Absolute bee-ginners

Thursday 31st June 2012

Opening up the hives
After work today, our bee colleague had agreed to come and open up the hives with us. We were expecting the worst. After all, Hive A appeared to have swarmed and Hive B (with the original queen) had been very quiet indeed. In fact, I suspected that the action at Hive B may have been the others going in and taking the store of honey.

It was somewhat reassuring to find out that this week has been a mega week for swarms. I guess everyone's bees were stuck inside during wet April and the first half of May. They obviously just spent their time multiplying! Then a hot fortnight for them to cram the hive full of honey. The result seems to have been hives full to the brim and mass swarms.

I heard, too, that our nearest fellow beekeeper had a bit of a nasty accident earlier in the week. While mowing his grass the bees came out of the rape field and stung him badly. Now I'm always careful to mow the lawn near the hives late on, after the bees have gone to bed, but after hearing this I think that extra precautions will be called for.

I've been rambling on when I should be telling what we found inside the hives. Well, Hive B had about 6 frames full of bees and brood, including plenty of newly laid eggs, which means that there is a queen and she is laying. In fact, it was fairly easy to find our old queen. The brood pattern looked healthy and there were stores of pollen and honey. Overall then, this hive should fairly quickly build into a healthy colony again. As the rape goes over in the field next door, so the clover begins to flower in the meadow.

Hive A, in which we had left a couple of queen cells, and which had swarmed, contained a surprising number of bees. Maybe seven or  eight full frames still. We couldn't find a queen, though a new queen would still be quite small and, obviously, unmarked. More importantly, nor could we find any eggs, which meant that the hive did not yet have a laying queen.
There were however a few old queen cells, which seemed to be empty. Probably the bees had chosen their new queen and destroyed the others. Thing is, they had then flown off with her.
But there were a few new queen cells too. So we removed the older queen cells and left the best looking so that, hopefully, a new virgin queen would emerge.

When this happens, she spends a few days in the hive before flying out and high up in search of drones from another hive with which to mate. As long as she does not get blown away by the wind, washed away by rain, or plucked out of the air by a bird, then she returns to start laying and building up her new colony.

The other job which needed doing in this hive was to move some of the honey-filled frames above the brood box and replace them with new frames. This is to keep the bees busy so they don't get ideas about swarming again. Secondary swarms are known as cast swarms, and can deplete the hive to the extent that it is no longer a viable colony.

A Queen Appears
As we were doing this, our bee colleague picked up one of the old queen cells which we had discarded. Out of it was crawling a bee... but not just any old bee. Even to my inexperienced eye this bee was longer bodied than the others. It looked absolutely pristine. A new queen, and a well-shaped one to boot.
This came as a big surprise, so the plan was changed. We decided to let her crawl in amongst the brood frames, and instead destroyed the two queen cells which we had left in there. With luck, the bees will accept her as their new queen and, next time we open the hive, we will see freshly laid eggs.


I would like to apologise for the lack of photos, as all of this will be a bit confusing if you don't keep bees. Reason is there's just too much to think about at the moment when we open the hives. Combine this with wearing a space suit and the fact that my glasses focus disconcertingly on the mesh veil of my hood and that's why there are no photos.

I promise to put together a photo essay at some stage in the near future.


Pigeon goes to roost
A comedic end to the day. As I ushered the goose pair into their stable block our new pigeon shuffled ahead of them and there it spent the night.

A new lodger moves in with the geese.

Splitting the Hive and Blue Eggs

Sunday 20th May 2012
Nearly June now, though you wouldn't know it.

Two hives, brood chambers only.
Hopefully a successful outcome in a couple of weeks.

Too may queens
I apologise for the lack of pictures, but I had to concentrate on my bee-keeping and a camera would get in the way. The day started with a visit from a helpful fellow bee-keeper. Into the garden trudged the three of us in our space suits. We opened up the hive and had a good look at our buzzy friends. They impressed our colleague with how calm they were and how busy they had been drawing comb and bringing in new honey.

But what we were most interested in was the brood frames, which would provide a trained eye with vital clues about the state of the colony and the fitness of the queen. Many of the frames were full of sealed brood. This means that the larva inside the hexagonal cell has been sealed in by the adult bees, ready to turn into a bee itself. There were also fairly mature larvae, but a distinct lack of smaller larvae and it took us a long time to find eggs. The fact that we did meant that the queen is still laying, but the reason for so few was not obvious - maybe lack of space, the long spell of cold weather or a weak queen. There were some drone (male) cells, but not overly many.
There were queen cells too, some sealed with their giant larva sealed in a sea of white royal jelly. The first warm day next week would probably lead to a swarm. This could be followed by further cast swarms, each time halving the strength of the colony.
So, we had a decision to make. Whether to sacrifice the queen and hope that one of the new, virgin queens would be victorious over the others and find suitable drones to fertilise her. What happens is that the queen flies out of the hive high into the air in search of drones to mate with. If successful, she returns to the hive to begin laying and the colony continues with its new queen. However, that's not a guaranteed outcome, so we felt it better to take a second option, splitting the hive to create a false swarm.

We found the queen easily (she is marked with a white blob to indicate that she is a 2011 queen) and moved her frame into the new hive, placed to face the opposite direction to the original hive. We then picked out some frames of brood, pollen and honey, in effect to give her everything she would need to build a new colony. We then shut that hive over and will leave it to get on with its own business for at least two weeks.
We then went through the remaining frames, leaving only the best looking queen cells. Hopefully, nature will take its course and we may end up with two hives. We'll find out what's happened in two or three weeks. Until then we leave well alone and just wait.
The worst scenario is that we end up with no queens and not a lot of bees. The middle scenario is that the two half colonies are not strong enough to survive as two, in which case we reunite them.

For the moment, fingers stay firmly crossed.

Overall though, it was fantastic to get the chance to look through the hive with the benefit of an experienced eye and we were very, very grateful indeed.

Blue Eggs and an Immaculate Smallholding
Then it was time to keep an appointment over in Donnington, where we had arranged to visit some fellow smallholders to have a nosey around and to purchase a dozen Crested Cream Legbar eggs (the blue ones) to go in the incubator.

Roger's smallholding yesterday was a smallholding on a shoestring, making excellent use of pallets, old bath tubs, second hand polytunnels and cardboard boxes. A smallholding which had evolved organically and very successfully. Today's smallholding was equally impressive, but it couldn't have been more different. Immaculately tidy and organised it was certainly ready for its opening to the public on 17th June as part of the National Gardens Scheme.
NGS - Garden

Colin and Janet concentrate on rare breeds and have their own website, well worth a look.
http://www.thehawthornsrarebreeds.co.uk/

Prize for cutest animal of the day had to go to the day old pygmy goat, though it was a close run thing with the various punk-haired chicklets and the family dog.

 

Once again, thanks to Colin and Janet for extending a warm welcome to us.

Royal Jelly

Monday 14th May 2012
Sunrise (??!) over the new veg patch.

Royal Jelly

We may have made a mistake today. It was time to open up the bees and inspect what was going on. Good news was that they have started to store honey in the super, so we can stop feeding them sugar solution. More good news. We managed to see the queen, easily picked out due to her much larger size and longer body. A bit like trying to pick out a rare gull or goose in among the throng of others. (Birders will get this!)

We observed as much as we could, honey, pollen, capped brood, developing brood. Then, a queen cell! Just the one. We weren't expecting this and destroyed it to deter swarming. This is what we had been taught, but on further reading afterwards, this may have been a mistake.

We were surpised that the cell was full of white liquid - royal jelly. This means that the bees had plans for this to become a queen, and that it's hatching was fairly imminent. This was not what we needed on our first proper inspection. We lack the experience to know what to do about it and don't want to learn by making very expensive mistakes.

Further reading suggested that this may well have been a supercedure cell, where the bees are trying to replace their queen. We do not quite understand this and will read up and ask around as much as possible. 

In the meantime, we are praying that the bees do not swarm in the next couple of days. 

Comments most welcome from anybody who knows what we should do.

Our immediate plan is to inspect again soon to see if there are any more queen cells and to make the brood chamber bigger so the bees are not too crowded.