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:

1. If it was not a swarm the bees would wander back to the hive when they got bored…
2. 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
3. If it was a swarm and I had not go the queen, well… I guess they would just have to fend for themselves.

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…

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…

1. do I have to do anything?
2. are they going to fight at some point?
3. does that mean they both have queens?
4. if they were dusted, how did they know which queen was theirs?
5. will they sort it out when then expand closer to each other?

Ed Lee, with his suggestion of naming them after Muppets.

Now all I have to do is get the bees to make some honey that I can get to harvest.

There had been a queen that had hatched / emerged and clearly gone round the hive and dispatched all her would be competitors.

I found the cell that she, or the other dead one I suppose, had emerged from, you can see the flap on the end if you look closely at the picture above.

But, I also found two non-emerged, still sealed, cells.  I thought I would take them home to the mating hive I had to see how they got on there. So, I cut them off the comb and was just trying to figure out how to transport them, when I noticed that the cell was being cut open from the inside, and two little feelers were emerging.

I could not get the cell in the queen cage and shut the cover without squashing it, so I ran to the car and put the cell in a matchbox. I went back to the hives to finish up there. I’m sure it can’t be every day that you get to see a queen hatching.

So I carried on, clearing up, and went to the car to head home,  when l took a look at the other cell that I had collected; oh no, its capped end was off, I must have been mistaken and it was empty. But no !! I looked down the hole inside the cell and there was another queen peeking back at me. I watched as a head popped out the cell, then a throrax that was so furry with yellowish hairs that it looked like teddy bear fur. She pulled herself out and she had well defined stripes on her abdomen, more-so than I had seen before. As such she will be called “Stripes”.

I checked the matchbox, and the other one was out, and had a golden abdomen, and will be known as “The Golden Hind”.

Now… what do I do with two ??? Well one went in my mating nuc, and the other is awaiting a new home in the bathroom in a queen cage with 8 workers to keep her and some fondant company.

So presently I have no mated queens, and too many queens for the number of colonies I have. Well I say too many… I’ve not seen any apart from these two, but the others have been involved in swarms or other scenarios that suggest they have queens present.

They didn't swarm far

So, hmm, another swarm. Well in two and a half weeks I’ve gone from 2 colonies to 7.

Well I’ve kind of run out of kit. I’ve resorted to a tip I heard the other day for temporary accommodation, using a super. I was also short of a stand and and roof, so we have, the hive the swarm came from, crown board on top of its super, the crown board being vented, a varroa floor on top of that, then the super with the swarm in, then a varroa floor insert as a crown board (yes ran out of crown boards too), then the roof.

Will the swarm be happy in a super? Will the bottom colony be happy with a hole in the roof? Will the swam be happy so close to the original hive where it can smell it or want to swarm again? Tune in next week for more exciting adventures…

Oh, but hang on, what of the original colony. Well that it just the icing on the cake isn’t it. After capturing the swarm and putting them to one side in a skep, I looked in the original colony to see what was going on in there. That is where the mystery started. No queen, no eggs, no larvae, no sealed worker brood; But one one frame about 7 queen cells, all sealed, some of them really quite large and impressive looking. Where did they come from without eggs? Were they still viable? Will one hatch and kill off the others, or just take another cast and swarm. For all this and more tune in… oh you know the rest.

Anyway, that’s the background to this post as I thought I’d track down a recipe or two for my good readers, and to use myself once I et round to harvesting any wax from my bees.

So first I found this “How to Make Beeswax Wood Polish“, which along with suggesting the use of more commonly found ingredients as Olive or Walnut oil also, give some lovely easy to follow step by step instructions with pictures. Basically, it is 1 to 4, wax to oil mix; grate the wax in using a cheese grater, heat (very carefully as everything is flammable) until the wax melts into the oil, and mix  now and again, while it cools to prevent the oil and wax separating as it cools.

I then went looking for the more classic turpentine featuring recipes and “hit paydirt” as far as looking for recipes are concerned, Beeswax recipes features a wide range of recipes al on one page, various creams, lip balms, soaps, wax crayons for kids, oil paints, 8 types of polish, leather waterproofing and a very handy tip.Rather than use a ban-marie or whatever to avoid setting fire to melting wax you can melt it in the microwave. Of course I’ve not tried it, maybe someone will comment on it below. There is even an arthritis wax treatment approved by the (American) Arthritis Foundation apparently.

Just as I got home I got a call from the other apiary; swarmed…. The swarm was on the fence between them and the neighbours. I was already in enough trouble with the other half for spending the day on Bees instead of helping at home.

So, when I got to the apiary the bees were not so much on the fence as they were on the floor sat in deep grass and weeds, my ‘favourite’. So I started by pulling away undergrowth, and then I swept what I could into my skep (which I made at the national honey show last year). I uprighted the skep on the white sheet I brought. I went back and was pulling out weeds and the bees on them and dropping them on the sheet next to the skep. I thought I had got a good amount and there were lots of bees in the air, I could not really get very many more off the ground and they were stuck in the undergrowth and removal would have risked squishing; so I smoked the ground, and smoked and smoked and smoked until all the bees were gone from the ground. I figured with all the fanning from the bees going into the skep I had got the queen in there and they were just trying to fan to attract the others over. I was just saying “well I think we have her then” when then I turned around back toward the fence and beheld a classic sight, I nice big swarm sat hanging off the branch directly above where they had been on the floor. The queen had obviously been on the floor and flown up to escape the smoke.

The tree was an old elderberry, lots of dead wood to get in the way. I got hold of the skep, held it under the swarm, and…. one firm shake, and PLOP. Well pretty much plop, a significant weight of bees fell into the skep.

Anyway to make a long story short, tree shaking, checking and trying to gather errant bees that had grouped elsewhere, lots more smoking and gathering. I then pulled 5 frames out of the bait hive, that had been sat 20ft away with a swarm lure in it. I dumped the majority of the bees in the top and then put the sheet under the front of the hive to watch bees climb up and in the front. I gave them a Miller feeder of syrup, and left them to their devices.

So ending on a good note, I was getting syrup from other hives top feeders, now the weather has changed they don’t need it. In one hive I took off the feeder and saw under the crown board all in the super. I might still get some honey. With a few weeks left of rape 50 yards away I might even get more than one super.

Update – next morning. Got a text, a tennis ball sized clump of bees where the swarm started out. I had heavily smoked that area so there should not have been any scent left. I’ll go and see…

Now, I would have put this down to me being new to beekeeping and not knowing exactly what to do, or something to do with the sugar syrup, or something to do with the bees. But I also had bought one new Apidea nuc at the spring convention, put bees from the same hive in, fed them the same syrup and treated them the same in all other ways. They are all alive and making wax on the frames happily.

Now the frames nucs were fairly clean when I got them, advertised as “ready to use” and I did spend 4 hours cleaning them, including using boiling water from a kettle.

Now I accept that these are second hand, but these are not really fit for purpose if they kill the bees in them. I didn’t even get as far as putting a queen cell in them.

I’m going to stop this post now because I keep getting wafts of bee diarreah even though I scrubbed my hands in water that was too hot for comfort. I’m going for a bath in disinfectant.

Nick

It landed on some delphiniums which then gave way, bees are heavy when you have lots of them in one place. Not the best first swarm for me to have to deal with, one on the floor. Due to access restrictions I collected the swarm with three shoeboxes. I had to chop down the flower stems to get to all the bees and take a bit of soil. I put out a white (ish) sheet and on a small table with the sheet leading up to the entrance. Here is a brief movie clip of the bees climbing up to enter the hive :

So to make a short story shorter. I hived the swarm and put them next to the nuc they came out from originally. I didn’t see a queen, so we shall see what happens next. Here are some more pictures:

Don’t try stopping bees with your face or you may end up looking like you are trying to chew a golfball.

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So, this weather we have been having, argh. On Monday I managed to get a weather window; just warm enough to have a look at the bees. I opened the bees up and started having a look at the bees, but I had forgotten to bring my proper bee jacket. I had a hood on, but then only a t-shirt, and a black t-shirt at that (bees aren’t keen on people in dark colours or blue allegedly). So I didn’t get far into the first hive, but it was far enough for trouble to be spotted.

I’d only got 2 frames in to notice that the frames were empty where before it had been where the bees had heavy stores. The wet weather had left them drained after the big March build up of bees and the incessant rain we’d been having.

Then the real fun started. Two sealed queen cells on the front of the next frame, and that was just on the one side. At that point I had to ‘pause for thought’, I didn’t have the equipment with me to deal with queen cells (unless to knock them off). By now I’d ‘collected’ 4 stings to my upper arms, and although the stings were not bothering me too much, there was plenty of alarm pheromone around and the bees were bothered. I chose to retreat  for the sake of the bees and the need for equipment.

I went to collect some nucs I’d prepared previously, then to clean some Apidea nucs, in preparation to return , but then rain started and stopped play.

So now, its three days later… Three days of drumming fingers and building other bits and pieces, researching the manipulations on the web and finding out that I’d have to start a bit earlier with the Apideas to get them built up with comb and stores before I could put a queen in them. I’ve been preparing two full hives, building nine supers, cleaning and waxing the apideas, linseeding coating all the woodwork, ‘adjusting’ a stand I’d built incorrectly the first time and assembling one hundred super frames.

Now I’m just waiting for that weather window, and I might be getting it. It is 9C (little too cold yet this morning), with odd little showers but strong sunshine coming through.  Wish me luck.

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…aka building my first nucleus hive. So I had a piece of wood lying about and a penchant to have a go at making a nucleus hive. I started with the easy bit, making the box; just screwed butt joints for now. I’ll get round to building things using finger joints.


With a bit of light chiselling I made a simple rabbet for the frames to sit on, using a bit of trial and error for sizing, using a commercial brood frame for dimensions.


With a bit of ply making a crown board was fairly simple, making a frame and popping the board on top.

Making the roof was a similar affair, I also added spacers to rise the roof above the crown board to allow for ventilation, and wedges down the side to keep the roof centred on the hive.


The floor for this was and interesting one; rather than an entrance at the front I’ve gone for an entrance below leading up to to the wire mesh floor. I’ll tell you how I get on with that one. As for the mite tray, I figured as the whole thing will be pretty light, I can just lift the hive and place the corex board underneath.


The usual 5 frames fit in nicely leaving just a little space for manipulation.


And there we go, job done. Well just short of a stretch of roofing felt to keep out the rain and probably a lick of paint for the rest of the box too.

They started out named after the colour of their lids, yellow, blue and silver. Not the most inspirational names, and then I had to change roofs round as some went in for maintenance, others for innovation (more on that another day) and I made the tyrolean roof which wasn’t coloured. Then the yellow hive died and it seems asking for bad luck to call a new colony after one that died.

Presently they are called ‘the one with the pointy roof’ and ‘the one with the flat roof’. I don’t really want to call them hive 1 / 2 / 3 / etc. As I’m not going to have too many hives and would like them to have a bit of character.

So, you need to suggest :

Two names, one for each hive, and a theme / naming convention that would be applicable for 7 or more hives.

So “Apple” and “Pear” and then ‘fruit trees’ as the theme, but members of the Beatles would not, as there were only 4, no 5 or was it 6?  …  No you can’t use the fruit trees suggestion.

How to enter? Just comment on this page further down.

The prize? My first 1lb (454g) jar of honey (once I get some honey from my bees).

Can you enter more than once? Yes, I suppose so, but max of 5 attempts please.

Can anyone enter? Yes, I don’t see why not

Closing date : Thursday, 3rd May 2012, at 23:59 GMT +1 (i.e. British Summer time) 

So just on the day I’d come to swap it out, wouldn’t you guess it, she had only gone and laid in it. Fresh eggs by the look of it. 24hrs earlier I would have been fine… Grr ! They must have gone through a LOT of honey to make space in that comb, or maybe they moved it to comb 1 where it was all uncapped.  The last frame was full of uncapped honey too, and braced to the wall, unusually.

Anyway, that was the 2nd plan out of the window, no nice easy swap of brood frames… At this point I had a step back to think. I could move them, put a queen excluder on and a super and let them get on with it. But, they were building brace and clearly didn’t have enough room. I didn’t want to abort so many eggs that she had taken the time to lay, so my plan to put the disfunctional frames to one side for them to rob was clearly out.

So… hmm… I transferred the combs over to the new box, barring the last two. In their new position I put framed foundation, giving me uncomplicated frames and the queen somewhere to lay, once they were pulled out with wax. The remaining two troublesome frames I left where they were, put a queen excluder over the new box and this box on top, with the 3rd frame of foundation I had brought. That way the nurse bees would still look after the eggs, the queen could not get up there to put any more in, and I could remove them later, and they would not have competition to rob their honey back. All upside? well not quite, I’d be leaving the rest of the old box open for them to fill with brace comb, and I’d be taking a chance on the eggs surviving, but then nothing is perfect.

So with that done, and a bit more storage for them, I squirted hiveclean on them all, put the crown board on top and the super above that (remember I didn’t want hiveclean tainted honey in the supers), and put the roof on top.

Oh, nearly forgot, I was putting cone vents on that pent roof, and, of course the battery drill runs out, half way through the first cut… Pahh !!

A lot of bees were still sat on the old floor, so I propped that up against the landing board so they could crawl up to the new entrance.

So, after all this lot… Do I really feel like going through it all again with the next hive? 2 stings down, next door hive with upset bees flying about, returning foragers coming back to chaos, and not knowing where their hive had gone. What do you think?

But… if I didn’t hiveclean then, I would not be able to get the super on that they no doubt needed just as much by now too. So I levered the brood off the base, moved it to the new position on the mesh floor, squirted them with hiveclean, crownboard on, clean brood box on, queen excluder, super, roof on top, put the old floor in front leading to the entrance. Done. 6 mins.

And so, I left. Had I done the right thing? on balance I think so. Getting as much of the job done given the situation, balancing upset (on both parts), with the need for a clean, more room and so on.

What’s next? Well I have to go back, transfer the 2nd hive to the next box while scraping off the frames, and give them access to the super. I need to go back to the first box, see what is happening with the old brood box frames with eggs. Scrape off frames, and at some point put a super on. Hmm when is it safe from hiveclean? What about build up of brace comb in the old box in the mean time? When can I put the super on top safely.

For these answers and more tune in to the next edition of “What does he think he is doing !! tsk tsk tsk”.

part 1 | part 2 | part 3