Autumn
Hello every
one, I suppose by the time you are reading this, Autumn is upon us.
You will
remember that we had lost two hives last winter and thus was down
to two to start this season.
By early June
it was looking like one of those, “ Queen Anne” was laying
thousands of eggs and the bees were making “play cups” a sort of
mock building of queen cells. An indication that the hive was getting
just tooooo busy and the queen was thinking of leaving with the
flying bees to find a new home,.
This would
leave the juveniles to look after the new queen when she emerges.
What the bee keeper can do in this situation is to artificially swarm
the bees by taking some frames with queen cells on them and some
flying bees , put them in a new hive thus creating a new swarm and
at the same time taking the pressure off the parent hive and the
queens desire to fly.
Sure enough
another week later a lot of queen cells had been made and some were
sealed , and I did the business thus creating my third hive and with
a new 2015 Queen! It did mean there would not be a great deal of
honey to collect as the season went on because the new queen and her
swarm has to be left alone while she goes out, has a good time and
gets mated so she can start laying fertile eggs for her new brood.
About the same
time I had been invited to attend a Bee Inspectors Course. One of my
near by keepers needed a lift to the venue where the course was being
held. I was happy to do this , One the way home he said that one of
his many hives had swarmed and he had collected the swarm from a
nearby bush and had housed them in a “Nuc” a sort of small
portable hive. He also said to return the favour I could have it!, so
out of the blue I had by four swarms back again!
By now it was
mid summer so I knew we was only really going to get a harvest from
two of the four swarms, and the harvest even from them two did not
look great. So by the end of the season, We had ten pounds of set
honey from the early nearby Rape fields and eighteen pounds of runny
honey from our local trees and flowers.
Each weekly
visit We had been dusting the bees with icing sugar this is a “green
method” and causes the bees to clean themselves and thus dislodge
some of the horrible Varroa mites that can attach them selves before
they emerge. But now at the end of the season it was time to use a
more potent method of strips laid on the top of the hives frames and
this fumigates and kills thousand of the little horrors. The bees
dont like it, but hopefully it has caused massed casualties amonst
the Varroa!
Not the best
season we have had but as hobby bee keepers Georgina and I are
happy to have the Apiary back up to strength all the “girls”
well and happy and with enough stores for the coming winter. We have
also sold half of our crop to offset the running cost so we am
happy too! I will write again soon.
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