I said in a previous blog that during the winter my main job is to worry about the colonies making it through to Spring.
But while I am doing this there are also loads of dull messy jobs which includes cleaning, repairing or replacing the wooden frames in the Supers. These are the boxes that have the frames where the bees make the honey we have.
They are kept at the bottom of the garden and I stacked in columns - ready to use-nearly ready to use-not ready to use. Later I will get them all ready so they can be shipped to the apiaries ready for when honey production starts.
Some of the frames had set honey in them, i.e where the honey has crystallised and gone hard and I thought once Spring arrived I would let the bees reclaim the set honey by putting the frames near the hives.
The weather recently has been quite mild and yesterday as I took The Boys for a walk noticed there were quite a few bees around the supers and in particular the frames with the set honey in them.
Initially I was a little concerned they were out so early in the year when there's little for them to forage on but equally it was very nice seeing them again.
In the Ravensden apiary I have a beach chair and often I plonk myself down and just watch them. Initially I look out for anything odd, signs of disease but their endless activity and to-ing and fro-in can be quite hypnotic and restful.
When I got home again I went to have a look and there were quite a few feeding on the honey and I couldn't resist watching them. I didn't bother with a suite or gloves and they just got on with things and weren't concerned by me moving a couple of frames nearer to them.
This morning I went over to the apiary to see what was going on and there were a few bees flying from all hives except the one that looked very small when I applied the oxalic acid. Ufortunately it hadn't made it.
Monday, 25 January 2016
Winter Varroa Treatment - Part Two.
Following the previous blog about the oxalic acid treatment for the Ravensden Bees, the next stage was to do the bees at Scald End Farm.
To get to them you turn off the road into a field, drive 200 yards before you get to a partially collapsed bridge over a stream and then another 100 yards to the bees.
Some of you know that my beloved Land Rover, 'The Shed' as it is known, is still waiting for an engine transplant so I have had to use the Meriva. OK when its dry but obviously its been very wet recently.
The bit getting off the road and up to the bridge didn't seem too bad so I carefully drove up to the bridge and walked the rest of the way. On arrival three of the hives had flying bees and the fourth was ominously quiet. Suspecting the worst I gently lifted the lid but gradually some bees came up to say hello so hopefully they aren't a lost cause. All four hives were treated and fondant added .
While I was there it rained on and off most of the time and when I got back to the Meriva a reasonable sized puddle/lake had built up. I decided to try and drive round it. You can guess what happened.
The AA told me:-
- sorry can't help
- we know someone who can.
As I would have to wait for about 2 hours and would be charged £250 for the privilege, I phoned a friend who happened to be in the area and eventually he dragged me out using his Land Rover.
After leaving the boards on the hives for 3 days I collected some of the sticky boards from the Ravensden hives to see what effect the oxalic treatment had and did a video of the results
To get to them you turn off the road into a field, drive 200 yards before you get to a partially collapsed bridge over a stream and then another 100 yards to the bees.
Some of you know that my beloved Land Rover, 'The Shed' as it is known, is still waiting for an engine transplant so I have had to use the Meriva. OK when its dry but obviously its been very wet recently.
The bit getting off the road and up to the bridge didn't seem too bad so I carefully drove up to the bridge and walked the rest of the way. On arrival three of the hives had flying bees and the fourth was ominously quiet. Suspecting the worst I gently lifted the lid but gradually some bees came up to say hello so hopefully they aren't a lost cause. All four hives were treated and fondant added .
While I was there it rained on and off most of the time and when I got back to the Meriva a reasonable sized puddle/lake had built up. I decided to try and drive round it. You can guess what happened.
The AA told me:-
- sorry can't help
- we know someone who can.
As I would have to wait for about 2 hours and would be charged £250 for the privilege, I phoned a friend who happened to be in the area and eventually he dragged me out using his Land Rover.
After leaving the boards on the hives for 3 days I collected some of the sticky boards from the Ravensden hives to see what effect the oxalic treatment had and did a video of the results
Sunday, 10 January 2016
Telling the bees
I normally limit myself to a 'Good morning' greeting, general small talk, comments on the weather, what I intend to do [and apologise when I'm clumsy or get something wrong], and a 'See you later'
From discussions with other bee keepers I understand I'm not alone in doing this and its something of a tradition.
However I recently came across an another old tradition of 'Telling the Bees'.
According to Wikipedia:--
The telling of the bees is a traditional European custom, in which bees would be told of important events in their keeper's lives, such as births, marriages, or departures and returns in the household. If the custom was omitted or forgotten and the bees were not "put into mourning" then it was believed a penalty would be paid, such as the bees might leave their hive, stop producing honey, or die. The custom has been most widely noted in England but also recorded in Ireland, Wales, Germany, France, Switzerland, and the United StatesI read about this on a blog I follow which gave a link to a short Film produced by RTE. Perhaps a touch too much Irish whimsy for my taste but nice enough all the same.
The film is here
Tuesday, 5 January 2016
Winter Varroa Treatment
The last main job of the year is the winter varroa treatment. Hopefully the partial removal of the mites strengthens the colony to make it more likely they will survive the winter.
Unlike the treatment in Autumn, this involves using Oxalic acid which is a particularly nasty substance that's highly corrosive and should not be handled or inhaled. You can buy it ready made in a 5% solution or tubs of crystals and you make it up yourself. A 500ml bottle and syringe that will do 10 hives costs £10. It has a very short shelf life.
It doesn't completely get rid of all the mites but can kill up to 90% of them. However it also kill the bee brood so it can only be administered in winter when the queen has stopped laying.
The usual way of administering OA is by dripping it into each seam of bees using a syringe at 5ml per per seam; a seam is the gap between the wooden frames. The OA needs to be warmed so as not to shock the bees and if possible it should be done on a warmish day to prevent too much heat loss when the hive is opened.
After using the syringe method for some years I bought an automatic syringe that you calibrate to the dose you want and once the dose has been applied, it refills itself automatically. This means the process is much quicker and there is less disturbance to the bees.
Last year I was talking to a very experienced bee keeper with ~130 colonies and he said the previous winter he had used something called a vapouriser for the first time. He had borrowed it but as it was so successful he intended buying one himself.
'If its good enough for Ken, its good enough for me', I thought and decided to get one myself.
Bee keeping equipment in this country is stupidly expensive but I managed to get one from Germany at two-thirds of the cost here. The instructions were in German but there were numerous Internet articles and YouTube videos on how to use it.
It works by putting 1gm of oxalic crystals in the round bowl at the top of the vapouriser which is then inserted in the front entrance of the hive. To keep as much vapour in the hive as possible a blanket is put around the entrance and also at the back of the hive where the varroa sheet goes.The crocodile clips are then attached to a 12v car battery that heats up the element that vapourises the crystals which then coats the bees.
Unlike the treatment in Autumn, this involves using Oxalic acid which is a particularly nasty substance that's highly corrosive and should not be handled or inhaled. You can buy it ready made in a 5% solution or tubs of crystals and you make it up yourself. A 500ml bottle and syringe that will do 10 hives costs £10. It has a very short shelf life.
It doesn't completely get rid of all the mites but can kill up to 90% of them. However it also kill the bee brood so it can only be administered in winter when the queen has stopped laying.
The usual way of administering OA is by dripping it into each seam of bees using a syringe at 5ml per per seam; a seam is the gap between the wooden frames. The OA needs to be warmed so as not to shock the bees and if possible it should be done on a warmish day to prevent too much heat loss when the hive is opened.
After using the syringe method for some years I bought an automatic syringe that you calibrate to the dose you want and once the dose has been applied, it refills itself automatically. This means the process is much quicker and there is less disturbance to the bees.
'If its good enough for Ken, its good enough for me', I thought and decided to get one myself.
Bee keeping equipment in this country is stupidly expensive but I managed to get one from Germany at two-thirds of the cost here. The instructions were in German but there were numerous Internet articles and YouTube videos on how to use it.
It works by putting 1gm of oxalic crystals in the round bowl at the top of the vapouriser which is then inserted in the front entrance of the hive. To keep as much vapour in the hive as possible a blanket is put around the entrance and also at the back of the hive where the varroa sheet goes.The crocodile clips are then attached to a 12v car battery that heats up the element that vapourises the crystals which then coats the bees.
Saturday, 2 January 2016
Top Bar Hive
Apart from worrying about the bees, winter is a time to catch up with jobs that haven't been done and to prepare for the coming season and something I have been working on is my Top Bar Hive.
A couple of years ago I attended a meeting where a local bee keeper gave a talk on the work he did with an organisation called Bees for Development.Their main work is in training young African bee keepers who would then go to small rural villages and teach bee keeping to provide an alternative cash crop. Information on BfD can be found here.
Apart from the good work they do, the thing I found very interesting was the type of bee hive they use in Africa.
European hives are mostly a series of boxes stacked on top of each other but African hives are essentially a trough where the colony expands horizontally rather than vertically.
Although Western bee hives are hardly a piece of space age design, they do depend on a degree of fairly precise manufacture and also need a fair of wood to build then, resources that are in short supply in remote African villages.
The TBH is therefore simple to make and does away with the numerous wooden frames in a Western hive by having a series of bars laying on the hive and the bees than build the comb down from them.
You can download plans from the interwebnet but my woodworking skills are limited to deciding how big a hammer to hit things with. A new TBH is a bit expensive but I eventually bought a second hand one off eBay for £40 and I made some legs for it and an observation window.
My first attempt at populating is was with a very scrawny swarm that eventually expired.
Last winter the woodpeckers made a total mess of the thing and the hive bowed in the middle. The walls were probably too thin and they buckled, the bars weren't supported by the side walls and I kind of wrote it off.
However I've decided to resurrect it and the first stage was to try and fill the holes with strips of wood and wood putty.
To cure the bulging I have put a straining bar through the hive and tightened the nuts on each end until the side walls are roughly straight and the bars don't fall into the hive.
Some of the bars have been damaged by the woodpeckers but there are enough left to support a reasonable sized colony.
The bars have slots in them and to give the bees a starting point you can either put a lolly stick or small strip of foundation in the slot. I am also going to attach a piece of drawn out come to a couple of the bars to give the queen somewhere to lay eggs.
Although I could hope to get a swarm next year I am going to play safe and buy what is called a package of bees. Normally if you buy a colony they come on convention frames but as these don't fit in a TBH, a package is probably easier to install. What you get is a box of 'loose' bees with a laying queen in a small cage. The bees are then emptied into the hive and the queen cage put in the hive for a couple of days before being the queen is released.
The package has been ordered now and wll be delivered around April time.
TBH's are now a bit trendy although conventional bee keepers can be a bit dismissive of them and I was advised to 'get rid of it and get a proper hive'.
They are often used by 'natural' bee keepers as they are perceived to be more bee friendly I suspect due in part because they recreate an environment similar to a hollowed out log where bees often set up a colony in the wild
Recently they got a bit of publicity when Monty Don of Gardeners World suggested new bee keepers used them.
Although he seems a reasonable bloke, unfortunately some of his comments about bees and bee keeping were stupid and ill informed which is surprising as he is a Patron of Bees for Development.
A definite advantage of TBH's is that they are much easier to handle than conventional hives.
A full super of honey can weigh 50 lbs and its no joke lugging these around. However with a TBH you just have to handle one frame at a time making them suitable for people with back problems. However you have to be very careful handling the frames. A conventional hive has an enclosed frame with wire in the foundation enabling you to swivel the frame in front of you to see either side of the frame. The comb in a TBH is just suspended from the top bar with no strengthening and its easy to break it off.
Also honey extraction is a pain. Because the hive doesn't have wooden frames you can't spin them in an extractor and you have to cut the comb away, melt it, let it cool and then take the wax off to get the honey.For me this isn't an issue as I am not interested in getting honey from the hive and have other hives to produce honey for markets.
Some of the varroa treatments are more difficult in a TBH but 'natural' bee keepers wouldn't use chemicals anyway and treat varroa with what is called a 'sugar shake' - essentially covering the bees with icing sugar that makes the bees clean themselves knocking the mites off.
A couple of years ago I attended a meeting where a local bee keeper gave a talk on the work he did with an organisation called Bees for Development.Their main work is in training young African bee keepers who would then go to small rural villages and teach bee keeping to provide an alternative cash crop. Information on BfD can be found here.
Apart from the good work they do, the thing I found very interesting was the type of bee hive they use in Africa.
European hives are mostly a series of boxes stacked on top of each other but African hives are essentially a trough where the colony expands horizontally rather than vertically.
Although Western bee hives are hardly a piece of space age design, they do depend on a degree of fairly precise manufacture and also need a fair of wood to build then, resources that are in short supply in remote African villages.
The TBH is therefore simple to make and does away with the numerous wooden frames in a Western hive by having a series of bars laying on the hive and the bees than build the comb down from them.
You can download plans from the interwebnet but my woodworking skills are limited to deciding how big a hammer to hit things with. A new TBH is a bit expensive but I eventually bought a second hand one off eBay for £40 and I made some legs for it and an observation window.
My first attempt at populating is was with a very scrawny swarm that eventually expired.
Last winter the woodpeckers made a total mess of the thing and the hive bowed in the middle. The walls were probably too thin and they buckled, the bars weren't supported by the side walls and I kind of wrote it off.
However I've decided to resurrect it and the first stage was to try and fill the holes with strips of wood and wood putty.
To cure the bulging I have put a straining bar through the hive and tightened the nuts on each end until the side walls are roughly straight and the bars don't fall into the hive.
The bars have slots in them and to give the bees a starting point you can either put a lolly stick or small strip of foundation in the slot. I am also going to attach a piece of drawn out come to a couple of the bars to give the queen somewhere to lay eggs.
The package has been ordered now and wll be delivered around April time.
TBH's are now a bit trendy although conventional bee keepers can be a bit dismissive of them and I was advised to 'get rid of it and get a proper hive'.
They are often used by 'natural' bee keepers as they are perceived to be more bee friendly I suspect due in part because they recreate an environment similar to a hollowed out log where bees often set up a colony in the wild
Recently they got a bit of publicity when Monty Don of Gardeners World suggested new bee keepers used them.Although he seems a reasonable bloke, unfortunately some of his comments about bees and bee keeping were stupid and ill informed which is surprising as he is a Patron of Bees for Development.
A definite advantage of TBH's is that they are much easier to handle than conventional hives.
A full super of honey can weigh 50 lbs and its no joke lugging these around. However with a TBH you just have to handle one frame at a time making them suitable for people with back problems. However you have to be very careful handling the frames. A conventional hive has an enclosed frame with wire in the foundation enabling you to swivel the frame in front of you to see either side of the frame. The comb in a TBH is just suspended from the top bar with no strengthening and its easy to break it off.
Also honey extraction is a pain. Because the hive doesn't have wooden frames you can't spin them in an extractor and you have to cut the comb away, melt it, let it cool and then take the wax off to get the honey.For me this isn't an issue as I am not interested in getting honey from the hive and have other hives to produce honey for markets.
Some of the varroa treatments are more difficult in a TBH but 'natural' bee keepers wouldn't use chemicals anyway and treat varroa with what is called a 'sugar shake' - essentially covering the bees with icing sugar that makes the bees clean themselves knocking the mites off.
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