Long live the Queen

Finally, on Easter Monday, the sun shone long enough for us to do our first full on bee inspection of the year. Prising the frames apart was a major undertaking - the bees had well and truly stuck them together. Just to make things even more difficult, there was brace comb on the ends of each and every frame and at the bottom of the hive as well.

We laboriously unprised each frame and checked them over. They were literally dripping with honey. In fact, we took some of the brace comb from the frames round to our neighbour's for dinner as there was even honey stored in these. We estimated that 4 or so frames were full of stores. Perhaps another 4 were full of brood in various stages, and one frame had eggs.

I was disappointed that we couldnt see more eggs - but as there was so much brood, I won't worry too much (yet). The big news of the day though was undoubtedly the fact that we spotted the Queen. She is the same as last year (our swarm queen), is still marked, and I am pleased that she is still Queen Bee as I think she has a very good temperament.

Having said this, Liam got stung on his thumb, and I was stung on the leg. However, I think this is fair enough given the amount of disturbance we put them to - and all without a smoker. (We tried - it went out...as always.)

I also removed the Queen Excluder and rearranged the Super frames as I had intended. Needless to say hardly any bees were in the super. Maybe it is just too early. Still - it is there if they need it.

I will take the varroa insert out later on and do a count for 2 days - and then do another one. Someone pointed out to me it is easier to count fewer mites twice rather than try and distinguish loads of them all in one go. I shall give it a go!

Frustrated with the weather

What rubbish weather! I have psyched myself up to try and find the Queen and it wont stop raining. Just before the bad weather started Liam and I had a quick look inside the hive without removing any frames. We took the decision to add a super as the bees were now moving over all the frames and it felt heavy and looked busy.

However, we decided to put the Queen Excluder on, and then immediately thought we had made the wrong decision but it is too wet to change it! I am not sure that the bees will go into the Super as we used foundation that was only half drawn out from last Summer.

I am waiting for 5 minutes of sunshine to go and remove it but it is not looking promising...

A second hive, and a water puzzle

We have taken the plunge and bought a second hive from Thornes - mainly because Liam didn't want to spend his birthday at the Ruishton Beekeepers Auction.

It has arrived and I am waiting for a nice day to sit outside and apply Linseed oil and to build some frames. I have been keeping an eye on the hive entrance and there seems to be a lot of activity on sunny days with bees taking in a lot of pollen. I am also enjoying the sight of my bees on the flowers in my garden, and I think for the first time I understand the point of all those BBKA leaflets telling you which plants / shrubs / trees to plant as it is somehow very satisfying. (The picture above is of a crocus about ten foot from the hive).


I have been slightly puzzled by the large numbers of bees ignoring a 5 foot high water feature (fountain and pool) bang smack in the middle of the garden to visit a water butt right the other side of the garden from their hive. How do they know it contains water? The lid is on and there are no obvious signs. And why dont they like the pool?

Following David's advice we have put a bowl of water on top of the butt with a stone in it. This will hopefully stop the bees going into the water butt and drowning. However, they seem to be happy to ignore it and keep burrowing under the lid. Very mysterious.

On the next sunny and warm day, we are going to try and find the Queen to check to see if she is marked (and the same one as last year) or not (in which case, we are going to have to try and mark her - gulp.) This is the precursor to starting Robin's artificial swarm method. Watch this space...

First sighting of pollen

Another inspection, and a quick heft of the hive on Monday revealed more dead bees on the ground but the hive felt heavier (??? can fondant really work this quickly or is this my imagination?!). Looking at the hive entrance, there were also guard bees and plenty of forager bees returning loaded down with an incredibly orange pollen - possibly snowdrop?

Inside, on the crownboard, there was still some fondant left and the bees were clustered around it. From what I could see through the glass partition, bees were extremely active in the brood chamber with bees teeming all over all but 3 frames.

I havent done a full inspection yet - I want to go to a "Disease and Hygiene" talk on thursday at Frome BKA and will ask the experts when they intend to do theirs...

Have just realised that the bee equipment auction at Ruishton falls on Liam's birthday. Tentative questioning has revealed that he does not see this as how he wants to spend his day and so I think it is a case of choosing our hive from Thormes...

NB Until I find my bee notebook (carefully shelved since October), I need to note that I did a varroa check and had a daily mite drop of 1.25 - no concern (yet).

Planning ahead with ebay

Over the winter, Frome beginner beekeepers have been lucky enough to attend a series of evening courses run by Robin. These are pitched at a level above total beginner but below the basic exam course and have been extremely interesting.

Robin has encouraged us to think ahead and work out what we want to do if (when?!) we find Queen cells. Liam and I have decided that we would like to increase the number of colonies we have and take it to the dizzy heights of two hives.

Last week's course included a discussion on the different methods of swarm control. There are a couple of different approaches including the Pagden method (the BBKA recommended method) and a revised approach - Robin's "Safety First" method! We will be attempting the latter so more on this in a few months time...

Whichever method we use, we learnt that a nucleus hive would be useful - and that these are available on ebay from £35. I have accordingly just "Made an offer" on a nuc hive with a wire mesh floor for £32 plus £15 postage and had it accepted.

Next up is a second hive - I am hoping to find a second hand one at a local auction?

The bees are awake!

It is so nice to finally have something to post about! After a long winter with not very much happening (bar some oxalic acid treatment in December and an excellent candle making course with Robin - see separate post), my bees seem to be waking up again.

I have been hefting my hive every couple of weeks from mid Jan and had noticed last week that it was definitely lighter. Liam bought some fondant from the bakers in Frome (who immediately asked how many hives we had - he must have suspected something!) and we put it in the hive on Thursday. Up until then, we had seen no activity whatsoever around the hive - no flying bees, or visible guard bees etc.

This continued until Sunday when I went to check again. In the morning - nothing, despite the fact that it was a reasonably sunny day. I lifted the roof and inspected the fondant and was reassured to see they had taken some and seemed very busy in the hive at least. Later that afternoon I glanced at the hive and saw not only bees flying but about 20 bee corpses in front of it. It looks as if they had suddenly decided a spring clean was in order and had chucked out all the debris? For the first time since November, I could also see guard bees at the entrance and a few bees flying.

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.