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Category: super

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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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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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The number of colonies has been reduced to 9 for this winter; just a little bit less work to do.

Rather than mixing up sugar solution I decided to give Apikel (an invert sugar solution made from maize) another try. My first attempts some years ago could have been the cause of colony loss but others haven’t reported anything similar so I decided to try again. In addition to the Apikel I did give every colony a few pounds of waste honey.

Varroa figures were much higher that I’d hoped so I decided to give an autumn treatment of Apivar miticide rather that wait until mid-winter with the oxalic acid. Better that they go into the new year varroa-free. After three weeks, the Apivar strips were removed, heavily abraded, and then replaced in a different position. Research has shown that abrading increases the efficacy of the strips in the latter half of their life.

I have started compiling my End of Season records; provenance of the queen, average colony behaviour and total honey yield. This gives me a good picture of every colony when they start to emerge in the spring.

Lecturing and classes have been very different this year and will continue to be so in 2021. To this end Steph Green and I have started filming what I would call snippets to complement the theory classes when they start in 2021. So far we’ve done cleaning and storing of supers and next week we cover the choice of smokers, their effective use and keeping them clean.

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Although on the surface it looked as if all 10 hives had survived the winter, the first spring inspections revealed otherwise. Two were queenless and two had drone-laying queens. The fifth was so weak it really didn’t deserve to survive.

Result; I have lost half my stock. Only once before in over 40 years have I ever lost colonies in the winter.

What was strange was that queenless hives 5 and 6 continued to forage keenly bringing in both nectar and pollen. The latter is said to indicate a colony being queen-right. Test frames of eggs from another colony were inserted into both. Had they no source of queen pheromones they would have immediately started to draw out emergency queen cells. No such cells were developed which was a weird phenomenon. The colonies continued to dwindle as no eggs were being laid.

They had to be united with another colony but a normal unite wouldn’t work as they thought they already had a queen. Their population was used to supplement the abysmally small, but queenright hive 2. Bit by bit they were moved closer together until they could be shaken out in front of 2. First I caged the queen in hive 2 just as a precaution and shook out the smaller colony and took their hive right away. A few days later I then did the same with the larger. The result is that hive 2 now has sufficient bees to care for brood and the queen is merrily laying away. By the beginning of May they should be large enough to take a super.

The rape came on flower and the first supers have gone onto the five healthy hives. This is where the excitement starts to build and we see the distinct difference between colonies. By the last week of April, hive 3 has three supers and hive 4 is still on its first.

The month has been gloriously sunny and as I gardened each day, the air was full of the gentle hum of the girls hard at work in the greengage branches and down at ground level on the wallflowers.

Of course, continual sunshine meant that the nectar dried up and by week four they were getting a little cross. A solid day’s rain in the last week has hopefully corrected the situation.

However, only half the usual number of bees means half the usual amount of honey so they’ll have to work twice as hard. Maybe the lack of air pollution due to CV lockdown will give them extra impetus.

To those I promised bees this spring, don’t hold your breath.

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This month sees the start of foraging in earnest and also the start of swarming.

Although the oil seed rape was only just down the road the bees only worked it for pollen. The bees foraging for nectar went in the opposite direction. I am now beginning to wonder if modern varieties of rape have significantly reduced amounts of nectar.

Whatever it was they preferred, half the hives worked it vigorously. One hive got up to four supers and the others to two or three.

The colonies which only just made it through the winter have struggled to reach supering size but as two of these have 2016 queens and will be requeened this season.

The first swarm I was called to remove was a poor little bedraggled specimen hanging from a tree near Thaxted Fire Station. It had been there several days and was trying to set up home out in the open.

Thaxted swarm

It was nearly dark when I arrived so it had to wait until the next morning; a night of torrential rain and it was still raining next day. Half of them had been washed down in the night and were comatose mixed in with the recent lawn mowings. It was a ladder job to reach the little swarm and I then swept up as many as I could from the ground hoping that once they were returned to the bosom of their family they would become resuscitated. This did in fact work and most of them recovered. They were a pathetic little bunch when they were eventually hived; just over one frame of 14 x12 in a nucleus hive.

The rape finished flowering two weeks ago and any resulting honey would normally have started crystallizing by now. It’s all still clear which again leads me to conclude that the nectar came from elsewhere. The eventual analysis will be interesting.

I’ve had to perform three Pagden artificial swarms so far with another one to do this week. At the same time as creating the artificial swarm I also take a two-frame nucleus with a queen cell so I have a second string to my bow in the event of a loss on mating flight. The apiary is getting rather crowded now with sixteen hives.

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Everything is late this year due to the very long winter; November to March. Colonies have been late building up but fortunately the rape has also been about two weeks late in flowering. This has enabled four colonies to be just about big enough for supering.

All the hives were spring cleaned between 14th and 20th April. This involved giving each colony a clean floor, brood box and crown board. All frames were inspected for disease and age and yellow spacers added to frames which had become too dark brown and needed replacing. These frames will be gradually worked to the edge of the box at each hive inspection and then replaced with foundation once any brood has emerged.

The dirty hives were scraped down and then scorched out with a blow-torch before being used again.

Stuart Roweth has produced yet another new version of his beegym and I will be trialing this in one of the larger colonies. (www.beegym.co.uk)

I have returned to the training scene this year with just two young lady students keen to learn about this absorbing hobby. Having just two students, rather than the six or seven in the past, will I am sure produce a much more rewarding learning environment.

The Asian Hornet justifiably continues to feature high in the list of threats. I have two lure traps, based on the National Bee Unit water-bottle design, hanging in the garden and charged with some of our own home-pressed apple juice. One by the hives and the other by the bee shed. Fortunately nothing yet.

The big question on my mind is whether 2018 will be a repeat of 2017 when it comes to oil seed rape. As the month comes to a close the rape has been on flower for two weeks now and the real-feel down in the apiary is -3, it’s blowing a gale and raining hard. It’s been like this for a week now and is set to continue.

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