ish]

As at long last we have had some reasonable weather, the girls are making the most of it and at Ravensden they are gorging themselves on the Oil Seed Rape in the field next to the apiary.

It seems I lost three colonies over the winter. Not fantastic but not too bad. On a county level the picture is much worse and several people has lost all their bees.
From the initial information collected from members it seems, perhaps not surprisingly, that the greatest losses have been suffered by new bee keepers.
To the Association's credit it is trying to organise something whereby bee keepers who have had the worst losses have small colonies, called nucs, or mated queens made available to them.

A consequence of the heavy losses/bad weather is that honey production has been set back.
I have only a few jars and have only done 2 markets this year. I have cancelled the Beds Young Farmer's Rally and it might be I don't do another market until July.
A week ago I was contacted by someone who wanted 10 jars of honey. We didn't have this and suggested he went to a local farm shop that I knew normally had lots in stock. Sue was there a few days ago and there was nothing apart from a sign saying they hoped to have some honey in June.

The strongest of my colonies have had a second brood box added, doubling the space the queen can lay in. This should produce a bigger, stronger colony.

A by product of this is that it should reduce the tendency of the colony to swarm. One of the main triggers for swarming is a lack of space and the idea of trying to prevent swarming this way is called Preemptive Swarm Control, or as I put it, getting your retaliation in first.
The bees have a fair amount of work in the second box to do in drawing out the frames where they convert a flat sheet of wax into a 3D series of cells. However several of the 'double brood' colonies have nearly finished this so I am adding smaller boxes called supers. This produce the retail honey I sell.
There are numerous methods of trying to prevent swarms once the process has started, most of which are baffling but I might do a blog about it.

Wasps in residence

I store my supers in stacks that are ratcheted together and have a roof on top to try and prevent things taking up residence.
Its difficult to keep ants out and when I was sorting out a couple to put on the hives, I found this.

A tiny wasp nest. When I turned it over I could see the larvae about to hatch.

The traps are set

Swarm trap

This is the swarming season and bee keepers become obsessed with it and spend huge amounts of time trying to prevent it  using a variety of different methods.
I have a slightly heretical view that I got from a another bee keeper who lives locally and is far more experienced than I, who said he didn't really understand all the fuss about swarms, after all the bee keeper got a new young queen to replace the old queen.
Bee keepers far more interested in honey production than I, would say swarming can set back the retail honey yield. Something that doesn't bother me unduly.

An off shoot of swarming is that bee keepers can catch a swarm.
There has been lots of research into what sort of new home bees are looking for when they swarm. They have preferences as to volume, entrance size, absence of damp and draughts and the direction they face, all of which are fairly easy to recreate. They are primarily simple boxes and I make mine out of pallet wood.
When the bees have found a new home, bees at the entrance produce something called the Nasonov pheromone which they spread by fanning their wings and it acts as a signal to the other bees telling them where the new home is. This can be synthesised.
So I put a swarm trap at either end of both apiaries with a couple of old smelly frames in and a sachet of the synthesised pheromone in the entrance to attract swarms. For one of the traps at Scald End I left the pheromone at home and left the trap on the ground near the tree it was going. When I returned there were a few scout bees investigating the inside.

The traps can catch either random passing swarms or swarms from your own colonies.
Over the years I've got a few but it is really just a punt to nothing for some 'free bees'.

The Swarms are coming!!!!!!

The Swarms are coming!!

Yes its that time of the year when the what are laughingly called 'journalists' of the The Express, The Mirror, The Mail and The Sun print their ill-informed, scare mongering rubbish about apocalyptic, biblical hordes of killer bees sweeping the country killing puppies, old age pensioners, small children etc etc with headlines that have  headlines with words in capital letters FOR no APPARENT reason.
I collect some of the more lunatic examples which I use in my talk on bees.

The all time 'greatest' is the following

As I hope both of you know, the opposite is actually true. When bees are swarming they are at their calmest and will only sting if people attack them with sticks, try to wash them away with a hose, or set fire to them. All have been tried in Bedford
A leaflet about swarming is here.

So if you have a swarm in your garden, what should you do?
First thing to do is this.

Next up is to see if you actually have a swarm of honey bees. A survey carried out by YouGov for Friends of the Earth asked people to identify a honey bee from pictures of a bumblebee, solitary bee, hover fly and a honey bee. Two-thirds got it wrong.
I suspect if they had included a picture of a wasp the percentage would have been higher.
You can download a leaflet about identifying a honey bee here.

Next get hold of someone who can help.
The Bedfordshire Beekeepers Association run a service where you log onto their site where there is a map with contact details of people who will come and see what can be done.
Normally there is  no charge for this and the swarms collected are passed onto new beekeepers in the county.
I am on the list so can collect swarms within 10 miles of Ravensden.

Some points to make about the swarm collectors:-
- they can only deal with honey bees.
- they cannot deal with swarms in dangerous or difficult situations e.g on roofs, on chimneys, in wall cavities.
- they cannot do structural work to get to the swarm.

Bloody Hell!!

At least one of you will know I never cease to be amazed at how gullible people can be and in particular their ability to pay stupid amounts of money for Manuka honey.

I have blogged about Manuka before and recently a Manuka advert contained something outrageously daft and when I looked into it I found something I thought I would share with you.

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.

The Waggle Dance

I am regularly teased by other stallholders at the markets I do about how I 'go on a bit' about bees.
As you both should know I don't eat honey and have no interest in selling honey, yet if anyone asks me about bees, its dark before they get home.

Our bee keeping started off in a fairly normal way and any honey the bees produced we gave away.
Sue originally was the bee keeper and I was 'Mister Shifter' the general helper.
Things changed when I stopped working and had more time for the bees and looking back I think there were two events that cemented my interest in the bees rather than the honey thing.
My Grandsons know I keep bees and my daughter had a lavender bush in her garden. It was for the bees and Luke used to practice his counting by counting the bees on the lavender.
One day Luke came flying into the house in a real panic and it took Nikkie some time to calm him down and ask him what had happened. 'There's a bee in the garden and my teacher told me bees hurt me'.
When I found this out it was all I could do to stop myself going to his school to speak to his teacher and point out her brainless, ill informed Daily Mail view of things was wrong.
After this I think I became rather evangelical about explaining what bees were about.

The second thing that locked me in was when I found out about the Waggle Dance.
When I give talks about honey bees to groups like the Women's Institute,, the bit I enjoy most is when I talk about the how bees communicate with each other using the Waggle Dance. Normally the reaction to it is one of open mouthed amazement bordering on disbelief.

For as long as we have interacted with bees, we have seen them do the Dance.
The dance is pretty much the same every time. The bee will walk in a straight line shaking vigorously. It then walks back in a loop to the starting point and walks in a straight line again shaking,then loops back again making a figure of eight pattern.

Although the basic structure of the walk - waggle-walk-waggle-walk, stays the same the direction of the waggle varies with different bees, even in the same hive at the same time.

For thousands of years we have tried to domesticate bees and seen the Dance, yet nobody could work out why they did it.
The Greeks, who had an opinion on everything, thought they did it because they were happy which doesn't seem unreasonable.
Here's a bee dancing

However, an Austrian scientist called Karl von Frisch came up with a theory.

His findings were initially met with a mixture of scepticism and derision but eventually his discovery was confirmed and combined with his work that found bees can see in colour, it earned him a Nobel Prize.

What he discovered was that the bee doing the Waggle Dance was telling the other bees in the hive where they could find food.

Blimey.

Von Frisch's experiment involved having a colony of bees with two alternative food sources [bowls of syrup] in different directions from the hive.

As the bees visited the food source a blob of paint was put on their back, green for one source, red for the other.

When the bees returned to the hive and did the Dance, the bees watching the 'Green Dancer' were given a blog of green paint and the bees watching the 'Red Dancer' a red one. The direction of the Waggles from the vertical.were recorded.

When the newly marked green bees left the colony they went to the Green source of food and the red bees to the Red source

Von Frisch measured the angle of the bees waggle part of the dances and found that the angle of the direction from the vertical on the frame corresponded to the angle from the sun to the sources of the food.

The bees have their own GPS system to help them find food. and can translate a vertical plane of movement to a horizontal one.

At this point the WI are merely stunned.

Next I ask if there's a problem with a navigation system based on the sun. 'It can be cloudy' is the obvious reply to which I point out bees can see UV light and polarised light so they can see where the Sun is even if it cloudy and overcast.

There is an increase in stunnedness.

Von Frisch's experiments have been reproduced many times and with the ability to tag individual bees and develop computer simulations, the next discovery was that the length of the Waggle told the other bees how far away the food was and it's thought that 1 second of Waggle is equivalent to about 0.8 kilometre.

So not only can the bees tell other bees where the food is, but how far away it is.

At this point the the needle on the Stunnedness Meter heads rapidly towards the red.

Its also been shown that the strength and repetition of the Waggle indicates the value of the food source. Repeated vigorous Waggles indicate a good food source, a short disinterested Waggle suggests it's not worth the journey

So not only can the bees tell other bees where the food is, how far away it is but what they will find when they get there.

Bees can stay in the hive for some time and the finale of the talk is that the bees have metallic cells in their head that they use for navigation. These cells also tell the bees how much the Earth has rotated over time and therefore the Sun moved so they can adjust their Waggle so the other bees don't turn up at the wrong place.

At this point there is often the sound of jaws hitting table tops.

The Waggle Dance is often referred to as the most sophisticated form of communication by a non primate. I've met several primates who aren't this sophisticated.

This generates a lot of interest at the talks I give and I have spoken to a few people who feel that something this complex done by a humble insect must be proof of a God. How could Evolution produce something so sophisticated?

Its actually more complex than they think.
A protege of Von Frisch, Martin Landauer, discovered bees use the same directional communication system to indicate to a swarm of bees where a new home could be.
When a swarm is looking for a new home, scout bees survey the area and inform other bees in the swarm of where potential  new homes are by using the Waggle Dance.
There can be many different candidates for a new home but as time goes on it appears the bees reach a consensus as the number of different Dances reduce and once 'agreement' on a particular site is reached, the bees go there.
It seems that the various sites can change in popularity over time and the number of 'Waggle votes' can increases and decrease as the bee explore the possibilities.

However bizarre this may sound there it is thought that bees have developed some form of decision making process. Experiments have shown what sort of things are looking for in  a new home and its possible to rate them and this is reflected in the number of bees indicating a particular possible new home.
They have a limited time to make their minds up as their internal food supplies run out after ten days so decisions aren't always perfect.Bees, like us might have to make a 'good enough' choice

I'm reading a book about this at the moment and might try to do a blog on it.
It is amazing and the problem is I can only read bits at a time before I come all over all John McEnroe