Repairing a cock up

Bees like a self contained environment and when confronted with space in the hive they do one of two things.
If the gap is small they close it up with Propolis or if the gap is large they fill it up with comb.
When I collected the Little Staughton swarm I put a few drawn frames in the nuc box and added the bees. As there was nothing much I needed to do I left it.

However, when I checked it I found I had left too much space between one of the frames and the side of the nuc and the bees had filled it with comb. Despite what I said in an earlier blog, the nuc is now very full and I think I will have to transfer it to a full hive albeit I will probably have to pad it out while they fill it up.

I don't want to leave the 'filler' bit of comb behind so I need to transfer it somehow.
The same thing happened to me a few years ago and I cut the comb out of the nuc and tied it into an empty frame by threading lengths of rafia throufgh it and tying it off. The comb was very soft and it was very messy but it worked.
This time I thought I would do it a little differently by pinning the rafia to an empty frame so I can just slide the comb onto the frame and then tie it in with some more rafia.

This time we're ready for you.

The long time reader of this blog will know last year I lost two hives to wasps, including the sadly missed queen Barbie who was the star turn when I took her to markets in the observation hive.
This year will be different.
Hopefully.

Wasp traps

These are easy to make out of Sprite bottles.
You take a 2ltr bottle and cut the top off which is pushed into the bottle and a loop of string is made to hang it up.

You then put something sweet in the bottom of the bottle such as jam or rotting fruit. Add water and a little washing up liquid to break the surface tension of the water making it easier for the wasps to drown
The wasps find their way into the bottle but cannot get out again as they fly up the sides of the bottle.
I will put several of these up at the perimeter of both apiaries. There is a school of thought that says that although they catch wasps they also attract them and those that don't get caught let the main nest know where the bees are, so I will have them away from the hives.

Hive entrances

It is one of the jobs of young worker bees to protect the hive from possible invaders such as wasps and they stand guard along the entrance to the hive.
If the hive is under attack the size of the entrance can be reduced using a block of wood.
Normally these reducers look like this

If things get very silly some reducers can be rotated so the hive has a much smaller entrance, barely two bees wide.

Some of my hive entrances had this option and they worked well as can bee seen here so I will be adjusting all the blocks so I'm ready when the wasps arrive.

Posh [and expensive] wasp traps.

Once it was too late last year I had a look at these things.

They look similar to the Sprite traps but apparently they are made by some scientist bloke and only catch the scout wasps  or something like that. If you're interested their video is here.
I've ordered one for each apiary.

This is a bit mad but .........

The press endlessly refers to the apocalyptic effects of bees dying and how dependant we are on them for our food.
Normally they go on about the fruits we would lose but I have never seen a mention of a critical staple food  that forms the cornerstone of British society - tea.

Yorkshire based Taylors of Harrogate understands the importance of bees in delivering the flavours found in fruit and herbal teas, so commissioned research to look into our’ awareness of the effect the declining bee population will have on our favourite fruit and vegetables.


They have also produced a slightly bonkers Bee Hotel.

Its here

Bee update and other stuff

For both apiaries this will be a transitional year. There have been new Nuc colonies introduced, hives re queened and swarms introduced.
This will mean there won't be too much honey produced, or to be more precise not too much honey produced that is sold at Farmer's Markets. This isn't a problem as honey production for sale is of very little interest to me. What is important is that the bees are healthy and produce enough honey stores to get them through the winter and this will be my focus for the remainder of the season.
Saying that I do have enough mature colonies that should be able to provide enough honey for the very few markets I still do.

Ravensden

The two swarms seem to be doing well and producing lots of brood. Producing new comb is expensive in honey terms for the bees and they consume 6 ounces of honey to produce one ounce of wax. Therefore they are both being fed regularly.
With both swarms I have managed to do something stupid.
For the Little Staughton swarm I left too much space on one side of the hive and as bees do they have filled this up with a slab of comb. At some point I will try to cut this out and then put it in a proper brood frame.
For the Park Bench swarm I inspected it a few weeks ago and saw the queen. I caught it but as I was about to mark her she flew away.
I spent the next two weeks worrying about whether or not she would return but when I checked there was open brood which means she is back.
Its unlikely they will be transferred to their main hives until next year.

The two new queens were left alone for two weeks to let them settle in and when I checked them there was plenty of brood in both hives. One queen came out and said hello.

The new Nuc is doing very well and expanding rapidly.

One of the hives had gone queenless but there were numerous big queen cells so I decided to leave them to it and produce another queen. As I was looking at the frames a queen emerged from her cell right in front of me. Instinctively I picked her up and put her in the marking cage I always have with me. I marked her with a small dob of paint and put her back. Whether I should have done this as she might be too young, I don't know. I will wait a few weeks to see what happens.

I had ordered a Nuc for my Top Bar Hive but for various reasons this didn't happen so will be left for next year.
The other hives are doing well.

Scald End

Things have not gone well here.
The three hives that would have been re queened next year all went queenless. However with the refund from my Top Bar Hive nuc I got some queens and they have been installed.
The Apple Tree swarm is doing very well but the Train Station swarm less so.
The Phil hives [the ones I got from my friend who became anaphylactic] are now on proper hive stands. Both the frames have been propolised tight and they will be a job for next week. They seem Ok with lots of bee activity.

Bumblebees

Still happily flying around at the end of my garden;

Solitary Bees

Some of the eggs have passed through their larval stage and are now chrysalis's [??].

Starvation warning

One of the features of modern monoculture farming is that when a crop is harvested often this means there is nothing for the bees to forage on.
The Oil Seed Rape ended a month ago and there's little, if anything, for the bees to forage on.
Recently the National Bee Unit issued the following email:-

Beekeepers may wish to monitor their colony food levels closely over the next month as many colonies, particularly those which are strong and had their spring honey crop removed, will be at risk of starving. In some parts of the UK, the weather is still cold and foraging opportunities for large colonies are few and far between.

  I am feeding them with a syrup solution.

Varroa

I have done something about varroa on my website here
In it I said

Australia is thought to be the only country that is Varroa free but as its in New Zealand, so surely its just a matter of time

Well you've guessed it, varroa has been discovered in Queensland.
Admittedly its only a few mites and they are a less destructive strain of the mite we have in Europe but its varroa.
Australia authorities have said they will quarantine the area to prevent the spread of the mite.
Which is exactly what the Italian authorities said they would do to prevent the spead of Small Hive Beetle. They failed.

Glyphosphate

In a victory for Monsanto's undoubted bribery and weapons grade lobbying, glyphophate, the main constituent of Roundup, has been relicenced for another 18 months.

Neonicitinoids

Defra have just turned down the NFU's latest application for an emergency use of neonicitinoid seeds.
Perhaps the NFU should have used Monsanto's lobbyists.

The road to failiure - Step 1

I didn't manage to find the queen at the beginning of the week. The weather was not good and it started to rain. I only managed to get a quick look through the hive but she wasn't around so had to try agin.
My second attempt didn't start well as I went through all the frames and couldn't see her.I had another go and this time she appeared and I caught her using a new queen catcher I had bought.
I normally use a bulldog clip type of catcher

It has slots in that allow the worker bees to escape but keep the queen inside. You leave it for a few minutes for the workers to get out leaving the queen behind.
If you are marking the queen you then transfer her to a marking tube.

You push the plunger up the tube [it doesn't go all the way to the top so you can't squash her] to keep her still and then you use a marker pen through the mesh.
However last time I did this, the queen flew away as she was going into the tube so this time I decided to use a new type of catcher which combines the catcher and marker.

It works like this

It worked better than I expected and she was transferred to the cassette and queen excluder added to lock her in.
She was then left to lay her eggs in the cassette for no more than two days.

Two days later she was released back into the hive and the cassette bought home.
Last time I used this method there weren't too may eggs but this time virtually all of the brown cups had an egg in,

Honey bee eggs measure 1 to 1.5 mm long, about half the size of a single grain of rice.
The cups were then transferred to the rearing frame which was put in a hive in Ravensden for the bees to work on.

There are 20 cups in the frame but I have no idea how many queens I will produce. I will be happy with just a couple,