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Blogging Bees  Unfortunately, it would appear at some stage our bees committed regicide and removed the encumbant queen. Generally this would happen in a swarm, however on this occasion that simply doesn't seem to have happened. If it did, it was an extremely small swarm that went with the old queen. Being the practical creatures that they are, they had a new queen in waiting, just developing in a cell. Unfortunately, us galumping humans went and did a hive inspection (the first since our Corsa was stolen) and that meant we damaged the new queen cell. Not knowing or expecting it to be there meant we proceeded "as normal" rather than super cautiously - although there is no certainty even that would have saved it. So now we have had to go cap in hand to the association beekeepers, who very kindly have provided us with a nucleus taken from one of the stocks at the University in Stirling. This queen was being very prolific, and there were already preparations underway to start swarming. Therefore she was removed, along with several frames of brood, to induce a new queen to be raised by the remaining bees. All in all it should work out well. We will get a new, mated, laying queen to re-activate our existing hive. It will slow down development a little, but not fatally. All in all it will be a good ending to a potentially disasterous tale. Its also a salient lesson in the benefits of joining a club or society of people interested in the things you are. Without them, we would be in a very poor situation now indeed. Current mood:  optimistic.
Well, as most of you will have no doubt noticed, the summer was wet. It wasn't actually as bad here as it has been in England, however there was enough bad days for the bees to really struggle to get in a honey crop. Unfortunately, a tactical feeding error by Kit has left them with too much stores in the brood box. This has slowed down their laying rate and will no doubt cause further problems down the line. For the time being, we will put them up to the heather, and see how they get on up there. This will probably go really well or really badly - its been one of those years. The colonies have been combined, and a new queen has been seen running around on a frame, however I didn't have the equipment to mark her with me. I went back in the next day with said marking stuff, and of course couldn't find her :) Anyway - such is life. Its not been a good year thus far in bee world. Current mood:  sad.
With the unseasonably warm and good weather, predictably the bees have been making the best of it. Plenty of nectar and pollen coming in, and a mass of activity in both hives. So much, in fact, that they barely noticed I was there. Not a single bee even threatened me, let alone tried to sting. I prepared a third site today, although not for us. Another beekeeper will be joining me on our site, and in the event of us leaving will carry on with it. Its a good little site, and its worth holding onto them once you have them. Keeping permission for bees on a site is infinitely less work than getting a site in the first place... So now there is an empty, blue painted hive sitting ready for our first colony split of the year. Its a real honour to supply someone with their first bees. It will hit our honey harvest, almost certainly, but I can't say that I care. It was a glorious feeling to be there, hive tool in hand, smoker between my knees, and thousands of dark bees just getting on and working away, as I was. We were working together and it was an incredible feeling. Current mood:  enthralled.
The weather was sufficiently warm to allow Fiona and I to visit the hives today. I placed the varroa inspection sheet under the hive, having forgotten to do so last time I was up. It should allow us to see the mite drop rate with the Apistan in. We removed the mouseguards, as they seemed to be at risk of impeding the flow of bees now. The risk from mice is really quite low now, so thats ok. Watching the bees, there was pollen arriving, although we didn't get to watch for long before an angry bee decided to have a go at Fionas hair. We came back 10 minutes later fully suited up, and checked all was well. There was a little brood - not a lot yet, but what there was looked quite healthy. I hope next time we are up its warmer and we are able to do a proper inspection. Last Tuesday Fiona and I managed to get up to the hives with Isobel, who had come over to build her first hive. We had a good day putting the pieces together, with me only making a few mistakes. I wasn't happy with me... Anyway - the bees are fine! The first hive was quiet as normal. I think the queen needs replacing to be honest, she is getting long in the tooth now, and I think the hive will probably go swarmy on us. The second hive did its normal trick. No sooner had I got the lid off than literally a corridor of bees came storming up through the small gap in the crownboard to attack us. It was a sight to see - if it wasn't accompanied by lots of angry bees. Its ironic. I went in to put in the Apistan strips to kill the varroa. I need to hit it hard now, whilst there is very little brood. Once inside brood cells the varroa mites are very hard to kill. So there are 8 weeks of treatment ahead now with strips hung inside the brood space that the bees all brush against and pick up a minute trace of mite killer. It should do a good job. It was reassuring to see them so angry and "in your face". It means they are healthy and want to defend themselves. All good signs at this time of the year. I also noticed they had a lot of sugar on stil (we left 2, 2.5Kg bags, one per hive, over the winter) and they hadn't actually eaten much. This means they got a lot of stores down into the brood space when we put the sugar syrup on after taking the honey. Its exciting! I love it! Current mood:  accomplished.
It is extremely wet up here at the moment. The last month has seen very little apart from rain, and that makes working with the bees at all extremely difficult. They don't thank you for opening their roof and letting water in! We wanted to get some extra ventilation in, by lifting the crownboard up on matchsticks, and at the same time fit a 2 inch expanded polystyrene roof insert to increase the heat retention in the hive. We also fitted whats called a feeding eke - a small frame that lifts the roof up from the bag of fondant I put underneath it. It helps keep everything square and tight. So thats basically the bees done now for the winter. We hope that they will overwinter fine as they are - they have a bag of fondant on each incase they run short of their brood box contained supplies. As we now have varroa to contend with, I will need to treat them before the spring starts in earnest, as the mites will all be phoretic at the moment. Once teh brood starts being laid, they will all head there. We have enjoyed our first year, and eagerly await the first flush of spring and the pollen it brings! Well, we said all along that it had to happen. I was in the process of doing what I thought would be one of the last inspections for a while when I happened to notice a phoretic mite on one of the workers. I wasn't certain that it was varroa, but frankly I guess I knew it was really and just thought well perhaps it might not be. Anyway - I hadn't got the stuff on me to treat it, although now I am grateful that I had thought it out earlier and bought most of the equipment I would need. Without wanting to get into deep technicalities, I placed a board under the open mesh floor to catch any mites that fell off. As a result I had a clear diagnostic of the mites, and indeed confirmed varroa. Sadly this was pretty much inevitable - varroa is endemic to this part of Scotland now. So I have used oxalic acid on them. I didn't have any of the Apistan strips - a powerful miticide that can be placed in strips into the hive to kill off the bad mites but leave the bees unaffected. Oxalic acid is a powerful acid that doesn't hurt the bees, however it doesn't do the mites any favours at all. At the moment there will not be a lot of brood, so the mites will mostly be congregated on the bees and trying to ride out the winter. This can be taken advantage of in your treatment attack, as now is a time of both maximum mite exposure and also no honey or similar that could get tainted. Shame really - we were doing quite well without it, and could really do without it being there. However we have to deal with the reality - it is there and there to stay now, so we need to keep on top of it, and look after our bees as best we can. Much longer term we know that we intend to move to the Islands, and currently at least there isn't varroa there, so we have to start again in effect with new colonies. We do at least have someone lined up to take ours on though - a new beekeeper who lives in Alloa. This is great news, because you do get an attachment to your bees, and you don't like to think of them having to go somewhere where they might not get looked after. Well, that was something of a suprise. We entered a jar of honey into the honey show for the association. We didn't really expect a lot - the competition is both stiff and experienced, so we knew the chances of success weren't great. However we did enter the medium clear honey category, and managed to be placed second in class. The judge was particuarily impressed with the clarity and sparkle of the honey, so we were happy. It hasn't been a bad year - although there wasn't a lot of honey, what there has been has been well recieved, so I guess we shouldn't complain. Next year shoudl be better - we have more experience, and we will have more time to hone the bees to a razor edge of capacity in the hive to pull in the nectar. The weather still plays a large part though, so you never can really tell. Well, we finally have the first ever jars of Hillfoots Honey. We went back to the hives this morning, took off the supers with the honey in (now almost entirely devoid of bees, until we started taking them off. Then a few returned. Not really angry, more just filling up to get away. In total, we have just over 7 kilos of honey. It sounds a lot, but actually is only 15 "normal" honey jars full, or 30 of the little ones. I have no idea what people reading this are interested in, so I will provide a few facts.. A hive of bees must fly 55,000 miles to produce a pound of honey. Two hives worked to produce the 15lbs of honey we have, so have flown (roughly) 825000 miles. Or 29 times around earth. They will have had to make 30 million visits to flowerheads to have collected the nectar for this much honey. They have done all of this since late May / early June. If a honeybee were able to fly around the world, it would consume 1 ounce, or 1/16th of a normal jar of honey, to power it on the journey. It also remains the only commonly eaten substance produced by insects and eaten by man. There are some honeyants that aboriginal people in Australia eat, but I think they are a fairly special and small group! It has been a mixed year. Most beekeepers here seem to think it hasn't been too good - the bees did seem to struggle when the hot weather was happening. Although the sun is good, too much heat and the flowers dry up. No nectar means no honey. Its sticky stuff! I don't have any fancy equipment to get it bottled for me. Its a ladle, and a lot of care and attention. Perhaps next year I will invest in some sort of tap controlled bucket! I will try and get a photo up of our jars. I probably should sleep now though! Kit Having spent some of this evening with another club member learning some of the delicate art of extracting honey, we made our way to our hives and fitted the bee escapes to the crown board. These act as one way bee valves. Bees can come out, but cannot get back in again. Well thats the theory. Unfortunately, (well actually fortunately really) we watched for a short while, and soon noticed bees coming and going. Through a hole in the roof. Now these should be there. They are ventilation holes. However on closer inspection we noticed that one of the four vents had no mesh over it. Cue bees using it to too and fro with the honey. They realise that they can no longer get up to it, and thus start shipping it out very quickly. If we hadn't noticed, they would have robbed most of it before we got back there tomorrow. So now they really aren't amused. They were spending their time scouting around the outside investigating every single nook and cranny no matter how small, to see if they could work out a way of sneaking through it! Next, the extractor will be collected and setup. At some point we have to steal the honey (thats the bit we need to get very right. If we don't, it will hurt likely as not.) Then we have to uncap each frame, spin out the contents, and strain it to remove any wax bits, etc. Whats then left is honey! |
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