A blog originally for keeping track of my hobby of being a Beekeeper which has evolved to include Home Brewing and even more recently to follow me and my families approach to "The Good Life". Eventually I hope to include baking recipes and stories of our flock of chickens also reporting on the success and failure at the allotments.
Though the main body of this post is about the inspection I did on Wednesday 14th I will mention quickly that me and Steph did an inspection a couple of weeks ago. At this inspection all went well in the hives. The small hive is building up nicely and the new colony created using the snelgrove board seems to be thriving though I still haven't done a full inspection on that one. When packing up the hives some of the Bees started getting rather persistent so we left the apiary and walked far enough away so they wouldn't follow.... or so we thought; we had just taken our suits off and a bee started going for my face so I quickly went in the opposite direction to get away. Steph wasn't quick enough and received her first ever sting, on the forehead! Luckily she didn't have a reaction. She was literately saying 5 seconds before how she had never been stung!
The next inspection I did solo and that went well. All 3 colonies seem to be doing well, plenty of brood, eggs and stores in each. There were loads of flying Bees about especially from the colony that has been created most recently with the snelgrove board. The smallest hive is still progressing nicely though I would like it to be a bit stronger going into winter; I think that starting next week I will start feeding that colony to give it a boost.
When I was packing up the last hive I felt a scratch on my ankle so looked down to see the culprit...To my horror as I looked there were 3 or 4 Bees going to town on the same spot on my ankle. At first there wasn't much pain and shortly after there was an intense itching. I finished packing up quickly and got away from the Bees in case any more decided to have a go. When my suit was off and I was safely back in the car I rolled my trouser leg up and had a look at the damage; my ankle was sore but not swelling too bad. By the time I got home it had started to swell and by the next day my work shoes felt quite tight. Luckily that's the only reaction I had and now, a week later, my ankle is back to normal!
Since that inspection I have made and painted another hive stand. Yesterday (23/08/2013) I went down to the Bees and separated the colonies that were on top of one another with the snelgrove board separating them. The top hive was moved about 15 foot away and placed on my new stand; this went off without a hitch (and thankfully without any stings). My apiary looks good now with all 3 hives in it but will look better if they all make it through the winter strong. As mentioned earlier I have started feeding my smallest hive. It has a half gallon of syrup in a feeder above the colony and with any luck they will use it to build up a little faster; we'll see.
At the moment there is loads of Himalayan Balsam in flower all around the apiary. This is an excellent source of nectar and pollen for the Bees. I did try to take a good photo of the Bees in the flowers. I wasn't very successful; the Bees were being too busy and moved before the picture was taken. Below is one of the better ones although it's still not great!
Me, Steph and Lauren have been on holiday in Corfu for the last week so I haven't had time to post for a while. Since coming back from holiday I have done another inspection and done a bit of home brewing so I have plenty to write about in the next few days to catch up. It makes sense to start with the inspection I did just prior to going on holiday.
It was a lovely summers day, which made a change due to the horrible weather we've been having, so me and Steph went up to see the Bees. We also took Steph's aunt as she was interested in finding out how the hives work. Lauren was also present and to begin with Steph's aunt looked after her while me and Steph inspected the first 2 hives. The hive I checked was the one that I believe is either Queen-less or failing. This hive still has workers and small amounts of brood but not much other activity though there seems to be plenty of stores. The hive Steph checked was much better. Eggs, brood and Queen Bee-Atrix all to be seen with plenty of workers and activity. We didn't use smoke and by the end of it there was a few angry Bees but once the lids were back on the hives they all settled down.
After that Steph took over baby sitting duties and handed her suit to her aunt. Me and Lyn (Steph's aunt) entered the apiary and started looking through the supers. Everything was going well for the first few frames when disaster struck and one of our party got stung. I was stood behind the hive with a frame in my hand with Bees all over it... I didn't get stung. Lyn was stood just to my side peering over the hive, less than a half a foot away from me... she didn't get stung. Steph was stood a few metres away from the side of the apiary... she didn't get stung. Lauren was in her mothers arms, also a few metres away from the hive... she DID get stung, further more she got stung right on her eye lid!! The next few minutes went by quite quickly and I'm not sure how much I remember about it all!
Steph took Lauren much further away from hives, to the car. Lauren is screaming and saying "BEE...EYE!!"
Lyn went to the car and quickly got out of the suit.
I put the hive back together quicker than I have ever done and nearly tripped up leaving the apiary!
I ran back to the car, again nearly tripping up over raspberry bushes and the slippery path.
Back at the car I removed my suit and started the car, Laurens eye is swelling up and she seems to be hyper ventilating, I feel somewhat panicky and start going over any first aid training I have had in the past... my mind is blank other than making sure she can still breathe, which luckily she had no problems with.
I set off from the allotment at what seemed like setting off from the Formula 1 starting blocks (and then slowing down again realising crashing would do no-one any favours).
The next 15 minute journey to the hospital seemed like an eternity, with Steph sat in the back next to Lauren making sure her condition doesn't start deteriorating. She had got a lot quieter and was seeming to start nodding off, albeit it was approaching nap time and she does usually fall asleep in the car.
We managed to keep her awake long enough to get her into A&E where I took her and ran with her across the car park (later I was told that when I was running across the car park she was smiling and laughing but I couldn't see that).
Once inside the hospital, typically, she seemed to improve drastically. The nurse gave her some calpol and sent us back to the waiting room and when finally called in again she was given the all clear and some stickers for being such a brave girl (although we passed on the sticker with a bee on it!).
When we arrived back home she was absolutely fine, just with a slightly swollen eye which later bruised slightly just in time for our holiday. Looking back we realised that taking her up to the allotment while we did an inspection was a little silly, though in the past she has been closer and seemed to enjoy looking through the netting at the hives. Next time we all go to the allotment she will be kept well away from the apiary until she is a little older and can have her own suit.
Just over a week ago I got a text message from Dad who was up at his allotment doing allotment things. I get fairly regular texts from him when he is up there, especially when it is good weather. The normal text that I receive from him reads either "Uggins a bees out" or "Not many bees art today", which to a Yorkshireman makes perfect sense but to others may not be as easy to comprehend; The translations are "Lots of bees are flying in and out of the hive today" or "There aren't that many bees flying today". The day I'm making reference to today was a quite different message, it read "Emergemcy aig swarm of bees in pear tree" which should read "Emergency a big swarm of bees in pear tree" but he is also not the best at texting but I'll let him off for that. When I'd received the text I got excited but also a bit worried as I didn't know how long it had been there or how long it would stay there. I also wanted to know if it had come from my hives.
I wasn't available to go straight there so as soon as I was I rushed up there with my nuc hive that I built earlier in the year with the aim of trying to catch it. Upon arrival I had a walk over to see how big the swarm was. Now even though I've never seen a swarm before I believed this to be one of fair size, below is a video of it. I apologise for the heavy breathing in the video, I had a bit of a cold at the time and sounded a bit like Darth Vader!
The next thing I did was put the nuc hive under the swarm. I took another video at this stage but all it shows is the hive under the swarm. It's here if you want to see it but it really doesn't show anything different.
After I had my equipment in place I started trying to get the Bees to go in the nuc hive. One way I've seen of doing this on youtube is to literally grab handfuls of Bees and place them in the hive. I tried this and it wasn't really working in doing anything other than annoying them, so much so that I received my second ever sting from my Bees and it was right on my backside! No, this method wasn't working. I decided that it was time to bring out the smoke. I have been told a few times that smoke is not needed for collecting a swarm but I thought it would help me. The usual method is to cut off the branch that the swarm is on and then give it a sharp shake to dislodge the Bees into your hive or transport box; this wasn't an option as they were wrapped around the tree trunk. Anyway, I lit my smoker and started blowing smoke above the swarm and at the opposite side to the hive, hoping that this would encourage them to go down and across into the hive. I thought this was working as a lot of Bees were making their way into the hive as seen in the next video.
Hooray I thought, I've caught them! So I packed up and left them to make their own way into the hive. When I got home I had a feeling of a job well done and was thinking "that wasn't too hard was it". The next day I found out how wrong I'd been! When I arrived back at the allotment I found the Bees had regrouped on the tree exactly as they were to begin with! I was a bit dismayed but I had to do something about it as they had started making comb on the tree and would have eventually perished if they stayed there, not to mention making it hard for my Dad to work in that area of the allotment. I decided to have another go at the smoke them into the hive method but this time I was a little more forceful, to the point where I think I was annoying them a bit and I did get another sting, this time on my hand.
After a while I'd got to a similar point to my last video with the Bees going into the hive when I spotted something familiar; a large Bee with a white spot on her back! After seeing this I knew where the swarm had come from as she is the only one of my hives with a marked Queen! I had a small attempt to catch her on the end of my hive tool but she was having none of it so I carried on smoking above the hive to get them to go in. After a while I think I saw her majesty walking into the hive but couldn't be sure as now there were hundreds of Bees climbing all over one another to get into the hive. The next, and last, video shows this.
After nearly all the Bees had made their way into the hive I decided to leave and come back the next day to make sure they had settled in ok. I packed up all my gear and gently moved the hive into the apiary next to my other 2 hives then left.
It turned out the weather was really lousy for the next few days so it was longer than I wanted before returning to the hive and this time I was again anxious for the swarm. When I did get to return it didn't look good to begin with; there were a few dead Bees on the entrance but when I opened the hive up I could see it was full of alive Bees but they were very lethargic. I believe this is because they were starving (the next time I build a nuc hive I will make it bigger so I can fit some way of feeding them such as a frame feeder). Knowing that there wasn't enough room in the hive for a frame feeder I decided that the best solution would be to fill a freezer bag with sugar syrup and place it in the space above the frames with a slit at the top so the Bees could feed from it. When I had done this, and spilt a load over the tops of the frames, I could see a marked increase in the liveliness of them. I will continue to feed them this way until I can put them into a full sized hive.
This Monday just gone was the last of Wakefield and Pontefract Beekeepers Association winter meetings and was titled Apis Through The Looking Glass. We were shown a in depth presentation with slides of honey bees through a high powered microscope. The guy holding the meeting was called Graham and he has a book available at amazon.co.uk also called Apis Through The Looking Glass, which contains the photos featured in the presentation. The presentation was very detailed so I will just go over the basics and what I can remember.
Bees are insects so are made up of three sections; the head, the thorax and the abdomen. On their head they have two antennae, five eyes, a set of mandibles and a proboscis. Their heads are also mostly covered in hairs, including the two main compound eyes (yes, bees have hairy eyes!!). The thorax has the two sets of wings and six legs. The abdomen contains the bees honey stomach along with other internal organs and the sting. In the presentation these were all shown in very close up photos. I have included Wikipedia links for various parts for if you want to read more.
Head
The antennae of bees contain many senses which the bees use to detect vibrations, smells and temperature among other things. It is made up of several sections but the male drone has one more segment, believed to be used to help locate Queens on their mating flight.
Bees have two kinds of eyes; the compound eye and the ocelli. The two compound eyes are made up of hundreds of segments which gives them a pixelated view of the world, the male drones have much larger eyes that almost wrap all the way around their head, again they are for helping to locate Queens. The three ocelli are situated on the top of the head and are arranged in a triangle, they are thought to be used to help the bee stay upright and straight when flying.
The mandibles are the mouth parts of the bee and are used to chew up the wax scales and build comb.
The proboscis is the bees tongue and is used to suck up nectar from flowers.
Thorax
The larger of the sets of bees wings don't actually physically attach to the muscles that drive them. There are two muscles in the thorax that drive the wings by stretching and contracting the thorax vertically and horizontally, this in turn causes the thorax to push the wing making them beat. The smaller wing has got hooks that connect it to the larger wing when in flight so the aforementioned method that drives the large wing also drives the small one in turn.
The bees legs have two other functions, other than the ability to walk! The first is located on the front legs and is a small nook in the inner elbow that is used to clean the antennae; it works by wrapping around the antennae so they can be scrapped clean prior to flying. The other main function is the
pollen basket; this a hairy area of the back leg that collects pollen, the bee does this by first covering itself in pollen and then brushes the pollen towards its back legs. Then with the aid of a small amount of nectar the bee squeezes the collected pollen through it's "knees" into the pollen basket.
Abdomen
The honey stomach is located just in the abdomen, prior to the main stomach and is where nectar or honey is stored when travelling from one place to another. It is similar to the crop in birds. It has the ability to stretch to fill a larger area of the abdomen so in summer months when there is plenty of nectar it will usually be bigger than in the winter when there is no new nectar coming into the hive. When a bee returns to the hive it brings the nectar back up and passes it to other bees in the hive for them to in turn take it to be stored as honey.
The rectum is in the abdomen and has similarities to the honey stomach but in reverse. In the winter months, when it is too cold to leave the hive, the bee can store excrement in it's rectum stretching it to occupy most of the abdomen. In the summer the bee is outside a lot more and able to deposit it's droppings outside on a much more regular basis so there isn't as much need for a large rectum.
The sting is located at the end of the abdomen and is the part most people are aware of when in close proximity to bees! Bees have a venom sack connected to the sting that is pulled out of the honey bee when it stings you, killing the bee in the process. The venom only develops after a few days so a newly hatched bee is very unlikely to sting you and has less chance of it causing any damage. The sting of a bee is made of two main rods with barbed ends that move back and forth in opposite directions, thus causing them to dig deeper and administer more venom.
There were other parts included in the presentation including the reproductive system but I don't remember enough to do it any justice if I was to try to write it up. In the future I may learn more and also have access to pictures to show the various parts in greater detail and if so I will do a more detailed post.
This week in Wakefield has been especially sunny and Monday was no exception. As it had been over a week since last seeing the Bees and also my daughter was at her childminders it seemed like the perfect time to do the inspection. Upon arrival at the allotment I got the smoker lit and while that was getting going went and had a look at the apiary; from the other side of the mesh fence I could see several dozen Bees just hovering in front of the hive facing the entrance, these are Bees doing their maiden flight and getting to know what the hive looks like from the outside.
After a quick look I returned to the car to get suited up and then grabbed my smoker and headed into the apiary. At this stage they were very calm and I managed to remove the mouse guard from the entrance of the hive. I then puffed a small amount of smoke into the hive and carefully lifted the lid. Inside I could see that there was very little of the fondant left that I put in prior to winter; next visit I will completely remove it even if there is any left and replace it with a empty super for them to start storing honey in. While checking the supers I did notice a frame with pollen stored which was next to a frame with brood in it. Due to this I was extra vigilant looking for the Queen; I didn't find her but there was plenty of stored honey!
Next I started working through the brood chamber. The first frame had no stores and no brood but the next was a little more encouraging as it had plenty of stored honey in it. The following 2 frames where better still with pollen and brood with Bees all over it. The next frame in was the best of all as I could see very clearly, in all her glory, still with a nice big white spot on her back, Queen Beeatrix! As I watched her walking over the comb I did actually witness her with her abdomen deep in a cell laying a egg! That was all I needed to see so was much quicker checking the rest of the hive. I didn't see any Queen cells yet so don't think they are quite ready for swarming yet!
After putting the hive back together I was talking to my Dad, who was also in the allotment, and he told me the guy in the plot 2 down had been stung 3 times while I was doing my inspection, however he hadn't been stung once and he was only about 4 metres away. The majority of Bees seemed to be flying in the opposite direction as well. He was using his rotavator at the time and me and my Dad believe they didn't like the vibrations. Anyway, I apologized to the guy and he seemed ok, I just hope they don't make a habit of it because if the allotment council start receiving complaints then I may have to re-home the Bees.
The first meeting of the new year was held by a doctor from Halifax, a town about a half hour drive west of where I live. The subject of the meeting was to give a better idea of the relationship between Bee products (including stings) and health, also dispelling a few myths about honey.
The start of his presentation was a video, I think it was set somewhere in India, showing someone who holds a surgery where the treatment is Bee stings; patients will come to him with different ailments and the "doctor" would administer the stings. In the video there was a claim that 80% of patients felt benefits from the treatment. The guy holding the presentation was, like me, a little sceptical of the claims, however it could have been the placebo effect that was making the patients feel relief. I will not be trying this form of pain relief!
From there the presentation went into allergic reactions to Bee stings and what can be done to lessen the effect. There was a fair bit of medical terminology used that I don't remember but the basics were that the more you get stung the more of a resistance you can build up but on the other hand you can have a severe reaction and develop hypersensitivity at any time. To better prepare yourself for your inspection a single anti histamine tablet was recommended; this taken prior to the inspection will help if you are stung but won't totally stop the effects, especially if you are hypersensitive. If you have a known allergy then maybe it's worth seeing your GP and enquiring about an epipen so if you have a severe reaction you can have something you can administer while waiting for an ambulance. As with all forms of medication you should consult your doctor prior to using them anyway.
This was followed with another video, this time of the survivalist Bear Grylls. Below is the youtube video. I think it speaks for itself!
After we had finished laughing at Bear Grylls expense the presentation went into dispelling a few so called facts about honey and it's healing properties. He did state that people would probably disagree with what he was about to say but he was basing his views on scientific experiment, or the lack of.
I think one of the big ones was that local honey has no proven benefit to people suffering from hay fever; as the pollen is ingested and destroyed in the process there is no real benefit gained from it. He said that no scientific experiment of any credit has shown any reduction in symptoms from using honey. He did however say that in just believing that it'll work may give you benefit from the placebo effect.
There was mention of other anecdotes that show how good honey is for various things but with little scientific proof but one product has been tested scientifically and shown to have the properties that it say it has but not as fully expected! This product is the manuka honey; there is proof that it has above normal antibacterial properties but not if it is ingested. The main use for this honey would be to apply to the skin where you are healing from a wound or similar. Eating it had no extra benefit and apparently doesn't taste very good anyway.
To round his presentation off he mentioned propolis, wax, royal jelly and even Bee larva, all of which are used with no real scientific proof of having medical properties. I think something that has to be taken into account is that his views are based on the lack of scientific evidence to prove the medical benefits, there is also very little evidence to disprove any of this! Basically you can believe it or not and if you do believe it works then there is a good chance you'll notice a difference so why not try it!
There was a lot covered in his presentation and I don't think I have done it justice, however I think I have covered the subject in enough detail for today, if anyone has any further questions please ask me and I'll try to answer them.
As per usual there was a raffle after the presentation but I didn't win anything. It is a good place to go to and discuss how your hives are doing and other topics that interest me. One guy who I talk to regularly has mentioned he has an apple press and would be willing to lend me it if my dads allotment produces a large amount of apples again this year, so home made cider may be on the cards later in the year!
