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Not really something I want to write about but something which has to be recorded.

Possibly the worst year I can remember in the last 40.

Having started with 9 colonies I managed to get a reasonable crop from the oil-seed-rape but from this point it all went down-hill.

The weather turned cold and wet throughout the spring and the bees were confined to their hives for long periods. The result was overcrowding and a strong swarming urge. This couldn’t be quelled by adding supers or replacing comb with foundation so it became a continual battle to prevent swarming. This was exacerbated by a period of bad health (mine) which prevented me from doing brood inspections. The result was a massive loss of bees in swarms and a line of hives with virgin queens. The bad weather meant that the queens were unable to fly for weeks and having failed to do so for nearly a month, became barren. This resulted in them becoming drone-layers and the colony gradually dwindling away.

The summary of my losses were

Drone Layers 10

Regicide 3

Mating Flight Loss 7

In a drone-laying situation, you cannot do a paper unite as the colony, to all intent and purposes, has a viable queen and unless and until she is removed she cannot be put together with a colony which has a viable queen. Finding a small virgin queen to remove can be done but it does involve a high level of luck. The only answer is to simply shake out the colony, remove the hive and leave the workers to seek refuge in another hive; again and again.

Then disease struck. I was having to shovel up heaps of dead bees beneath the hive entrances and it was spreading along the hives. Unable to diagnose the problem I called in a seasonal inspector and between us we came to the decision that it could only Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus on a grand scale and for which there was no cure. With existing colonies dwindling down to a few frames of bees I united the two larger ones to make one viable colony and took it to an out-apiary over at Cutler’s Green to get them away from the infection.

The home apiary now looks a poor shadow of its former self.

What's left of a once thriving apiary

The out-apiary at Cutler’s Green was boosted with two ‘cut-outs’. A neighbouring farmer had two old rotten hives sitting on a field headland which had been populated by a swarm and a cast. He wanted them removed so I duly obliged hoping they were in fact swarms from my own hives. No such luck, as I could tell from their personality that they weren’t from my well behaved colonies. They were however bees and I wasn't going to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Having got them on the borage at Cutler’s Green they soon settled down and started producing brood.

Early morning at Mill Hill, Cutler's Green

The borage was a god-send as it may-have-well just saved my honey harvest.

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Everything started at least two weeks earlier this year. The good weather we experienced meant that I could start spring cleaning on 1st of April, well before any large flow.

I also took advantage of the now smaller post-winter colonies to quickly find and clip all the queens (except one).

Hive 9 was a real surprise. This was a colony which had been moved away from the main apiary due to suspected infection with sac brood. It was also one of two that I deliberately did not give a full winter-feed. Whereas hive 5, the other colony treated in a similar fashion succumbed early in the winter, hive 9 continued to thrive and once we were clear of winter, an inspection showed no sign of sac-brood and they had existed on less than a Miller feeder of syrup.

Hive 4 which was a poorly laying queen was moved out of line and replaced with the now healthy hive 9.

The first supers were going on on 13th April again 2-3 weeks earlier than in the past.

After the early start to the season we were then subjected to an extended period of very poor weather which confined the bees to their hives. This enforced stay-at-home induced a swarming instinct in all the colonies even though they were all on 2023 queens. Needless to say, it was the unclipped queen which was the first to go. Fortunately they stayed close to home and were captured and hived.

All the others with clipped queens were reduced to one queen cell and allowed to swarm. The little clusters of bees in front of each hive were gathered up and added to the swarm hive.

By mid May, all the oil-seed-rape had finished flowering and honey extraction started with several hives yielding 2-3 supers.

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All the healthy hives were autumn-fed with a 50:50 mix of Apikel and waste honey from extracting. Hive 3 turned its nose up at the bulk of it and stopped taking it down when it was only partially used. Life was too short to try and work out the reason so I just went by the adage that the bees always know best. I cleared their feeder of bees and moved it to hive 8 who had gratefully received their initial sustenance.

Hives 10 & 11 had both sac brood and bald brood. There is no cure for these other than trying requeening so they were moved away from the apiary and given no winter-feed. They were now small colonies so were left for nature to take its course.

On November 1st all hives received an oxalic acid sublimation and the varroa drop trays were left in place. There was still a not insignificant varroa drop so all hives 1 to 8 were given an oxalic dribble treatment at the start of December.

Hive 10 soon succumbed to the winter weather so that was removed from the apiary, cleaned out and then give the 7 day acetic acid disinfection treatment. Hive 11 however, built up to such an extent that they were across 8 frames when they were given an oxalic acid dribble treatment. All that without getting any extra winter feed.

The huge wild plum is on flower again and the aroma and the sound of bees all over it is simply witness to the amazing creation which we all share.

A lure hive has been set up in the spinney again. I caught nothing last year but this year may be different and provide a colony for an apprentice.

Asian hornet is here; no two ways about it. Over 70 nests were found in Kent last year so this year they will cross the Thames. I have started my precautions by making the first of many mouselieres.

Next will be some Jabeprode traps and then maybe some harpes-electronique. Let’s wait and see.

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The wasps came out in force in August. I dispatched one nest but couldn't find the others. It got so bad that hive 7 just gave up defending. The wasps know which hive to target. I fitted a home-made conduit entrance which had the bees puzzled for about 1-2 hours and then wasps gave up and bees found their 2 new entrances. This is a very successful method of stopping wasp predation so I’ll maybe make a few more. I make no claim to originality as I saw these on a retailers web site and realised the simplicity of manufacture; especially as I had lengths of the plastic trunking already in the workshop

Anti-wasp entrance

Having been successful with the wasp problem I replaced the original entrance block. Two days later and they were being robbed by bees. These could have come from my own hives or from the known feral colonies in the houses opposite. I resorted to an entrance-block change again but this time it was the single-bee size. Poor hive 7 just don’t know how to defend themselves.

Anti-robbing entrance

The bad news continued when I discovered sac brood and chronic bald brood in three colonies. A chat with an ex seasonal inspector and I decided to isolate the hives for the time being. One managed to clear itself successfully after judicious use of tweezers to remove the sac brood larvae. The other two remain in the corner of the apiary waiting to see if they survive the winter.

Harvest-wise, my dire predictions were proved unfounded. The borage came on flower late and the Debden Green colonies started foraging keenly. Not only that, but as the bee flies it made the Debden Green fields with flying distance of the home apiary. Much of what they foraged was used up in flight but they were definitely bringing it home. On top of this, the lateness of flowering and the weather meant that the farmer postponed the swathing until late August giving the bees another bonus. This all managed to redress the balance and I had one of my best years ever

As the bees have cleaned-down the supers, several supers have gone via the workshop. Over the years, the supers I made at Ted Hoopers woodwork evenings, not to mention the old ‘Taylor’s of Welwyn’ supers, have gradually had their corners worn away until they are prone to wasp intrusion. I have rebated the offending corners and inserted hardwood slips to extend their lives.

Hardwood corner repair

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Most people only think of garden flowers or fields of rape as honey and pollen yielders but many trees have hidden talents.

Whilst we are familiar with stone-fruit and pip-fruit blossom the other forest trees have more unseen flowers. Chestnut and hawthorn are two glorious show-offs but have you ever noticed the beautiful racemes of the sycamore? What about the flower-heads of field maple or ivy? If you do an internet search for these two you’ll get all sorts of sites as suggestions which will tell you the height, the spread, the leaf shape, leaf colour and so on, but the poor flower doesn’t get a mention.

The bees know them though and the sycamore and field-maple are worked so avidly that it can tempt them away from the oil seed rape. In fact 10% of my clear spring honey in 2020 was from the field-maple. Maple is a lovely sweet honey but sycamore has a strong nutty flavour which might not be to everyone’s taste, but to others it’s a distinctive difference.

By mid June 2023 I had done four extracting sessions and everything was looking very encouraging. The harvest so far was exceeding 2022. At this point it all went pear-shaped.

I thought the dearth of the June gap was not going to occur as field-bean continued flowering. However by the middle of the month there was no nectar coming in. What they had collected was ripened and capped and supers only half full were abandoned in favour of just collecting pollen. Cold late-autumnal weather has brood nests visually shrinking and winter preparations underway. There is no excited chasing after a lovely summer ‘flow’ and the poor bees just seem to be passing the time of day drifting around.

Two hives taken over to Debden Green were initially given an extra two empty supers for all this lovely borage honey on the doorstep. Five days later these had to be removed because the weather was too cold for them to cope with such a large empty space to heat. The inclement weather has continued throughout the month so these two hives will probably come home having achieved nothing.

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On the 11th of April Aimie and Sophie came for their first ‘in the apiary’ training session. Continued cold weather precluded opening any of the hives so it had to be a dry run

By the latter half of the month, all hives had been spring cleaned; clean floor, brood-box and crown board. None of the 2022 queens had been clipped as I am loathe to do this at the end of the season. Better to wait until the spring. A smaller colony means that she is easier to find and she is less likely to be rejected when they need all the fresh brood they can get.

20th April. Madeleine, apprentice of the year 2022, telephoned to say that her hive had swarmed. I’ve never known it to happen so early. Instant action was taken and all hives given a 1st super to relieve any pressure whether they had been spring cleaned or not. Three of the hives were supered too late as a later inspection revealed swarm queen cells.

Having watched a very informative zoom talk by Wally Shaw of the Welsh Beekeepers Association I downloaded his brochure from the WBKA web site and decided to follow his Snelgrove II method of artificial swarming. No extra equipment needed other than a spare hive and not even any need to hunt for a queen. (There is always the added advantage that you can requeen with queen cell raised from a more suitable colony.) One colony has undergone tis process successfully and a second will be completed next week.

Nectar and pollen is being foraged enthusiastically from both the oil seed rape and the sycamore. The loud humming coming from the sycamore trees is a sound to be heard.

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It was a bitterly cold March morning when 10 drama students from Anglia Ruskin University joined me at Meadowfield to acclimatize themselves with beekeeping.

A forthcoming production involved Ronald and Madeline, the former being a beekeeper. In order to look convincing they wanted to get a feel for the equipment and clothing involved and experience handling honeybees.

Unfortunately, the 'beekeeping experience' could not be experienced due to the weather. We did however look in an unpopulated hive, inspected wax and propolis, looked at dead bees and handled the eqipment neede for a hive inspection.

Hopefully Ronald won't look an absolute duffer on stage although how he is meant to earn a living from only four hives is beyond me.

Anyhow, they were all a friendly bunch, keen to learn what they could and they accepted an invitation to return and meet the bees, when the weather was more clement.

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In January I found that two hives had died. On opening the hive I fouind the cluster had been just too small to survive. There were no visible signs of Deformed Wing Virus and varroa levels had been kept very low by two winter sublimations and ten weeks of Apivar. The queens were from 2021 but these two colonies were the best yielding producing 7-8 supers each previous year. Why did they dwindle away? I'll never know. The hives have been removed and sterilizing pads put in each so that the uneaten frames of stores can be employed elsewhere.

The demise of two colonies however is not a major loss as I am now back to the eight colonies I’ve over-wintered in earlier years. Hives 9 and 10 will be moved across to the gaps left by 5 and 8. The boy’s go-cart was renovated last year so I now have an ideal hive transporter. The hives to be moved were very heavy; too heavy to be lifted for each move. On the seat of the g-cart however they can be easily pulled a further 3 feet every flying day.

I stress the flying day as I have yet to read a beekeeping book which recognises the fact that if you have ten days of bad weather and the bees stay indoors, continual daily moving of the hive means they will emerge from a hive 30 feet away from its original position. Too far for them to re-orientate.

Hive 10 reaches its new destination.

February has seen the longest, fattest hazel catkins I’ve ever known. The are many hazel bushes in the hedge and it's been marvellous to see so many bees all over them returning to their hives loaded with the pale greeny-yellow pollen.

Bees collecting hazel pollen from catkins.

Enough for two. Apis and Bombus share a crocus

The snowdrops, aconites and crocus have provided the regular springtime diet. One of two emerging queen bumbles have been joining them for a meal on the crocus.

The bullace and cherry plum are about to burst into flower and it's then that the spring feasting can commence.

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All hives were prepared to be winter-fed with Apikel this year. Not all of them completely emptied their Ashforth feeders but that was simply because they were already well fed. One hive, hive 2, however took down hardly anything and that’s a bad sign; usually queenlessness.

Hive 2 therefore needed requeening and this was best done by uniting with S1; a smallish colony with a new queen.

S1 was gradually moved, 3 feet per flying day, until it stood alongside hive 2.

The two hives were then swapped over so most if not all of 2’s flying bees homed in on hive S1

S1 has been moved across
Hives 2 & S1 are swapped over
Deciding on unite method

It was now time for the final unite. With two small colonies it can be done quickly and easily by masking the colony aromas. I spray all the frames down with a very dilute mix of water with a drop of essential lavendre oil. On this occasion it was too risky as although I had looked through hive 2 and not found a queen, that didn’t rule out there being a virgin queen raised as a supersedure too late in the season to mate. This therefore had to be a brushing-out unite.

Hive 2 moved away
Brushing bees from frame
Bees brushed in front of S1

The bees on the ground in front of S1 will find their way in during the day but the guards wont allow in an alien queen, virgin or otherwise.

Any frames in hive 2 containing stores were put into S1 and it was job done.

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Having a corrupt web site has unfortunately meant a blog-free year to date. This means that I’ve been able to spend more time with the bees rather than sitting trying to think what I could write. However, a much more knowledgable beekeeper was able to sort the problems and we are back on air again

Fortunately I practise what I preach and I can look back through my hive records, my varroa-count records and other documents to recall the story of the year.

Starting the year with 9 hives rather than the usual 8 was a wise precaution as one became queenless. How I don’t know.

A glorious week in February meant all the hives could be opened and given a treatment with Apivar. A weekly check was made and the strips were removed once the drop had been zero for two consecutive weeks.

An early spring meant that I was able to start spring-cleaning in early March. Every hive was given a clean floor, brood box and crown board and every frame was scraped clean of wax and propolis. My idea of cleanliness doesn’t necessarily match that of the bees but we both have to compromise to live together.

Over the apiary hedge was 175 acres of oil seed rape. My expectations of stacks of full honey-tubs were rudely dashed. Continual dry weather meant a low nectar yield so my rape harvest was below expectations.

Continual sunshine meant that the girls could at least continue flying day after day. It also meant that the airfield over the road was able to yield an abundance of ragwort: not good news. Ragwort has a most unpleasant flavour and it taints anything with which it is blended. I have a stack of tubs sitting on one side maturing in the hopes that the ragwort influence will slowly decrease.

I have experimented with sublimation. I bought an electric vaporizer and also a Gasvap. Both had to be used with a full-face gas mask although with the electric vaporizer it was possible to use it safely simply by standing well downwind as it warmed up. The Gasvap was not so successful. It was necessary to stand right by the entrance whilst the Gasvap belched (most of the) fumes into the hive entrance. Having a beard meant that the gas-mask was not a tight fit to my face and I was breathing in oxalic acid fumes. Not recommended.

Madeleine, my trainee/apprentice this year had a thorough grounding as she worked with me almost the entire season. Her help was invaluable, especially when it came to moving hives over to Debden Green to establish an out-apiary beside the borage. Yes, lovely borage honey. A beautiful, almost clear runny honey and the yield was sufficient to get me close to my target harvest weight.

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