Hornets

I haven't blogged recently because I have had very little to say, but an article in the Mendip Times recently caught my attention. In the November edition, Chris Sperring wrote "Sting in the Tail" about European hornets. Apparently there has been a huge increase in these insects in Somerset in the last two summers. I can (somewhat unscientifically) corroborate this as I have seen three (one in our office and two somewhat alarmingly in our house) earlier this month, despite never having noticed them even in our garden before now.

The article was actually quite reassuring as apparently hornets are not aggressive at all (unless you are close to their nest) and are in fact the "gentle giant" of the wasp world. Has anyone else noticed an increase in hornets, and, do they pose a threat to our bees like wasps do in terms of robbing? The article states that 40 Asian / Japanese Giant Hornets (a non native species and not in UK) can kill 30,000 European Honey bees but makes no mention of the likely behaviour of the European hornet.

Feeding time is over...

The bees have finally stopped feeding. Or at least, I think they have... Liam checked the feeder over the weekend and the remaining sugar syrup had crystallized in the feeder. I am not sure if this is because the temperature caused it to do so, or because the bees were no longer feeding/moving it around. Either way, Liam was unable to lift the hive when he "hefted" it and so we have to assume they had taken enough. I believe there may be the option of giving them candy over the winter months if they look like needing it. I am trying to disturb them as little as possible so have not actually looked inside the hives at their stores for some time.

We have replaced the eke and the apiguard but this is really window dressing. I am not sure it will be doing anything in these temperatures?

On Friday this year's Beekeeping Course for beginners begins, so I will be returning to that and can no doubt ask all these questions there!

Still feeding...

Just a quick post to say that my bees are still feeding - we have now fed 2.5 gallons and it is still going down nicely.

I have also had to have my camera cleaned because it was covered in propolis but that's another story!

Feeding frenzy?

Slight panic over the weekend. We checked the bees last week to see how much syrup had been taken down after our faux-pas with the feeder. And the answer? None (again!) We drizzled more over them, around the opening in the crown board and poured some over the seams of bees. Still no interest. Robin then came around with a feeder made to his own design. Apparently, our eke was putting too great a distance between bees and feeder.

We were using the eke (made so proudly by Liam!) because of the apiguard and have now removed this, cellophaned it and will put back on once the feeding is complete. (Thank you for your comments by the way - this has reassured me that feeding should take precedence over the varroa for now).

Anyway, the new feeder has had an instant result. We put the feeder on around lunchtime on thursday and by the time we left for a weekend away at around 6 that evening, all of the syrup had gone and we had refilled it with another gallon of syrup. On our return on Sunday evening, they had finished all of that and so we refilled again this morning. (I will ask Robin if I can post a photo as we will definitely try to reproduce this for ourselves next year).

Now I am just waiting to see how much syrup the bees will take down. So far, we have fed 1.5 gallons.

Schoolboy error (or errors)

Hmm, a day after we put the feeder on, we couldnt resist going to see how much our diligent bees would have consumed.

As we lifted the roof, they continued in their extremely drowsy meanderings without paying us the least attention. NO syrup had been consumed, and we eventually concluded that we must have positioned the feeder incorrectly - misaligning it with the hole in the crownboard. It is now adjusted, we drizzled a bit over the top of the brood chamber to let them know it is there, and we will try and check it before the weekend.

And now for the second error... I was rereading Gerald Fisher's chapter on putting the bees to bed and he explains a little bit about the way Apiguard works. Apparently the thymol evaporates and is heavier than air. This means that it sinks to the bottom of the hive - and why you need either to have a solid floor - or have your tray in... Needless to say we dont (we had taken it out after the 2nd varroa check). So, does this render the first 4-5 days of treatment pointless and can we just get away with sticking the tray back in sharpish?!

Another varroa test and a first attempt to feed...

I am sorry that it has been so long since my last post. In the last few weeks of August with the danger of swarming past, I decided to leave well alone for 2-3 weeks. In the meantime I attended a talk with Frome beekeepers given by Robin on recycling wax. This was excellent and I hope to be able to get some spare wax to start experimenting!

After the talk I got chatting with some of the other members about how and when to feed. Apparently, in this area, it is a good plan to feed before the ivy comes out as otherwise the bees can get too distracted and not take up enough syrup. I therefore put my order in for sugar in bulk - and now have a 25kilo sack sitting in the kitchen.

Liam and I then did one full inspection, and noted down the amount of stores on each frame. We calculated that the bees have 9 pounds worth of stores in the hive - and understand that they need at least 40 to get through the winter.

Before feeding, however, I decided to review the varroa count again. This time I did it for 7.5 days and got 38 mites. According to Defra this calls for light control. We have therefore constructed an eke (OK, Liam constructed an eke) and have decided to treat and feed at the same time.

Varroa Count Results

Four days after putting the insert in, we removed it and put it on our patio table to inspect in the sunlight.

With the help of Ted Hooper and the Defra leaflet, we counted just 10 still varroa mites, but the board was also covered with two or three types of other, smaller, moving insects. From the Defra pictures, I dont think that the largest of these was Braula coeca (?) because it was considerably smaller than the Varroa. It looked like a little red spider but there were literally hundreds of them scurrying all over the board.

The next size down was really too small for detailed observation to the naked eye. It just looked like little brown specs moving around. I am hoping these were Melittiphis?

We have decided not to worry about these for the time being... Instead, we divided 10 varroa mites by 4 days to get a daily mite drop of 2.5. According to Defra, that figure for this time of year means that control is not yet required. We will do a first icing sugar dust at our next inspection and see how the bees react and in the meantime have asked Norman for his advice. Now I just have to dispose of the sticky paper - yuk!