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Tag: varroa

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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 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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Work continues in both the apiary and the workshop.

We’ve had no long cold spell again this winter. Maybe climate change means they are a thing of the past?

Never-the-less oxalic acid treatment had to be done, brood or no brood. Total drop varied from 570 down to 70 which I didn’t think was too bad. There was still a small natural drop the following week so I’ve followed up with an Apivar treatment.

Weeks of dull cloudy and cold weather has kept the bees confined to hive but a morning sunshine early in the month brought them out. It wasn’t just cleansing flights either. The aroma of the winter honeysuckle was hanging like a cloud around the shrub and the girls were foraging madly. I have at long last succeeded in getting some winter aconite to grow in the damson copse and their gloriously yellow blooms were a real magnet. No aconite in the spinney yet which is a real disappointment

Honeybees working the aconite

The Dartington Long-hive continues (unapace) to grow steadily. I have tried to do a little each day through the winter. The brood box is now finished, the roof is assembled and it is all ready for proofing. Honeyboxes and insulated dummy-boards can be gradually completed throughout the spring. The former are of course not vital as I can always use conventional supers if necessary.

The honey DNA testing results have come back from the CEH (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology). Some results were as expected but there were some surprises as well. The three varieties of open-pollenated rape were the main leaders in the spring and they showed up quite distinctly. The surprise was a noticeable content of sycamore. The spinney, which is only a third of an acre, consists of sycamore and elm 50:50 about twenty five years old but already yielding well. Unfortunately sycamore is an alien species and everyone I’ve consulted about the spinney’s future has said “You can get those out!”. We’ll see.

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Once the feeding is all done and the feeders removed, beekeeping becomes a more relaxed pastime. In effect, there is little to be done apart from the oxalic acid varroa treatment and repairs to equipment.

Oxalic acid will achieve an approximate 95% knock down of varroa. Not a complete cure but sufficient to seriously deplete their numbers before the brood rearing starts in earnest.

I mix a 50:50 solution of sugar water and add 18.75g of oxalic acid dihydrate to the mix. This is then dribbled 5ml into each between-frame seam of bees. Having the crown board up on matchsticks makes its removal almost vibration free.

The acid will only kill the mites which are outside the brood cells and cannot touch any beneath a wax capping. It is best therefore to do the treatment after a seriously cold spell which will have reduced the queen’s laying to almost nil. i.e. less sealed brood and hidden varroa.

Charging needle-less hypodermic

Trickling oxalic acid between the frames

 

 

 

 

Each colony can be done in less than a minute and the hive quickly closed up again before the cluster suffers heat loss.

The varroa trays go underneath just to give me an indication of efficacy.

This treatment can only be done once a year as the acid burns the carapace (the dorsal exoskeleton) of the bee and must also burn the bee’s mandibles.

In the workshop I have reinforced the bellows on the stainless-steel smoker, repainted the numbers on the hive roofs and made a new aluminium cover for roof 8.

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Apple weekend at Audley End House was once again a terrific weekend. English Heritage say the foot-fall was 4500 over the two days. Talking bees, pollination and honey for two days solid was very tiring but greatly rewarding. One very interesting visitor who introduced herself to me was none other than Ted Hooper’s granddaughter Lauren who told me that sadly, they no longer have a beekeeper in the family.

Winter Feed 2017

The bees have all had their usual amount of winter feed; 8l of sugar solution and 3l of waste honey. Hive 1 had the container of Apikel which I was given. Interestingly not all of this had been taken down but it could have been a case of them not liking it. I removed the feeder, gingerly removed the middle frame to find brood in all stages so carefully replaced it knowing they were queen-right. Had there been a problem, some of the earliest brood would have had emergency queen cells. As it was, the reason was that apart from the brood in the centre, the brood box was chock-a-block with stores.

Three other hives have only taken some of their feed and I’m hoping they are in a similar state because they had ample nectar flowing from all the volunteer borage in the field behind. As Tom, the farmer, freely admitted to me, "Yes, we cocked up there."

Volunteer borage amongst the wheat

The Apivar is almost at the end of its recommended insertion time but the varroa are still dropping high weekly figures. Some are still up in the hundreds per week.  Hopefully they should fall to single figures any day now and the strips can be removed.

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All the honey has now been extracted. This year was the first year I noticed such a strong floral smell as I lifted each crown-board. It was possibly the hawthorn which has a strong pungent aroma and is a most erratic yielder. All the honey this year is dark in colour, strong and loth to crystallize. I fear my creamed honey regulars are going to have to get used to clear honey .

One super was simply fitted with eleven starter strips rather than foundation. As the bees drew out this 100% fresh comb, one frame was removed and the remaining ten spaced a little more widely. This gave a slightly wider and heavier comb to cut into blocks. Much of it was also drone comb which, with its larger cells, meant less wax and more honey.

Having removed all the supers I can now complete my records of honey-yield per hive in order to make my decisions as to which queens to over-winter. Eleven colonies and one nucleus are going down to 8 hives. The queen in hive nine was culled and the colony moved around the apiary further than three feet each time placing it alongside other colonies whose number I wanted to boost. Each time it was moved, the flying bees returned to the hive nearest its old position. This way I gradually bled half the colony into other hives. The remainder was then united in its full-sized box with the nucleus colony. Each frame of bees was gently misted with a dilute sugar solution with a drop of oil of lavender to mask the colony aromas and the frames placed alternately into the 14 x 12 box and left for a few days to settle down. This box was then united with hive 1 using the newspaper method. The queen was removed from colony 1 and then later in the evening, this queenless colony was placed above the queen-right colony with a sheet of paper between them. By the time they had nibbled through, their aromas were sufficiently blended as to avoid any confrontation.

The varroa counts have reached scary levels so I decided to treat with Apivar before I feed. Having had Deformed Wing Virus and Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus during the year I thought it best not to just leave it to the beegyms. The hives fitted with beegyms have registered noticeably higher mite-falls but the beegym instructions do say ‘use as part of your integrated pest management’.

Next week we have the ‘Taster Session’ for prospective beekeepers followed by Audley End Apple Weekend. Lots of hard work to finish the season.

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What had seemed an amazing start to the season rapidly turned sour. The marvellous weather we had in March enabled supers to go on eight of the hives earlier than ever before. April arrived, the oil-seed-rape came on flower, and the weather turned for the worst; next to no rain meant no nectar and the bitterly cold winds meant the foragers could not leave the hives. These conditions lasted for almost the whole of the rape’s flowering season. Some of the hives got up to two supers but I added the second just to ensure there was plenty of space to store any incoming nectar.

Varroa counts have continued on a weekly basis and Stuart Roweth (www.beegym.co.uk) has kindly supplied some more up-to-date beegym equipment. His floor-mounted model has been upgraded once again and these are installed in hives 7 & 8. Hive 9 has ten of the new production model minigyms.

Beegym 2017
The latest model Beegym

Varroa has unfortunately been the least of my worries. Last year I had a severe case of CBPV (Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus) in hive 8 which I managed to clear by hand-picking all the infected drones from the combs. This year the virus has swept through all the colonies killing thousands. Being confined to their hives has exacerbated the problem because it meant that infected bees were not dropping out of the sky away on foraging trips but were staying at home to share the infection with their brothers and sisters. To add to the misery I also had cases of DWV (Deformed Wing Virus). Each day the ground in front of the hives has been littered with dead bees, to the extent that I got ‘The man from the ministry’ to come and have a look. He confirmed not only my diagnosis but the fact that there is no known cure. He scooped up several handfuls of dead bees, put them in a carrier-bag to send off for analysis just in case there was something else we hadn’t noticed. All we can really hope for is more rain at night and more sunshine in the day.

Varroa drop record sheet 2017
Weekly varroa drop so far

Over the road is a crop of field beans just about to come on flower but whether they’ll yield a harvest for me as well as the grower remains to be seen.

On a less despondent note, the Saffron Walden beekeepers group had a trip out to Kew Gardens to see The Hive. A marvellous edifice in stainless steel complete with lights and music. Not a lot to do with bees unfortunately, apart from the interior shape, which resembled a skep.

The Hive, Kew
The Hive at London's Kew Gardens

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