The Cut Comb Renaissance starts here!

The Cut Comb Renaissance starts here!

After mentioning in an earlier blog I was preparing for cut comb this season, I read an article by an American beekeeper who is evangelical about cut comb.

However, like over here, she is often confronted by the 'You eat the wax?' reaction so she decided to produce cards to give away with 'serving suggestions'.
Although I'm still not a fan of CC I thought this a good idea so have produced some myself.

I'll be giving these away when the cut comb is ready, May-June'ish

What chance do bees have?

What chance do bees have?

A couple of things recently cropped up that indicate what a long road it is.

Neonicotinoids pesticides have been increasingly linked to the dramatic collapse in bee numbers over the last decade and in 2013 a two year ban on using them on farmland was imposed by the EEC.
Two countries voted against the ban. The UK was one of them.

At the time one of the major insecticide companies, Syngenta launched an attempt to get the ban over turned and failed and there were concerns that there wasn't sufficient research in place to monitor the effects of the ban.
Given the huge amounts of money to be made by selling insecticides, I hardly expect Syngenta and others like Monsanto are sitting back thinking, 'I wonder how the things will turn out. If the ban is confirmed, that'll be fine with us'.
Instead I expect they've indulged in the same lobbying frenzy they've carried out in other countries like America and Canada to make sure the ban will be over turned. In this country they will be supported by the National Farmers Union and Conservatives who deny the evidence and oppose the ban.
Equally I'm sure that the multi billion dollar drug firms will be lining up their pet scientists to produce a snow storm of confusing and contradictory 'science' with phrases like 'there is no definite proof'', the results are not clear', 'if farmers cannot use Neonicotinoids then we'll go back to DDT', 'more research needs to be done'.

On a bee keeper forum this was spotted.


'Free seeds for bees! What lovely people Bayer are, doing their best for the bees' you might say.
Trouble is Provado contains a  Neonicotinoid that has been banned, so although farmers can't kill  bees with it, consumers can and Bayer try to encourage people to do this by giving away seeds. I suppose it helps the bees that aren't killed by Provado.
Apparently the Soil Association has written to Bayer and although I can't find the seed offer, Provado can still be bought at Homebase and B&Q.
In fact a number of insecticides have neo's in them and  a list of them can be found on the Soil Association web site here.

In America neo's are not banned. The fact that the Deputy Commissioner for Food is Michael R Taylor who once was an executive of Monsanto is entirely unrelated, my lawyers have asked me to state. 
Also they have asked me to confirm that in no way do I consider this similar to the situation in the American Fed where there was a 'revolving door' with executives of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros etc that contributed to the financial collapse in 1998. How could anybody think such a thing?

In America a number of home and garden retailers were called on the carpet for selling “bee-friendly” plants that were, in fact, treated with systemic neonicotinoids. Consumers complained, and some of these stores vowed to label such plants in the future.
As a reaction this this, some retailers started using labels in the pots saying things like “This plant is protected from problematic aphids, white flies, beetles, mealy bugs and other unwanted pests by Neonicotinoids.” The names of the pests (aphids, white flies, beetles, mealy bugs) are printed in black, all caps, on a white background. All the other words are printed in a tan color, upper/lower case, on a white background. Needless to say, the pest names are extremely visible, the rest is harder to read.
The problem with this tag is not what is says, but what it doesn’t. It doesn’t say that the plant is also protected from most other insects, including beneficial ones—like lady bugs, and pollinators—like butterflies and bees. While asserting the plant is protected from “unwanted” pests, it fails to mention it is also poisonous to the rest, to the “wanted” insects.

Unfortunately bees don't vote nor have the money to buy scientists or lawyers.

8th March 2015 - Is Spring here?

Although not as tropical as the Met Office suggested, quite a nice weekend and warm enough for the bees to be flying.
Spent a lot of the weekend preparing for the season and in particular getting supers ready.
Since last year I have acquired a Burco  and set up a soda solution to clean the supers in. It proved to be very effective and they were then washed in cold water and left to dry.
I am aiming to have about 10 colonies this year and its obvious I don't have enough supers or feeders - yet more money.

Last year I went to the BBKA Apiary in Luton where the hives were painted green and I decided to do the same thing. In fact things have become a bit colour coded as the WBC hive has been painted blue and the others are green and I've painted the new hives and the old supers accordingly. Also I have marked some of the supers frames in red - more of which later.

My Son in Law Chris, who is a joiner, came over on Sunday and we went to see what could be done about the wood pecker damage to the Top Bar Hive. However the bees had discovered the honey frames inside the TBH and were helping themselves so we kept our distance but I'm giving the dimensions of the hive to him and he will try to find a solution to the damage and the bowing of the hive.

Last year as an experiment I tried to produce some cut comb. I tried a different way of doing it than I had done before and it was quite effective. I decided to sell it at the markets and its definitely a 'marmite' product and also very 'generational'.
At my very first market at Willington I took some with me and a lady with her teenage daughter became quite excited about it saying how she had it when she was a child and hadn't seen it for years [something I was to hear many times subsequently].
As she extolled the virtues of melting it on toast and then have the wax stick to her teeth, her daughter went from bored to surprised to disgusted.
Can't stand it myself.
At the last market I did someone asked me about it so I decided to do it again.
Because you eat the wax you can't use wired foundation supers normally have to give them strength. Also the foundation is thinner than normal foundation.
The wire in normal foundation also allows it to be pinned to the wooden frame and last year some of the foundation slipped out of the frames I was using for the cut comb.
So this year I have dripped some wax into the corners to hold it in and painted the top bars red to distinguish them from normal frames.

 

Bloody Woodpeckers

As you will have seen on the thrilling YouTube video, woodpeckers can cause damage to bee hives.
Today I went to the Ravensden apiary to repair the damage to the Poly Nuc and the other hive with some filler and once I had done this I just had a quick wander round.
Bees were coming out of the Poly Nuc, Hive 4 and the Nutters. Things were quiet with the Snow Queen but a quick peek under the crown board and things looked OK.

Last year I set up a Top Bar Hive as a result of going to a presentation by a BBKA member about beekeeping in Africa where this type of hive is commonly used.
http://northbedfordshirehoney.com/types-of-hive/

I didn't take any honey off it and pretty much left it alone apart from a 'natural' varroa treatment late in the year. Although they seemed to be doing well, unfortunately they didn't make it through the winter.

Towards the end of the year it had bowed slightly and so I went to have another look at it to see what could be done about straightening the sides. As I approached it I could see some damage to the rear of the hive and a woodpecker had made a substantial hole in it and had damaged several frame bars.

Its going to take a bit of work to fix it but the really disappointing thing about it was that several of the frames were full of capped wet honey. If there was plenty of honey then why did they not survive the winter?

When I got the hive  I was told by a couple of beekeepers not to bother with it and I should have put the bees in a 'proper' hive. 
Well, I'm going to ignore them and keep it going this year.
I hope to get a few more complete colonies in brood boxes so I will also get a new colony to put in the Top bar and luckily a member of BBKA recently emailed members saying he has some.