Watch out ! They’re ready to swarm

inspection, manipulation, , , , , ,

I checked my 14×12 WBC the other day, and its packed to the rafters with brood. They were so packed in that they were making comb on the bottom bars and the queen was putting eggs in. They also had 5 queen cells on them. I didn’t see the queen, but I saw loads of fresh eggs (standing on end in the cells), so I was fairly sure she was present before knocking down all the queen cells. They had a super on but had just not touched it at all, so I took off the excluder to see if that would encourage them up there.

It does pose a quandary though, unless you have two WBC hives, how do you do an artificial swarm?

Well I’m going to try a bailey comb change / demaree swarm control. Basically putting the current colony above a box of new frames, with the queen in the lower box separated by a queen excluder, then once she start laying swapping the ‘clean’ box to the top. This will supposedly reduce the swarming intent and also reduce the varroa count significantly as the old lower box is left.

On the down side it will require a good number of lifts, so its lucky I have a couple of spare ones, not entirely sure they will fit, but we shall see.

In other news, I have 1 national that  I just made brood and a half, another that I tried to comb change onto commercial frames where the queen is refusing to lay in the new area. I have two hives where things are just not building up quickly, and two that are running low on space that I just put supers on. So in short, nothing that is going really well while not causing issues. 

 

Bee rescue

manipulation, , , , , ,

So last week (Thursday 9th) moved to rescue my buckfast queen “Danish Lady”. The colony was just not building up right in the previous inspections; in the last I could see no sealed brood, few bees and bo sign of her. I thought the treatment with varroa guard had done for her.

So, I planned to have a shook swarm into a nuc. I prepared ahead of time, nuc, sheet, frozen comb, some stores and foundation. I put a super on the floor, put a mesh floor slide board up to it to make a ramp. Putting a sheet over both, I put the nuc on top, took the lid off to allow insertion of the queen to the hive; so her scent would draw the others in.

I went to the troubled hive and started taking frames out, starting with ones with no bees. Where I found bees I shook them onto the sheet in front of the hive after looking for the marked queen, all going to plan.

Then I found a patch of sealed brood. Ahh, the queen was doing slightly better than last week and is still here somewhere. So, plan B, not all new frames, I wasn’t going to throw this lot away. So I continued to shake off bees and pulling out frames; no more brood, just the one precious patch.

I checked the bees on the sheet and there she was, with a bright green mark; don’t know how I ever miss her, but there you go. I picked her up on the edge of a hive tool and popped hee in the top of the box along with her brood. Great! Brood in, queen in; the bees should smell them and follow along now… well come on then, in you go, I don’t have all day.

Oh, did I forget to mention it was windy; windy enough to probably blow away any attractive scent … oops.

Well, time to get the bees moving in, maybe if they see their sisters going in they will get the idea. Smoke them up into the nuc, shake the sheet towards the nuc, shout “come on, she’s in there!”; all tried with small levels of success.  Then the smoker ran out of fuel. After a top up of slightly damp grass I got some nice yellowish smoke; oh yeah raining a bit too, not ideal conditions.

Anyway cutting a long story short, I got most in and the others can take their chances with one of the other hives there. I took the nuc away and drove home slowly due to forgotten hive straps.

The bees seem to be getting along ok in my garden for now, so I will cross fingers for a good build up.

Lessons to learn

  • Hive straps
  • Have multiple plans
  • Weather is a pain
  • Pheromone smell travel best without wind
  • Steeper angle on a ramp will allow you to smoke bees ‘up’. Smoking sideways tends to scatter them.
  • If you are in a rush, the bees won’t be.

Yalding Bee Fayre

General, ,

http://beefayre.yaldingbeekeepers.co.uk/

I am going to this next weekend (May 11th 2013), taking one of my little boys to enjoy the attractions and then seeing what I can get at the auction.

It was good just as an auction when I went a couple of years ago, now its bigger and seems to be attracting a lot more attention.

Its not far on the other side of the Dartford crossing if I recall correctly.

Highs and lows

inspection, manipulation, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Well its been a mixed inspection this time round.  Two WBC’s coming along nicely at Hastingwood but in need of some replacement frames. The Queens seem happy enough but the new one needs marking and clipping. On that note I just picked up some little snippers called “deadheads” the other day at Wilkinson’s that will be perfect for the job.
Anyway,  the next few hives at matching tye were struggling a bit. One had very few bees and a queen, the other had 4 frames of bees but then emergency queen cells and no eggs. So now I have one fewer colony after a newspaper method merge.  Well one was struggling and would have not built up quickly enough to catch the rape crop; and the other would have ended up with a virgin queen with no drones about to mate with.

The last hive on site held a surprise or two though.  Apart from being the only hive that seems to be touching the pollen patties,  it is also building up wonderfully.  Four 14×12 frames of brood, right across the frames; the hive full of bees (and at lunchtime too,  so the foragers would have been out) and lovely fresh honey coming in. Won’t be long til they will be needing a super. One little sting to the wrist, but with a result like that who could hold it against them.

On to the last site and, if you can believe it, better news. Seven frames of brood! So, you know what seven is the magic number for, yup, time for the first super of the year, Hooray! One sting from this hive, but what is that amoung such good news.

This year I have some supers that have drawn comb and some with just foundation. I am told that alternating comb-foundation-comb will improve the rate that the foundation is pulled out and so that is what I have done.

The other hive on site was doing well, up to 4 frames,  but not quite ready for a super yet.

Both those hives are on standard national frames and I plan to comb change them on to commercial frames.  More so that the colonies have made a mess of the combs and the woodwork is old. I may go back to having a couple of standard nationals there another year with some new/repaired woodwork.

April Inspection

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I inspected mine yesterday. Touch wood, they have all made it through, but they look very lacking in bees.

How many frames of brood do you have on yours?

My best are on old nationals in my parents back garden which is very sheltered so I guess that has helped a bit. Those two have 4 and 5 frames of brood; others however on commercials are FAR less well off, only having 1 frame on each hive. They are in a more exposed position, which made it ‘fun’ to inspect on Sunday without the bees getting blown off the frames. Interestingly the deep nationals I have have faired better in the same location with the commercials, but they are in WBC shells so maybe the extra bit of insulation helped. I have one where I saw the queen but I think no brood at all, but then I was in a rush to put it back before the clipped queen blew off and I lost her.

I had a fair bit of white hard honey too, I figured it was the rape I gave back to them and got them to take down in autumn, but I guess it would have been Ivy.

The fun, interesting part of the weekend was that both the national colonies were bringing in some very blue pollen, I should have taken a picture really. It looked like this :

Blue Pollen

and from a bit of research I think it is from :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_squill

given the colour and the time of year.

Visit four: First full inspection of the year.

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Ah ha! No bee stings today! Well except I kind of cheated, I didn’t inspect the hive that has done for me before. I was a bit tired after the first seven.

My inspection was last Tuesday, the temperature at the apiary was recorded as actually reaching 16C. Since then the temperature has crashed, raining and today snowing with temperatures of -0.5C. Hence I have not had chance to go back to the hive that stings, ‘Waldorf’

First inspection and what did I find? Every hive has made it through the winter, Hooray!

Every hive is starting to build up brood, with anything from half a frame to three frames of brood, in all three states of progress (eggs, larvae and capped brood). I should be happy,  but my favourite,  ‘Danish lady’, is the least progressed of all at only half a frame of brood. I was a bit suspicious that I might even have seen a cell with a dead larvae in it. I shall watch that one carefully to see how they progress. With the up and down weather we have been having anything could have caused it, so I am crossing my fingers. I just wish she had put on bigger numbers by now, I want to use her for a queen rearing course I am undertaking in summer.

I was going to be putting on some pollen patties that I made last year, and have been in the freezer since. I want to build up the numbers to take advantage of the rape seed (canola) fields that will be around in a month. I was lucky I chose to inspect first, as the delays have caused me not to feed them up right before the cluster they must be im now due to the weather.  I hope they are managing to keep that brood warm, especially in the two national hives with two and three frames of brood respectively. 

As for feeding the hives, well,  all but one hive had significant amounts of stores; and I mean like six frames worth. So they were in no ‘apparent’ danger of starvation.  Why did they scoff so much fondant?  Well, I guess it was more accessible for them, some of them even stored it in frames.

In conclusion,  all is well,  with one to watch carefully,  just in case. I will keep my fingers crossed.

In other news, in just under two weeks, I am taking another bee exam. This time BBKA’s module 1 “Honeybee management”.

Wish me luck.