Apiary visit 28/11/2011

On Monday I did my first apiary visit since 25th October. In the time between then and last Mondays inspection I have been worried about my buzzy little workforce. Things like have they enough food, have they been attacked by wasps or woodpeckers, has the wind blown the hive over etc. have been running through my head.

When I arrived at the allotment I was relieved that the hive hadn't been blown over but there was a distinct lack of activity outside the hive; I watched for about 5 minutes and saw no Bees. When I had suited up I went into the apiary and at that point saw my first Bee of the day entering the hive, I felt reassured for seeing her. The next thing I did was to gently tip the hive to see if it still had any weight to it and was happy that I struggled to lift it one handed; I have read that this is a good test to see if the have sufficient stores. There still wasn't much activity so I put a mouse guard on the entrance. A mouse guard works in a similar way to a Queen excluder in that it provides holes big enough to allow Bees out but not big enough for mice.

After I'd done everything that needed to be done outside the hive I lifted the top off and had a look inside. The fondant that I had put in last time was almost gone so I added another block of it. At this point loads of Bees flew out of the top and started buzzing round me but not too aggressively; some were flying straight at my face but most were just curious. This was a good sight for me as it showed that the hive still had plenty of occupants. As the temperature was dropping at this stage I decided to call it a day and not open the brood chamber. I didn't want to risk them getting too cold and developing any problems in the brood if there was any still present.

A small amount of fondant is visible at the bottom of the tub

Apiary inspection 30/08/2011 and Honey Extraction!!!

Last Tuesday I went up to the apiary to remove the honey that my Bees have kindly made for me. I didn't want to take too much from them as they have worked so hard for it so I took 5 completely capped frames and left all the half full ones. The Bees will continue to collect honey up until the flowers have gone but what they collect from now will all be theirs and hopefully this will reduce the amount of sugar syrup I'll need to feed them over the winter.

This time I was on my own and didn't take any pictures and will be taking less pictures in the future as I don't want too much repetition. When I arrived the first thing I did was light the smoker and then suit up. When I was suited up I went to the hive and removed one of the supers and swapped around the frames so I had 5 full frames of honey and 5 frames the Bees haven't got round to drawing out yet. The weight of the frames were impressive and later on worked out to be over a kilogram each. When I'd got the frames of honey I closed the hive up and collected the debris underneath to do a Varroa count later. I didn't inspect the brood chamber this time as the hive had been open a while by then.

When I got home I sent an email to the secretary of Wakefield Beekeepers asking for the contact to hire an extractor for the day. I was sent details of a man called Keith that lives a couple of junctions up the motorway so was in short driving distance. I called him on Thursday and arranged to pick the extractor up after work. The extractor is a 9 frame electric one and it cost £2 to rent for the day, bargain.

The frames in the super

A almost fully capped super frame

Using a sharp knife the cappings are removed

A sticky job but fun

The frames are placed in the extractor which spins at high speed forcing the honey out of the frames

The liquid gold running into a storage bucket via a pair of tights! This filters out bits of wax in the honey. I will need a better filter if I intend to sell the honey

The first jar of my honey

I took the above bottle to work to let people taste it and I think it went down well.

You may have noticed that there has been no mention of the varroa count up until this point. I haven't forgot, I just didn't have time to do it until today. There were 71 mites that I counted which was over 15 days. Below is the report from Beebase. I will be treating them ready for winter on my next inspection even though the count is still low as it's increasing at a alarming rate.

Average Daily Mite Fall = 4.7 varroa mites
Estimated number of adult varroa mites in the colony = 190
Treatment is recommended in about 9 month(s) time (counting from day of first monitoring).

Apiary inspection 02/08/2011

This inspection both me and Steph went as my sister was babysitting. As Steph was a little more hands on with this inspection I'm letting her write the bulk of this post. I will be back at the end with the varroa count.

There's a change in author this week! I am very scared of bees, but I am facing my fear. Slowly, I am getting a little braver. I started off near to the closed hive without a suit, but standing very close to the apiary door so I could make a quick getaway should I panic. Next, I put my suit on and went right into the apiary while the hive was open, and Morley did the full inspection. And this time with a suit on I actually held a couple of frames! The rest of the time I play role of paparazzi to the bees. Apparently I'm doing a full inspection (under supervision) next time we can get a babysitter... So this is to prove that I listen to my other half and pay attention when he talks about his buzzing girls (and few boys)!

The roof of the hive and the two supers were removed to expose the Queen excluder, which can be seen above. The bees can be seen building foundation in the wrong place, and most of this was removed.

The first frame in the brood chamber to be examined; the damaged area is where the dummy board had stuck to the stores, and it looks like the bees set to repairing the damage immediately. There are capped stores to be seen at the top of the frame.

Me, inspecting a frame. It was heavy and covered in bees, and also had many cells of larva. It was the first time I'd been able to clearly see the babies. 

Me, relieved that I did it! It wasn't as bad as I expected. In fact it felt safer to hold the frame than stand next to the open hive with individuals buzzing around my head!

Handing over to the expert for the really busy centre frames. Next time...

A busy centre frame; Queen Beeatrix is in the middle to the left.

Me again! This time checking out a super frame. No problem after doing the one absolutley covered in bees before!

A super frame, almost fully capped, full of honey. It was extremely heavy! Thanks ladies :-) Can't wait to sample it!

 And now for the technical bit...

Thanks for that Steph. Also mention that I added a wasp trap to the allotment; this is basically a large jam jar with some diluted jam in, then a wasp size hole in the lid. Apparently this will trap lots of wasps without harming the bees. I'll try to get a photo of it for next time.

 When we got home I got onto counting the varroa mites within the debris. I found 21 mites which is 7 more than last week, however I am still not worried as the estimated amount in the hive is still well below the danger level. Also I have not seen any sign of varroa related disease.

Average Daily Mite Fall = 3.0 varroa mites
Estimated number of adult varroa mites in the colony = 120
Treatment is recommended in about 9 month(s) time (counting from day of first monitoring).

Apiary inspection 26/07/2011

Over the last couple of weeks I got an email from Wakefield and Pontefract Beekeepers telling me that there was a potential new Beekeeper in the village I live in. They passed me his contact details and today we arranged to meet up so I could show him my Bees. He had already been to see another apiary in the village, but the other apiary had several more hives than mine, I believe he said around 15 hives all together!

At around 3PM I met up with him and we headed up to the apiary together. Upon arrival we suited up and lit the smoker then headed into the apiary. The first job I did was remove the varroa board and scrape the contents into a box so I could do a varroa count later on. After that I handed the camera over to him and asked if he would take photos as I went. 

First I took the roof off

Next I removed the super and put it to one side exposing the Queen excluder

Then the Queen excluder was removed, making sure the Queen wasn't on the underside

I then removed the plastic dummy board

The first frame with capped stores

The capped cells in this one are worker brood

Queen Beeatrix with her entourage 

Me and a Bee inspecting a frame

Holding the hive tool so it's at hand when needed

I tried to remove as much of the excess comb on the top of the frames

A frame from the supers

Capped honey stores

Looking into a super

After we had checked all the frames in both the supers and the brood chamber I added another super so there are now 2 supers on the hive; this gives the Bees plenty more room to store honey as there is a good honey flow on at the moment.

When I had dropped my visitor off I returned home and poured the contents from the varroa floor onto a sheet of white paper and counted the mites on there. I counted 14 mites and then using the calculator on the Beebase website I got the following information:

Average Daily Mite Fall = 2.0 varroa mites
Estimated number of adult varroa mites in the colony = 80
Treatment is recommended in about 2 month(s) time (counting from day of first monitoring).

Varroa mites 

Apiary inspection 21/06/2011

Yesterday was my first apiary inspection. It was as quick as I could be as I didn't want to disturb the Bees too much. I was unsure how much of the foundation they would have drawn out into comb so I took the frames for the super box with me just in case they needed more room to expand.

Upon arriving at the apiary I got all my equipment out of the car, which included my hive tool, smoker, smoker fuel, wind proof lighter, a couple of frame spacers and a small box for collecting any brace comb that was removed. The smoker fuel I was using was rolled up cardboard which I made sure had no glue or anything on. I put the cardboard into the smoker and using the wind proof lighter got it a blaze then set it down for 5 minutes while I put my suit on.

When suited up I entered the Bee enclosure and puffed a little smoke over the front of the hive and then waited a few minutes to allow the smoke to calm the Bees. The next step was to remove the roof and check on the feeder bucket, which was empty; unfortunately I hadn't brought any more syrup with me so couldn't add any more.  

To access the hive I then used my hive tool to prise the crownboard away from the brood box; I was surprised at how quickly the Bees had glued it all together with propolis. Once inside the hive I puffed a little more smoke over the top to encourage the Bees to go down onto the frames then started taking out the frames to inspect. 

The underside of the crownboard with brace comb. This was scraped off and collected.

Freshly drawn out comb full of sugar syrup

The next comb removed, after the above pictured, had new eggs in but were too small to photo. By seeing eggs it told me I still had a laying Queen. I carefully replaced the frame and continued my inspection. On the 3rd frame with brood on I managed to find the Queen. She is marked with a spot of white paint and visible in the photo below. I have named my first Queen Beeatrix the first!

Can you see the Queen?

When I got to the last frame provided in the nucleus hive I attached a couple of frame spacers as the frames I have are self spacing Hoffman frames compared to normal frames from the nucleus. 

The new frame with spacer added to make it hang far enough away from it's neighbour

When I'd checked the frames I put the back together as quickly as I could. I noticed something in the hive that wasn't supposed to be there.....A wasp!

Wasp feeding from a bit of leaked sugar syrup. I crushed it so it didn't tell it's friends and return!

Beekeeping Course: Week 6 ..... Bee Day

Wednesday the 15th of June will be now known to me as Bee Day. At last I can actually call myself a Beekeeper! The day started with me going to work at an early hour then when I got home I prepared my hive to take along with me to the course. While doing this the heavens opened and we had a really strong downpour. At this point I expected that any apiary visit would be out of the question but luckily I was wrong.

Upon arrival at the course Ivor advised us that anyone who had brought a hive would be able to take their Bees home after the class, as he had created enough nucleus hives for everyone who required one. There were three of us this week, including myself with hives. I drove my car up to the apiary and we split into three groups; one for each of us who were taking Bees that night. The first thing that was done was to put my hive where the nucleus hive was, and move the nucleus box to the side; that way any Bees that were out foraging would return to my hive rather than the nucleus hive. Ivor then removed the 6 frames within the nucleus hive and placed then into my hive along with 5 frames of wax foundation that I brought with me in the hive. It was at this point that one of my new "ladies" was a little too affectionate with her greeting and stung me on the ankle. I know it was a lady bee as males can't sting! It felt a little like a hot needle in my skin, luckily only for about half an hour before it wore off. Ivor found the Queen and marked her with white paint while he was transferring the frames over to my hive. We then left the apiary and headed into the classroom with the hives open ready to collect any stray Bees.

Upon returning to the classroom we had a quick coffee break and then moved on to discussing swarm management. One of techniques covered was the "artificial swarm"; this method is used when Queen cells are found and is a way of controlling the swarm before it leaves the hive. With this method you need to have a second hive. The first step is to move your hive about 2 foot to one side and put the second hive in it's place. You then take out the frame with the queen on and place this into the second hive and fill the hive with frames with drawn out comb or foundation if comb is unavailable. This frame with the queen on must have any queen cells removed so they aren't raised into a new queen that may fight with the old queen. In the second hive you need to get rid of any sealed queen cells but leave the unsealed ones. At this point the hives are sealed back up and left for a week. During this time the flying Bees from the first hive will have returned to the location of the first hive, which is now the second hive and the one with the old queen in. The Bees in the hive with the old queen now have plenty of room to expand and are much less likely to swarm. After a week you can go into the hive without a queen and remove all but one queen cell, which should be sealed by now and depleted of Bees as most have returned to the location of the original Queen. This hive is now moved 2 foot to the other side of the hive with the old Queen causing even more flying bees to return to old Queen as they will seek the nearest hive when they find their hive has been moved. At this point you will have a strong hive with the original Queen and a smaller colony with a newly raised Queen. You now have the option of amalgamating the 2 hives but with a younger Queen or having a second hive. This method does sound complicated on paper but when it was demonstrated at the course it was much easier to get to grips with. There were other methods that were explained but I will leave them for the time being.

At the end of the course I returned to the apiary to collect my Bees. I closed the entrance up and placed the Bees carefully into the back of my car. When I started the car there was a steady buzzing coming from the back that seemed to be getting louder. When I looked in the mirror I noticed that several Bees had either escaped or were on the bottom of the hive when I picked it up. I decided it would be a good idea to wear my suit while transporting the Bees. It was a interesting drive to my apiary at my Dad's allotment but I managed it without further incident. When I got to the allotment and met up with my Dad I carried the hive to it's enclosure that me and Dad built over the last few days (mainly my Dad). We then made up a mixture of syrup in my plastic feeder to feed the Bees made of 1kg or sugar to 1 litre of water and placed it in the hive. When I opened the entrance to the hive I expected them to all fly out angrily looking for who had moved them unwillingly to this new location but was surprised when none did. Probably because it was late by then and light was fading.

The following day (Thursday) after work me and my partner went up to the apiary, dropping the baby off at her aunts on the way. We only had a quick apiary visit and didn't use the suit. My better half even ventured into the Bee enclosure and she isn't the biggest fan of Bees. Thankfully the Bees were very well Bee-haved and Steph's opinion of my girls has been raised. She actually rather enjoyed it and would like to come more often.

This is a old door that the hive sits on allowing air to flow under providing ventilation

One of my ladies doing guard duty

Me stood next to the hive proving how brave I am

The apiary enclosure that me and Dad built (mainly Dad)

Just to the right of the apiary is the fruit trees that my girls will be pollinating next year