Friday 11 June 2010

4 stings and 2 bees inside veil

My last post was positively celebratory. This post reflects on the darker side of beekeeping....

We have been monitoring the hive every 4-5 days to check on the development of Queen cells. Originally, we were waiting to find a well developed Queen cell with an egg inside it and were then planning to split the hive - a process that would have involved trips to a second apiary site in order to have two hives, both with large numbers of forager and young bees. However, our bees did not bee-have and it is a case of too little, too late. True, there are now several million (it feels) Queen cells, but it is now a bit later on in the season, and the wise men of the Frome Beekeeper's Association have suggested that we simply take a nucleus instead.

However, I dont know if it is because we removed their honey, or, more likely, because the weather has been so rainy and stormy here, but the last two visits have been really unpleasant. The bees have been pinging off us and generally been extremely aggressive.

As we tried to find the Queen yesterday to remove her into the nucleus box, I was stung once, and Liam three times. Worse than this, I had the moment every beekeeper dreads when I realised the buzzing was actually coming from inside of my helmet! Thankfully I managed (blindly - as my fist instinct was to close my eyes!!) to grab at a loose piece of veil and squish, and actually got the bee before it got me. However, the result was that I then kept being dive bombed at the precise bit of my helmet where the bee was stuck - and I was so terrified more bees would get in, I was useless for the rest of the check.

Eventually we were forced to close the hive up without achieving anything and come away. Then, as I was about to remove my veil, Liam calmly noted I had another bee wandering around inside my helmet - it had probably been there the whole time...

All in all, we were both dreading today - where we faced repeating the whole thing all over again.
The aim was to:
  1. Find the Queen and remove her to the nucleus box - this means the parent hive is Queenless and wont swarm once Queen cells are sealed.
  2. Put Queen plus two frames of sealed brood and eggs into the nucleus hive. Forager bees should all return to parent hive. Again, this apparently means that this hive shuld not swarm as one of the constituents of the swarm (Queen, forager bees, young bees) is missing. Hmmm, touch wood...
  3. Put brood frames with foundation in parent and nucleus hives and feed nucleus hive
This time, Liam and I were armed to the teeth. 3 layers of trousers, gardening gloves covered with disposable plastic ones, and my bee smock elasticated waist carefully not pulled down around my hips (we think the bee got in underneath!) Liam built a small fire which we carefully loaded into the smoker - today was not the day for it to go out like normal. Finally we gritted our teeth and went for it.

The bees pinged, they were a bit aggressive, but thankfully today is sunny and there were far fewer bees in the hive. This time, we found the Queen (albeit on the last but one frame) and quickly put her in the nuc with two frames of brood and a shaken frame of bees for company. And then we ran.

Well not quite. We had to go back and feed the nuc because quite honestly, there was no way we were going through the 3 layers of trousers paraphernalia all over again in one day.

Now we have to keep an eye on the nuc, turning the frames of foundation so they draw them out and maybe feeding again. Once established we can try putting them in the second hive and hope they build up into a full colony in the summer.

And in six days time, we have to examine the parent hive for Queen cells, choosing either just one sealed or maybe two - one sealed, one open and destroying the rest.

Fingers crossed!

1 comment:

  1. Pia, a great post, well done.

    A most enjoyable read and I hope that I don't have that same experience too often. Over on the www.surreybeekeeper.co.uk website I am yet to experience my "first sting" and so I will be interested how it feels when I do get it.

    Glad you both survived.

    James

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