May 6, 2005
Honey
extraction - September
25 January 2004
Snowdrop flowers (Galanthus nivalis) carpet the woods in the locality and for
a few days now bees have been seen visiting the several clumps in the garden.
The bright yellow-orange snowdrop pollen has replaced the duller orange-brown
of the gorse. One hive had over 60 bees returning per minute in the warmest
part of the day, many of them carrying pollen. This indicates that the queen
is laying and the spring build-up of the hive population has begun.
~~~~
NOTE ON HAZEL~~~~~
Hazel Corylus avellana: Corylaceae
Like the hawthorn the hazel is very widespread throughout the country but avoids acid peaty soils, and even extends to the extreme north of Scotland. In oak and ash woods it is common, being often grown for coppicing, and flourishing best on calcareous soils where pure thickets or copses of it may occur. It is as an early source of pollen that the hazel interests the bee-keeper. The tassels of male flowers are conspicuous from late January until early March according to season and district. They yield an abundance of a light-yellow powdery pollen, that bees will collect eagerly in suitable weather when hazel bushes are near their hives. It is unusual for them to visit bushes a long way from home at this early season. The flowers are wind pollinated and not dependent on insect visits for fertilization. They are available for quite a long period, usually about a month, but this is governed by weather conditions at flowering time. In some parts of the country, notably Kent, hazel-nut and cob-nut orchards exist. The varieties grown in these orchards are fundament-ally the same with regard to flowering as the wild hazel bushes except that the tassels are sometimes much longer.
5/6
March 2004
The week long cold spell that came with the 10 cm snowfall in February greatly
reduced bee activity, although they still came out for short periods on sunny,
calm days even when the temperature barely scraped 6°C. On 5 March
the temperature by the hives reached 11°C and the bees of all three
hives were out in force. The numbers of bees returning per minute to the three
hives were (1) 57, (2) 90 and (3) 97; comparable with rates in high summer
when plenty of nectar is available.
A high proportion were bearing full loads of a dull orange pollen (gorse).
Occasionally smaller loads of pale yellow and white were seen. The bees were
very busy in daffodils and on a couple of Corylopsis bushes.
On 6 March the hives were hefted again (see 25.11.03 for details). The weights
recorded since October are shown on the graph below. As the winter has progressed,
the fall in the average weight of stores in five hives (two on another site)
has gradually become steeper, reflecting the increase in colony activity and
brood-rearing towards the spring.
Bees on the Corylopsis had bright orange pollen sacs. In daffodils the colour
ranged from white for loads just started to pale yellow for fuller loads. Here
they have a more laid back approach to pollen collection. Normally after visiting
a flower they hover by it whilst scraping the pollen into their sacs with their
legs. But with the more spacious conditions of daffodil trumpets they also
lie on their backs on the bottom of the trumpet, holding the anthers with their
forelegs, while scraping the pollen.
6
April 2004
With the willow, blackthorn, cherry and damson in the district now in flower
the nectar supply has increased greatly. Honey bees have also been seen on
ornamental currant and heather in local gardens. On warm days copious amounts
of yellow pollen are coming into all hives, so much so that the mouse guards
had to be removed to ease congestion at the hive entrances and avoid pollen
losses. There was a further drop in the average weight of food stores in the
hives during March but the two most active hives showed no change in weight
over the month, indicating that if any of the stores were used their weight
was replaced by incoming fresh nectar and pollen.
The most active hive (No. 3) was given a new super containing 11 frames of
comb foundation in order to ensure sufficient space in the hive for the rising
bee population and the incoming stores. Lack of space in a hive is one factor
that can give rise to swarming, something the modern beekeeper tries to avoid.
The weather has turned too cool and rainy to allow spring cleaning and the
year's first thorough inspection of the brood chambers. This generally happens
in April and will have to wait for a day when the temperature is above 13°C
with preferably no wind.
Links to information on bees and bee keeping.
A
super was put under the existing one on hive 3 to accommodate the
expected high nectar flow evidenced by the relatively high rate of
bees entering the hive.
10 April 2004
Hive 3 had shown the most activity since mid-January and was inspected at the
first opportunity. As expected there was plenty of brood at all stages of development
on 7 out of the 11 frames.
12 April 2004
The first Varroa mite check of the season showed that each hive was dropping
one or two mites a day onto the sampling board. Each hive was subsequently
treated with 5 g thymol in vegetable oil soaked into a paper tissue.
18 April 2004
New supers were places on hives 1 and 2 under the existing ones which still
had a considerable residue of the winter stores.
22 April 2004
All three hives were inspected by the government's local bee officer and given
a clean bill of health. All three hives had 8 frames of capped brood (young
bees aged over 9 days since egg-laying) indicating a rapid build up after the
winter. On warm days from now on the bees arriving at the hive entrance were
generally arriving in numbers too great to count accurately (> 120 / min.)
Top
2 May 2004
A routine inspection of all three hives revealed queen cells in all. This means
that they were preparing either to swarm or supersede their queens. The swarming
avoidance measure adopted at this early stage of the season was to weaken the
three colonies by removing three frames of bees and brood from each, taking
care not to take the queens with them, and replacing with frames of wax foundation
The aim was to reduce hive congestion and give the bees left behind some work
to do in drawing out the comb on the new foundation. The 9 removed frames were
taken to another apiary to make up a new colony. They included 2 good queen
cells so that the new colony had the possibility of rapidly producing its own
queen.
16 May 2004
The first of four swarms at this apiary was taken on this day from a nearby
willow tree, hived and transferred to another apiary. The anti-swarming measure
taken on 2 May was not sufficiently drastic to prevent swarming in such strong
colonies. The likely causes of swarming in these hives were threefold: 1) the
rapid build-up resulting from the copious availability of nectar during an
exceptionally good spring; 2) lack of space for the queen to lay in the brood
box because of the high influx of nectar and pollen combined with the surplus
of winter stores -- new supers were available only with wax foundation in the
frames and thus there was a lag before sufficient cells were built to store
incoming nectar; 3) overcrowding of bees in the brood box. Another cause of
swarming is a failing queen of two or more years old. All queens at this apiary
were less than 12 months old.
Taking this swarm needed two attempts. The first involved coaxing the bees
onto a frame using smoke, lowering the frame into a box and shaking the remaining
bees off the branch into the box. As the swarm was spread over a cluster of
foliage and side branches a neat knock-down into the box was not achieved,
partly because the box opening was too small. The bees soon returned to the
branch because the queen had not gone in the box. A larger box was obtained,
the bees were dislodged sharply into it from the branch, it was covered with
a cloth and placed on the ground with the opening downwards and the edge supported
to create an entrance to a temporary 'hive'. The remaining flying bees made
for the box indicating that this time the queen was in it. After all but a
few had gone in, the box was emptied into a ready prepared brood box with 11
frames of foundation. A super with no frames was placed on top to act as a
temporary funnel for the mass of arriving bees. The crown board was placed
on the super and the hive left until all the bees that took to the air had
entered it. It was then strapped up and transferred to another apiary.
Further swarms were caught on 17 & 20 May and 7 June. The keeper was present
during the 20 May swarm's emergence from hive 3. It was like someone had turned
a tap on. The air above the apiary was filled with thousands of bees. They
settled on a hawthorn and were easily shaken into a box.
24 May 2004
Hive 3 was moved to a more rural apiary 6.5 miles away as there was a possibility
that during its swarming preparations the bees had been irritable and stung
neighbours. If a hive is moved, the rule of three must be followed: a maximum
of 3 feet or a minimum of 3 miles. Otherwise, the bees will return to the place
where their hive was last known to be and perish. The decision was taken to
permanently reduce the hives at this apiary to two, monitor the situation and
reduce the number further, if necessary, in the winter.
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Driving
a swarm in a willow tree onto a frame using smoke
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Driving
a swarm in a willow tree onto a frame using smoke - close up
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Close
up of swarm to the right of the keeper's head
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Lowering
the frame of bees into a box
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Shaking
the remaining bees into the box
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Second
attempt with a bigger box
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Brood
frame of bees
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Close-up
of the comb showing the uncapped queen cell
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Emptying
the swarm into a super placed on a brood box
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14
June 2004
Despite the swarming some 9 frames of spring honey were harvested from the
three hives at this apiary yielding 22 pounds (10 kg) after extraction. Extraction
by centrifugation was in a 9-frame manual radial stainless-steel extractor
made by Saf Natura srl, Italy (http://www.safnatura.com/). The combs were uncapped
with a serrated knife or, if the surfaces were not flat, with an many-pronged
uncapping fork. The honey was poured through filters (stainless steel, then
nylon jelly bag) into a Saf Natura settling tank. After leaving overnight to
de-bubble, the honey was put into one pound jars, capped and labelled ready
for sale.
Top
21
June 2004
A routine Varroa check showed a natural mite drop of only 4 per day from Hive
1 and zero per day from Hive 2. The low amount from Hive 2 is because it was
recovering from broodlessness after swarming in late May early June. As the
mite breeds in the brood, broodlessness causes a temporary large drop in mite
numbers. Even 4 mites per day was considered low and thus not calling for emergency
anti-Varroa treatment. An inspection of the brood chambers on this date showed
that Hive 1 had plenty of eggs and brood Hive 2 had a small patch of eggs showing
that it has a laying queen again and is recovering from swarming.
12
July 2004
The two hives differed greatly in foraging rates during the past two weeks.
Hive 1 had 100 to more than 120 bees returning per minute whereas for Hive
2 it was only 34 to 59 per minute indicating the slow recovery of Hive 2 after
swarming. However, the fact that plenty of pollen was coming into Hive 2 meant
that the queen was still busy laying. This was confirmed by a brood box inspection
on this date showing brood and eggs on frames 2 to 6.
Top
3
July 2004
A fourth super was put on Hive 1 bringing its height to over 4 feet (120 cm).
The extra super was necessary as the one closest to the brood box appeared
to be over two-thirds full. The bees need storage space providing ahead of
requirements.
23
July 2004
A routine inspection of Hive 1 revealed eggs and brood (larvae and capped cells)
in the first super above the brood box. This indicated that the queen excluder,
an old long-slot zinc type, was leaking. Close examination of the excluder
showed that some of the strips of zinc were distorted out of the plane of the
metal sheet and thus could let a queen pass through in several places. It was
necessary to replace all the supers and work down through the stack, inspecting
frame by frame until it was reasonably certain that the queen was in the brood
box below the leaky excluder. Then the excluder was replaced with a newer short-slot
variety before replacing all the supers. The bees had begun to draw the new
foundation in the top super. However, the large dome of brood in the bottom
super means that as the young bees there vacate their cells a large volume
of space for honey storage will be created and the fourth super may not be
needed this season.
31
July 2004
Hive 1 was re-inspected to ensure that the manipulation on 23 July was successful.
There were no eggs in the supers but plenty of eggs in the brood box showing
that the queen was now back below the excluder where she should be. As there
were a few drone cells in the super it will be necessary to let these out in
the coming weeks as they too fat to pass through a queen excluder. They would
otherwise die in the supers and risk partly blocking the excluder.
Top
1
August 2004
There seems to be an exceptionally high wasp (Vespula vulgaris) population
in the village this year. Several requests have been received to destroy nests
in buildings or too close to them for comfort. Many are flying round the base
of the hives looking for bees to devour. This they often do by biting them
in half at the junction between abdomen and thorax and then carrying off the
abdomen to feed their young. The bee's thorax continues to wander round for
some time, often on the hive frames if the wasps have managed to evade the
entrance guards. A wasp trap of honey -- fermenting to prevent it attracting
bees -- was placed by the hive and it soon began to collect wasps.
A Varroa count showed that Hive 1 was dropping on average 16 mites a day. This
was still not indicative of imminent colony collapse and no action was deemed
necessary until the autumn treatment after the honey harvest has been removed.
Hive 2 was dropping 3 mites per day which is very low and continuing to reflect
its period of broodlessness. For the first time some of mites dropping onto
the sampling boards are showing dented carapaces indicated that the bees are
learning to deal with them. By breeding and to some extent retaining the mite's
selective pressure on the bees through moderate integrated pest management,
UK beekeepers hope that the bee population will develop a relationship with
the parasite such that whole apiaries are no longer destroyed by it.
15
August 2004
Foraging rates of around 60 bees returning per minute are already appreciably
declining compared with mid-July, indicating that the main nectar flow may
be coming to an end. In the past two weeks honey bees have been busy primarily
on knapweed, Japanese knotweed and bramble. Scattered clumps of heather and
borage are also attracting bees. There is no evidence that they are visiting
Himalayan balsam yet.
Top
In late August the Regional Bee Inspector paid a visit to do a pyrethroid resistance test. Synthetic pyrethroids such as tau-fluvalinate are very effective against Varroa. Although the bees described here were not treated with pyrethroid since the summer of 2003 there was nevertheless interest in knowing if the local Varroa had bred themselves resistance to the miticide. A sample of about 200 bees was taken and they were placed in a ventilated container containing a small sample of the pyrethroid. Thirteen mites were killed by this treatment over a period of 4 hours. The bees were then killed with detergent and washed with water through a filter cloth to catch any mites not killed by the miticide. No further mites were caught indicating that pyrethroid resistance had not yet evolved in or spread to this locality. This was of academic interest to this keeper who is now managing Varroa with thymol (main component of natural oil of thyme) and oxalic acid (found in rhubarb leaves).
August weather continued to be poor on the whole and many local beekeepers reported that the bees were consuming honey which they had previously stored. September weather got off to a good start but soon became cool wet and windy. Taking off the honey was delayed until mid-September in the hope that the late nectar flow from the Himalayan balsam and knotweed would replenish honey stores. Certainly the bees were visiting the knotweed about a mile away in great number. By taking a compass bearing from the map it was possible to find the main flight path from the knotweed to the apiary and watch the bees traveling to and fro to harvest the nectar. Eventually,on 13 September, the entire honey crop was harvested. The yield was only 75% of the normal average expected. Many local keepers did worse than that. One lost five colonies to wasps, another lost three out of her five colonies the same way. One keeper of some 30 years experience harvested only 200 pounds of honey in 2004 compared with 900 in 2003.
As soon as the honey was off, boards were inserted under the Varroa floors to check the natural mite drop. A big rise on the 1 August figures was observed. Production colonies were dropping up to 122 mites per day, suggesting that the mite population had increased dramatically in the previous 6 weeks. The hives on this site were dropping 19 and 21 mites per day respectively. No time was wasted in getting Varroa treatment in place. Five grams of thymol dissolved in 12 ml vegetable oil soaked in two paper towels was placed on the top bars of the frames of the brood box of each hive. This delivery system works partly by contact as the bees pick up the oil on their bodies and spread it throughout the hive and partly by the thymol vapourising. To monitor the effectiveness of treatment and to trap the thymol vapours in the hive,the sampling boards were slid into position under the Varroa floors. The total mite drop was counted after one week of treatment. The hives on this site dropped 1,239 (hive 2) and 3,390 (hive1) mites respectively. 2,500 mites in a colony is reckoned to be the limit before colony collapse is imminent. It remains to see whether hive 1 became so infested that it is unable to survive the winter. It is not so much the mites themselves that do the damage but the viruses that they transfer as the suck the haemolymph from the bees. Overwintering bees with a high virus burden are less likely to survive.
After completion of the thymol treatment the hives were weighed to assess the residual stores. The results were disappointingly low. The two hives each had only about 10 pounds of stores (honey and pollen). It was necessary to increase this to about 30 pounds each by feeding sugar syrup. The method for doing this is described above. Both hives took 5 litres of syrup (4 kg sugar) each within about 24 hours. A second 5 litres was taken more slowly. This will probably be sufficient if the October nectar flow from the ivy is good this year.
On days when the weather is good, traffic to and from these hives is up to 80 bees per minute. Dull yellow and dull orange pollen is coming in -- probably ivy and gorse respectively. The main ivy flow has not yet started but some flowers are open and bees were first seen on it on 1 October. There is a single large gorse bush near the apiary that is in full bloom. Honey bees have also been seen on Fuchsia.
Most
of the drones have long since been driven out of the hives and left
to starve to death. However on 2 October, two were seen at a hive
entrance in this keepers other apiary. This was good news. The hive concerned
had become queenless in August. It was given a frame of eggs from a vigorous
hive and immediately started to make one into a queen by feeding it royal
jelly and enlarging its cell. If it develops properly it is due to emerge
on about 4 October. Normally a queen mates with half a dozen or so drones,
preferably not from its own colony. However, even a poor mating with
one or two of its own offspring drones could be sufficient to see the
colony
through the winter. The colony could then be re-queened in the spring.
A colony that becomes queenless in late summer is in danger of not producing
sufficient bees to make a big enough cluster to survive the winter cold
and begin rebuilding its population from late January onwards.
Top
6 October
The hive which had apparently been queen less had pollen being brought in for the first time since 6 September. The amounts continued to increase so that on good days in mid-October to the beginning of November, 90 to 110 bees were returning per minute with a large proportion carrying pollen. Without disturbing the colony, this is the best indication that it is now 'queen right'.
Mild, overcast and wet weather prevailed through October and November. However, even on overcast days with the temperature around 10 deg. C bees were seen foraging, returning at over 60 per minute to some hives. The pollen loads coming in are predominantly light yellow (ivy) and dull orange (gorse). The dull weather has meant that the ivy nectar flow has been less than optimal but in a couple of hives that were opened, small amounts of crystallised ivy honey were observed.
The textbooks generally say that in winter brood rearing ceases and the bees go into cluster. However, two out of three hives inspected during the preceding weeks contained brood at all stages and the pollen influx to others suggest that they too have brood. Winter broodlessness was discussed recently on the Irish beekeeping e-list. This provoked several contributors to check their hives. Normally they would leave them alone in winter but as the weather has been mild and the bees unusually active they considered it safe to open them. Typically, between a quarter and a half of the hives contained brood. This is bad for Varroa control as the mites will be able to continue to breed throughout the winter.
The daily Varroa mite drop was checked on 22 October and found to be alarmingly high (8-191/day, depending on the hive) despite the thymol treatment 5 weeks earlier. Another thymol treatment was begun immediately. The mite drops were monitored in the following 4 weeks. The diagram below shows the values for individual hives and the average, to which an exponential curve has been fitted. The average weekly mite drops calculated from the equation of the curve for each week after treatment were 1372, 591, 254 & 109. Some hives were very heavily infested and bees with deformed wings due to the virus burden during development induced by the Varroa infestation were occasionally seen to drop out of the hive entrances. However, the second treatment seemed to have been effective and no further treatment was considered necessary until the oxalic acid spray in December.
6 December
On the warmer days the bees are still active and a mahonia bush some
5 yards from the hives is humming with bees. There was a surprisingly
high wasp activity round the hives in late November and early December.
Wasps were seen entering and leaving the hives, unchallenged by the
bees, although several dead wasps were on the ground below the hive
entrances.Wasp traps were placed by the hives. After a few days there
were scores of dead wasps in them and soon no more wasps were seen
entering the hives.
A simple home-made wasp trap that is effective in trapping thousands
of wasps between recharges is shown in the diagram.
Races of Honeybees
The indigenous black bee (Apis
mellifera mellifera; AMM) of this part
of Wales has been interbred with imported Italian bees (Apis mellifera
ligustica) for many decades. Orange bands on abdomens of some of the
bees in these hives suggest the presence of Italian genetics. It was
of interest to check how much the bees resembled AMM in morphology. One
way of distinguishing the races is to use wing vein morphometry. Twenty-eight
dead bees are collected and the right wings mounted on 35 mm projection
slides.
To ensure that the genetics of the hive's own queen is being studied
young bees are sampled by brushing them from the frame into a matchbox
and placing the box in the freezer for long enough to kill the bees.
Alternatively dead bees can be collected from within the hive but thisrisks
including dead robbers from other hives in the measurements. The right
wings are mounted on double-sided adhesive tape as shown in the image.
The wings are then scanned at as high resolution as possible in a slide
scanner. Using a suitable program (e.g. CooRecorder & CbeeWing
) the coordinates of eight wing vein junctions are recorded for each
wing as shown in the following image.
If the wing vein calculation is done using either CbeeWing or the spreadsheet described below then the points for each wing must be recorded in the exact sequence shown in the image above. The discoidal shift angle (DsA) and the cubital index (Ci) are calculated from the recorded coordinates. For an explanation of these terms with diagrams please see Dave Cushman's page
The following graph shows the Ci plotted against the DsA for 28 wings. The red lines bound the area below the x-axis (negative DsA) within which the wing vein layouts are phenotypic of AMM.
A MS Excel spreadsheet can be used to calculate the Ci and DsA. This can be obtained as a free download. The author accepts no liability for any loss incurred through use of this spreadsheet.
The results show that the bees in the second hive (K2) are not pure AMM. Only 13 of the 28 points lie in the box for AMM. The shift to positive DsA values and Ci values above 2.0 is consistent with A.m.ligustica (Italian) influence in this colony's genetics.
23
December 2004
Sunny days draw the bees out of their winter clusters. They are
seen from time to time on the Mahonia later in the month. This
is a time when their brood is minimal or absent. Today the temperature
was over 10 degrees Centigrade and there was almost no wind -- an ideal
opportunity to treat for Varroa with oxalic acid. Up to 7 ml was sprayed
onto each seam of bees.
Three colonies at a nearby apiary were found to have some patches
of brood when opened to treat for Varroa. After the treatment the
mite drop was monitored over four days. The fall from Hive 1 was 174
mites and from Hive 2 was 1393 mites. The high level in the Hive 2 would
very likely have crippled the hive before spring.
"The
chart below shows bee 'foraging' throughout the active season.
Bees
returning to the hive are counted over a period of one minute. They
could
have left the hive for any number of purposes: e.g. fetching nectar,
pollen, propolis or water; clearing flights (defaecation); scouting for
forage; carrying away dead bees and detritus. The activity at the hive
entrance is a good clue to what is going on inside. Purposeful activity
with a lot of traffic both ways in sunny weather and pollen loads on
returning bees is a healthy sign. Foraging is only moderately
correlated
with the ambient temperature. Other factors include what forage is
available and whether it is sunny, overcast, raining or windy."
