Summer is Here!

Looking out the window its hard to think that summer is here! Its already starting to rain and we are promised two more days then a brief   respite before the next low pressure comes across the country.

But summer is here never the less and the last days of spring up to now has been a very busy period for  Honey Bees and the fledgling period for Bumble Bees so the phone has been red hot!

The last one last night at the end of a quite Sunday afternoon was from the Landlord of the Ranleigh Arms about a swarm that was in his elderly neighbours garden. We got them just as a rain shower arrived , so by the time we had found them a new home we were pretty soggy. Needless to say just as we finished , the sun came out!!

This was swarm was number seven since the start of May.  And we had lost count of the number of calls and advice we had given about the docile Bumble Bee.

There are various opinions of why Honey bees swarm, the one we subscribe to is that as the weather warms up the queens egg laying really gets into gear,  its not long before the hive  rapidly becomes   congested. It’s the adult bees that decide  its time to find a new home, so that don't feed the queen so much and chase here about to get her fit to fly, because she has not been put since here mating time shortly after she emerged. They also start the process of starting a a new queen by selecting up to a dozen healthy grubs to be fed more food and turned into queens

The  Resident Queen obviously gets the message! ,And she will   normally fly on the first sunny period after rain or a cold period. Usually first thing in the    morning.

She takes most of the adult bees with her, leaving the the juveniles to look after the brood until the first of the new queens emerge , who will sting the others  to death  in their cocoons to ensure she is  the one the throne.

Mean while the  old queen has flown, usually not far and settled on a bush or fence ,

This is when we get the call!

Once settled in their temporary home, they send out scouts and will when they are ready depart for where ever the scouts decide is a desirable permanent home.

Obviously the good keeper will very often see what is going to happen and splits the hive taking the pressure off the over crowding and with the aid of one or more of the new queen cells form a new colony.

So at the time of going to press, we have found new homes with new keepers for three  swarms, one we wanted to keep, but they absconded , but we did keep two other so we now have the grand total of six hives in two locations.

I will write again soon, kind regards to you all. Freddie

First Inspection

Well spring is definitely here, today on the April 3rd the temperature was hovering around fifteen degrees early afternoon. So it was time for a full inspection at the Cornerfield Apiary .

But a couple of days earlier I had had my first look in the “Matilda “ Colony which as you will remember is the surviving one down on our Breeze Hill Allotments.

They where all happy, they still had a smidging of Candy Pollen synthetic food left. But with plenty of sealed brood and grubs , Matilda had been very busy and maybe I should have looked a little earlier! Any way we found her trapped her under crown of thorns and marked here with the white colour of last years queens ( 2016). One down three to go!

The first Colony we looked at on the Cornerfield site was Queen Anne's, she had been very busy and again I had been a little late because as you will recall we leave the queen excluder off for the winter so the queen can get to the stores in the “Super”, she had taken full advantage of it and started laying in the super  instead of down in the Brood box where she lives in the summer. But no big problem because what she had laid will all mature and the workers will clean out the cells and fill them with honey. In fact they had already started on one and it had a full one side of honey, some already sealed!

When we we then looked in the brood box , for only the third time in five years ( this is the start of my six year) Georgina and I found the her , trapped her under the crown thorns and marked her  with white for 2016.

The next colony was “Victoria” or it should have been, except there was no Victoria! Before we discovered that however we could see that the colony was quote small with very little activity in the “Super” and very little of the food I had put on on my last visit eaten.

But as soon as we started looking in the brood box we came across a charged queen cell. So obviously for unknown reasons the resident queen had been “lost” and because there was some grubs and sealed brood . The colony had started on the road of producing an “emergency” queen. They do this by choosing one of the worker bee grubs and feed it with extra Nectar and Pollen, it then transforms by a minor miracle into another queen . The queen is dead, long live the queen!

The is does mean however that we should not disturb the hive for a month. This will give the new Victoria time to emerge spread here wings and go a get mated and start laying this years brood.

The last hive we looked in was Queen “Elizabeth”, she was a 2015 ( marked blue) queen from a swarm that I had captured from our hosts apple tree. Incredibly this was the largest and most vibrant with about ten frames of busy girls , lots of sealed brood, grubs and some honey being collected. We found our Elizabeth up in the super, so we had to brush he off into the brood box before putting on the excluder. I think this colony will be the first to swarm.

So with this in mind I have set a Bait box a small hive box called a “Nuc” with some food in it so if they do swarm when I am not there they might ( big might!) go in the bait box.

But hopefully I will pre-empt this , spot what they are going to do and carry out an artificial swarm. Then use in the bait box/ Nuc to transport them back to Breeze Hill where we do need another colony.

We that's about it for now I will write again soon Freddie.

Spring in the Apiary

Hi ,well it the first day of spring to day , so its time to put the first blog of the new year. I hope you have all come through the raveges of the last big blow. Our allotment was a bit battered, but an inspection of all the hives proved that they were all intact although with a couple of fallen branches on them!

Its not generally possible to open up hives through the winter period because keeping the clustered colony warm is essential There has been a few warm days as you know , but I was never around to take advantage of them!

But one colony I was able to peek inside at was the small “ mated cast” I referred to in my last blog. Sadly they did had not survived , probably several very cold nights we had as well. So the Bodica Colony is no more!

What I am able to look at however however is the bees stores. Now you will know by now that we leave the first “super” that the bees collect on the hive because that is their store for the winter. One of the problems of the several warm periods we have had this winter is that the bees become more active. Now normally on the odd warm day in the winter the girls will come out for a fly around and do their business!

But on an extended warm period they remain active and the consequence of that is they eat more food!

So there is a risk then of starvation, as a general there is no way the bees can collect more nectar or pollen to replenish stores so this period from February to April is a food critical period for the bees.

In previous years I fed to bees with sugar water after the end of the session ( late August, Sept time) or if cold and wet, fondant because then there is no risk of damp sugar fermenting that can have a server effect on bee health.

I feed them again in reverse order just after Christmas . This year I have given them Api Candy and commercial formulated food substitute that has all the ingredients a bee needs and is not effected by temperature or weather changes.

This proved to be the right move because all the colonies are up in the top of ( probably) empty “Supers” feeding on the Api Candy sachets placed over the feeding slots in the top board.

So looking forward the signs are good but not guaranteed that we will come through with one colony on the Beeze Hill Apiary and three on Cornerfield site.

I have just decided it s time to check my swarm collecting kit because as you know we are the swarm collectors for the Council and our Association in the borough

, and it wont be that long before the phone starts ringing!

I will right again soon kind regards to you all Freddie

A Very Topsey Turvey Year on the Beeze Hill Apairy

This year we established a new Apiary in the corner of the Breeze Hill Allotments where we have a plot
 In all we collected nine swarms of bees large or small over the year and about the same number of call outs to worried household that turned out to be bumble bees in a bird box or under their eves. 
But our first Colony for the the Beeze Hill Apiary we collected  on the 22^nd of May from a front garden up Cotswold drive.W/Boro , as is our way we call each a queens name so we know who we are taking about. This one was BOADICEA.
Just a day later we collect a mall “cast” fro the Bushboards, this proved to be queen less so after a day or so we amalgamated it with BOADICEA.
In the evening of June the 20^th in poring rain we collect a colony that had swarmed down Albert Road W/Boro It was very difficult collection, but never the less provided us with a second swarm for our Apiary. Because of the very difficult swarm collection we think that the queen may well have been amongst the unavoidable casualties. So by the evening of the next day the survivors with no queen and were not impressed with there new home had absconded!
So we were back down to one Hive!
Around about this time we had an Email from the National Bee Base to keep a close eye of the bees stores because of a poor spring some keeper had reported lost Colonies due to starvation. As precaution we fed all of ours .
We also noticed on the weekly in inspection on the 27^th of June that there we could not see any eggs or developing grubs in our one remaining hive,  our conclusion that for whatever reason we had lost the queen. As it happens we had a colony at our other  Corner Filed Apiary in the process of a supercedur ( old queen dying or had become barren). In this situation the Colony makes about six new queens, Most keepers reduce there to two. But of course it gave us the opportunity to take two and place then in the now queen less Boadicea Hive. In due course this worked and the colony is now well established. BUT because we had introduced a new queen the colonies name changed from BOADICEA to MATILDA all very confusing!
In September we treated all the hives with APIGUARD this is a chemical that used after the main queen laying period and is designed to kill the Varroa mite that climbs in the with the grub just before it is sealed in with wax the metamorphosis . And causes Deformed bees and introduces virus to the colony and indeed if let unchecked will ultimately cause its collapse.
Early in October we had a call from our Association swarm coordinator that a colony had established its self in a compost heap. As it turned out was under the lid of a composter at the bottom of the Garden of Albert Watts the now retired  Barber., It was not a swarm but a Cast , although with eggs and grubs present there was obviously a mated queen present. and became the New BOADICEA!
This was an easy collection and went straight down to make us back up to two!
In December all the hives except the very small BOADICEA were treated with Oxalyc Acid this fumigated the hives and severely knock back any mites that have got themselves in empty cells or crooks and crannies.
Just after Christmas because of the very warm spells of weather we had another starvation alert from the National Bee base. ( the bees become more active, eat more of their stores, but have no way of replenishing them) About this time I always give the bees there Christmas present with a supply of artificial; feed called Pollen Candy.
As we are still in winter we cannot say with absolutely certain that both of Matilda and Boadicea will survive until the spring, but they are both looking OK on my last quick look after Christmas. So we hope we will go into the new year with  two colonies on   the Breeze Hill Apiary and three in the Corner Field  Apiary.
I will write again soon Freddie