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Merging colonies

I’ve had a mixed bag for the case of combining. At one apiary I had a nasty black queen ruling a very stroppy hive that would have a go at people walking past; really not the best thing for a hive in a garden that was right next to a path. The short version of this story is:

  1. I merged them using the newspaper method, killing off the nasty queen
  2. After a week I removed the partition
  3. They fought, lots, and killed the nice calm queen
  4. They were even more stroppy once they were queenless, and two national brood boxes hold a lot of angry bees, especially when they are full of brood too.
  5. I tried to re-queen them, but was unsuccessful
  6. I attempted to requeen again, with a ‘thick’ plug of fondant this time
  7. I think it has worked, they have calmed down a bit and are bringing in lots of pollen; I’ll inspect one evening this week.
  8. So, after my abject failure with the newspaper method, I decided to change method, lots of flour and chuck them all in together. My next two merging’s went better. I wanted to combine in some nucs I had, prop up the numbers of one hive in the hope of it being productive this year, and support another hive that was low on numbers and had lost its queen (as mentioned above, cough).

One went extremely well, no fighting that I could tell, the queen survived and is laying like a trooper. That stack now has six impressive frames of brood in a 14 x 12 national brood box, a super that is being pulled out nicely, and a commercial brood box on the top, which has the remains of the nuc, 5 frames full of brood, being hatched (separated from the main brood by an excluder below the super). Now some will say that is an odd order of boxes, separating the brood with a super, usually brood should be kept together for warmth. My requirement was to empty out the commercial brood and take that away, the problem was that the bees were starting to store honey in the frames that I wanted to remove, and I really didn’t want to start trying to extract a commercial brood frame. Given this was all inside a WBC outer shell I wasn’t so concerned about heat issues of separating the brood, so I did it, and it seems to be working.

The other merge was less successful, in a way. The frames were commercial in the nuc and the hive I was trying to merge them with was a WBC with eight 14×12 frames; not only could I not put the frames in, but I could not put one brood box on top of the other. As a result I merged the bees and put the brood in another hive that was a bit short on brood. The result was a bit short on bees, but the queen in there is a really good layer so that should not be an issue for long.

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Danish lady

My Buckfast queen arrived in the post three weeks ago, Saturday 30th June, from Keld Brandstrup of buckfast.dk. She was labelled “KB463 Random mated Green” but I thought that sounded a bit clinical so she shall be known as “Danish Lady”. She is marked green, out of step with this year’s queen colour which would be yellow, maybe they have a different scheme in Denmark; but given one of the last times I marked an clipped a queen I killed one I’m not going to try with her. I also noted that I think she is not clipped, which I should really get on with sorting out; I don’t want her disappearing on me. She has made a brilliant start anyway, laying really well, her hive is really nice and calm and they have started storing a nice frame or two of honey.

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Too long without posting – update

Its been too long since I posted anything here; I’ve been keeping my local beekeeping group site up to date though. So what is news… Well. lots.. So I decided to break it up into several posts

I’ll get on with those other 4 posts as soon as I get chance

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Busy but successful

I’ve been naming and marking… Naming hives after Muppets (as discussed) and marking and clipping queens that I have finally managed to find, hurah !

We have:

  • Beaker – Benjamin’s hive, mee mee mee
  • Fozzy Bear, Waca waca
  • Sweedish Chef (Hurdy gurdy) because it is on a bit of an unstable stand just now
  • Miss Piggy, because one of them stung me for no reason during the inspection

I’m yet to decide if I just paint the name on them, etch their names into the wood, or go as far as attempting artwork on the front of them. Apart from how the bees would take to the disruption, I’m concerned how my artwork will look.
After I checked for eggs again I installed “Stripes” (from the mating nuc) into the Fozzy bear hive. I had hoped than they would have taken the frame of eggs that I gave them earlier and made emergency cells, which I could then take and give to the mating hive. It wasn’t to be however, and so I’m now wondering where I can find them a new queen to look after them. I’m hoping the girls from Fozzy Bear will be nice to “Stripes” and that she keeps them nice and calm like the mating nuc.

I also was pretty successful at finding queens, clipping and marking finding 2 more and putting nice marks on them; although I am far from expert at catching and holding them, but I’m getting better.

I’m also in the process of reverting to more classical record keeping. With so many hives now its tricky to remember which one is where, never mind how each is getting on. So I printed some record sheets the other day and put some on the Krambach apiary, and yesterday at the Old School House apiary; but I ran out and went back to pencil and paper shorthand. I’ll have to sort out my printer at home. I’ve been tucking them under the roof, which seems to work.

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Bees attract bees

In the words of William Alldis “Bees attract bees”.

Twice now this has appeared to me to be true. Once when a swarm arrived in my apiary which was not one of mine, and now it would seem that at my other apiary there is one colony in a roof space over the porch and another has found where I stack my supers and inhabited them.

Oh and in other news, I have seen eggs!! Hooray! After what seems like months I have a laying queen. “Stripes”, who hatched on my hand a little while back and has bees in the mating nuc, has been out and about her business and is now laying eggs. Now I just have to find her some larger accommodations before she does a runner from her tiny home.

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That’s not a swarm

Yesterday I caught a swarm, but I’ve not got the photos yet so that story will have to wait. Today, I was called to a swarm, but the lady said it was in a bird box. I suggested it probably wasn’t a swarm as it was in a bird box, but I went anyway.

When I got there there were some tree bumble bees in the bird box and larking about near the children’s swing set, etc.

I took the bees away and emptied the box in some undergrowth. It was a shame to see all the eggs come out in a clump, but I think had I left them there they would have suffered a worse fate

From this site:

http://bumblebeeconservation.org/Garden_bumblebees.pdf

Tree bumblebee Bombus hypnorum

Queens, workers and males all have a black head, brown-ginger thorax, black abdomen with a white tail. The proportion of white on the tail does vary significantly but is always present. This species was first found in the UK in 2001, but is now found throughout most of England and Wales. It prefers to nest above ground, often inhabiting bird boxes.

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Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green

So… I’ve been collecting the odd lavender plant or fifteen recently, planning to put them on the apiary, a nice variety of types. Then I had the idea (well it might not have been my idea I’m not sure) of planting a nice low lavender hedge. So yesterday, basically I did just that. I went out to my favourite local nursery, Matthew’s Plants – Roydon Hamlet, and bought some hedge worthy varieties; Peter Pan, Little Lady and Hidcote. I then took them to the apiary, strimmed down some long grass by the main path, and planted them in a line. Now one of the issues at the apiary is rabbits, which I know from previous issues that they will eat anything going; my lavendar and quite expensive manuka plants for starters, grrr. As a result I covered the full 10m length with a handy roll of chicken wire, but I didn’t have anything to hold it down with. So later that night I went back and by torchlight pinned the net to the ground with tent pegs. Lets hope the rabbits are easily fooled by that and don’t do any digging 🙂

On the bee side, the bees were looking very active, one even came and stung me in the top of the head; ungrateful blooming whatsit !

The skep of bees I left to one side seem to be active; I’ve not decided if they are staying in there yet or not, I’ll see how the combining task goes once I see some laying queens somewhere… If I decide I don’t need it I think it can stay and we shall see how it progresses, although it is going to be another job that needs doing to make it a floor, a stand of its own and some kind of roof to keep the rain out.

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Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war

Also know as “come on queeny, go and get mated and get on with it”.

It has been a while since I saw an egg in any of my hives, and today is mating day, woo woo… It has been 6 days since a swarm emerged and I caught and boxed it shortly after that; and its been 6 days since I watched a queen emerge that I introduced to my Apidea mating hive. Added to that the weather has just rocketed in temperature and the bees are out in force.

Today I visited one apiary and removed the queen excluder that I had placed there when I put the swarm in its new brood box last week. They have done very well, pulling out nearly all the comb in the box. Unfortunately they mostly ignored the food I gave them to do this with, instead choosing to forage for the food first and then build comb. I should not begrudge them I guess, I’m sure eating all the nectar around to make wax with is much tastier than sugar syrup. I’ve STILL not seen a queen, but she must surely be there, it was a swarm after all. They’ve been making pickled pollen and storing nectar / sugar in the cells so I’m sure they have a good reason.

With that inspection in mind I think I have decided I don’t like the national brood frames, they are so dinky in size compared to a commercial so far less efficient for me and the bees.

And I’ve checked in my mating hive, and she’s certainly not in the queen cage, so she must have been released and integrated herself into the hive. The bees seem happier too, less flighty when I opened the roof, and they are building out the third frame in the box with comb. I was just about to take it out and put in some pulled out comb for them to help them along and noticed they had started themselves with a lovely white piece of home-made comb in a tear-drop shape. If only I had an extra pair of hands to take photos; well I’ll have to do something about that. I also moved the box to on top of the shed rather than hidden down the side, that way it should get more afternoon sun; at 4:30 it was already in the shade. In their new position they will get sun ’til 7:30 or so, and its about 3ft above the old position so I’m sure they will have no problem finding it.

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Combining Colonies Confusion

Something very odd has happened when I combined 2 colonies…. I covered them in icing sugar an dropped them all in the brood box together… just like the books say. And I left them to get on with it… And I sneaked a peak last night… and they have separated themselves into two distinct groups at either end of the hive.

Err… that’s not supposed to happen.

I have a national brood box with 11 frames, and some bees are living on about 3 combs at one end, and some are living on 3 combs at the other end, and none on the frames in the middle. And the hive is set up the warm way, so the ones at the back must be going past the ones at the front to get in and out to forage.

Umm… ummm…

  • do I have to do anything?
  • are they going to fight at some point?
  • does that mean they both have queens?
  • if they were dusted, how did they know which queen was theirs?
  • will they sort it out when then expand closer to each other?
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Another swarm… but where from?

Yesterday morning I got a call just as I got to work. “There is a swarm, 12ft up a tree, next to your hives”. Well it had to stay there for the day, I had only just got to work and I commute 90 mins each way. On Tuesday, 2 days before I’d been an caught a swarm, and put it in a super on top of the hive because I’d run out of equipment, then the day before I’d been finding queens and had noticed that the swarm had left. I had a good look around and had not seen where it had gone to, so I figured it had found a new home; meanwhile crossing my fingers that it had found a hollow tree or similar and not someone’s roof space. I had not looked straight up. I figured with that history that it must be that swarm.

After work I headed for the apiary, and there it was 12ft up and about 10ft to the right of the super where I had put the swarm 2 days before. Fortunately I was supplied with some scaffolding to wheel into place under the hive, far safer than trying to use a ladder I’m sure. I got my collecting skep and went up. I only just managed to reach the branch on my tip toes, and held the skep under the swarm. I pulled sharply down on the branch and … fudumph… 80% of the bees went straight in the skep. This was ‘not’ the swarm from the other day, it was far larger, and far heavier, twice as much if not more.

I got down and prepared the nuc I had brought. The boot of my car is like a travelling bee equipment emporium these days. I poured the bees in, and there were too many. Luckily I had closed up the entrance or they would be pouring straight out the front. I was putting the frames back in and they were sat high on top of the huge mound of bees in the bottom; and I hadn’t even collected all the bees yet. There were a fair few bees flying about and still a clump on the branch, which had risen out of my reach when it was relieved of this mighty clump of bees I’d already retrieved. To cut a long story short I got the bees and closed them up and put them in the boot of the car.

I checked through all the hives and with the exception of one that was small before anyway they were all full of bees, so where had the swarm come from, especially if it was not the swarm from the day before, because it was much larger.

But, as usual with my bee adventures that was not where the fun ended… There was another swarm, this one hanging under the hive that had swarmed two days before. Now trying to get a swarm out from under a hive, that’s ‘fun’. Oh, hang on, no its not. I was brushing them off and trying to get what I could in the skep, and dropping them on the floor on a sheet and brushing them off that into the skep. Then I was smoking them, so that if, per chance, I had already got the queen in the skep, I would maybe be able to hide the queen scent left behind. If I hadn’t got the queen in the skep, maybe she would move out of such an inaccessible area, and hang on a tree, like Tuesday’s swarm when I smoked the grass and weeds it was sat in on the fence.

After far too long, I was pretty much giving up trying to get them out, they kept dropping on the floor and running back up the leg. Then I noticed that they had started making little spots of wax. Well I know that swarms do do that, but this was on the underside of the mesh floor of the hive. In nature, bees start at the top of a cavity and build downwards; maybe that’s what these were up to. Maybe it was far fetched, but maybe not.

I’d had enough for the evening. I didn’t know if I’d got the queen or even if it really was a swarm. I put the skep on a hive floor a few feet away (on a step stool, not on the floor), propped up so the bees could get in and out. I figured:

  • If it was not a swarm the bees would wander back to the hive when they got bored…
  • If it was a swarm and I’d caught the queen and got her in the skep, they would find her in there and stay there
  • If it was a swarm and I had not go the queen, well… I guess they would just have to fend for themselves.

I took the large swarm in the back of the car to the other apiary and put them in a national hive, but I also put a queen excluder between the brood box and the floor so they would not swarm because the queen can’t get out. That’s what I’m told the theory is anyway.
Its now the next night, I’ve not been back to the apiary to check the skep and not been to the other to remove the queen excluder. Three days in a row is enough, especially as I’m doing all this writing up now, and I’ll have to go over the weekend anyway, and I need to build more commercial brood boxes to home everyone…