Apiary Visit - Queen and Queen Cell

After work today I visited my apiary to check on the Bees and see how my nucleus hive was getting on. Upon arrival at the land I was greeted by my Dad and Brother-in-law working hard at the land. My Brother-in-law was busy wrestling with some more clay in the ground and I'm not sure what my Dad was doing but he was rather sweaty. I had a quick chat with them then lit my smoker ready to get into the hives.

The first hive I inspected was the nucleus hive which I made last Wednesday. I gave it a really small puff of smoke and opened it up. Within the second frame I saw what I was hoping to see which was a Queen cell dangling off the face of one of the combs. As this cell that I saw was already capped it must be at least 8 days old which means in just over a week she should hatch and then with some good weather do her maiden flight and get mated with drones.

Queen Cell

Next was the main hive and to start with I checked the super I put on last week for any honey. At the moment there is no honey in there but under the Queen excluder in the half brood box below there about 3 frames almost absolutely full of honey and also mostly capped. This is the honey that I will be leaving them as stores for a couple of reasons. Firstly they worked hard for it so they deserve it and secondly as there has already been brood raised in the cells it may taint the honey. The honey in the super is on a combination of drawn out clean frames and foundation only frames so will be clean for when they start filling it with honey.

When I moved onto the main brood chamber I was keeping an eye out for the Queen and any signs of Queen cells. Within a few cells I had found everything I needed to find but not what I wanted to see; I needed to see eggs, pollen and larva but I wanted to see the Queen! After a couple more frames I was rewarded with a sight of Her Majesty!

When I had finished the inspection I put the hive together and went over to help my Dad move some equipment around the land. We moved a large storage box to a corner and when we got there we saw a frog. Unfortunately it was a rather camera shy little beast and kept jumping away before I got a decent picture of it but you can just see it in the below picture.

Wakefield and Pontefract Beekeepers: November Meeting

This months meeting was titled Queens and Things and was presented by a guy called Gerry Collins. As you can probably imagine by the title the subject was Queens and included other little bits.
We did have a presentation by him last year. Gerry mentioned that he used to be a biology teacher and some of this was shown in his presentation; he named a few of the pheromones that Bees produce along with the names of the glands that produce them, unfortunately I don't remember the names or I would have included them here. I may in the future need to learn them when taking advanced Beekeeping exams but at this stage I don't think I need to know them.

We were shown many slides throughout the presentation showing pictures of Queens illustrating the possible problems with locating her majesty. For example in one picture she could be clearly seen and then in a second shot taken seconds after the Queen had disappeared into a cluster of Bees. Other pictures included a Queen that was partly into a cell laying a egg making her hard to see and also virgin Queens that are only slightly larger than workers.

We were also advised about looking for the signs of having a laying Queen. One photo showed a group of cells with more than one egg in each cell. This normally would indicate the possibility that there are laying workers in there (which is bad because workers only lay drones). However in that slide what we were seeing was a young Queen that hadn't learned to just lay a single egg per cell; a clue to this is that although there were multiple eggs, they were mostly central right at the bottom of the cell, when you have laying workers the eggs are generally closer to the sides due to workers having much shorter abdomens.

There were plenty of other things covered but I either can't remember them enough to write up or I have previously written about the subject anyway so have chosen to leave them out. After the presentation there was, as always, a raffle with prizes including a bottle of wine, chocolates and honey storage buckets, along with other bits. I didn't win anything this month although I really would have liked to get some storage buckets, I only currently have 2 and one contains whats left of my honey and the other contains some honey my dad acquired for me over a year ago. The honey my dad got me has set solid in the bucket and it's this that I'm using to make my mead, when I have more mead making experience I will use honey from my own Bees, or what I like to call "The good stuff"

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

Beekeeping Course: Week 5

This Wednesday was the first lesson back after half term. As I am working night shift this week I had a lie in on the morning, however I was woken up by such a large noise outside as the heavens opened and hail stones came down hard for 15 minutes followed by a heavy thunderstorm. Though this was impressive to watch (and amusing watching our 3 chickens running around in the rain getting wet) it also made me think there would be no apiary visit on the course this week; I was wrong! After 20 minutes of heavy rain it stopped as quickly as it started and the sun came out for the rest of the day.

When I got to the classroom we all suited up and made our way over to the apiary. We split into 3 groups and checked the hives. After having some really nice warm weather over the last 2 weeks we were hoping to see eggs laid by the new queens. Last time there were a couple of hives that had virgin queens that hadn't mated yet, they need a couple of warm days to allow them to get out of the hive to mate; the first hive opened was one of them and there were eggs present. A further inspection of that hive in a weeks time will hopefully reveal that she is laying worker eggs and not just drone eggs. If she is just laying drones (males) then the colony is doomed as it can't survive without workers (females) to collect food and look after the young. We didn't see the queen in there but as she is a new queen she wouldn't look too different from a worker as her abdomen wouldn't have got enlarged yet. We then moved onto the second hive which is an established colony and did a check of that. In this hive we got the chance to do the inspection ourselves so when it came to my turn, using the hive tool, I separated the frames of brood and carefully lifted the frames one by one. I was unable to find the queen but did find brood in all the frames I checked. While we were doing this the teacher with one of the other groups shouted over to say they had a drone laying queen. Unfortunately she will have to be killed and replaced if the colony is to survive but as she couldn't be found then it'll have to be done another time.

After a short break for tea and coffee we had a sort of test where we were given nine bits of paper with images of the 3 castes of bees (queen, worker and drone) but they were cut up separating the head, thorax and abdomen. We had to put the bits together to correctly identify the 3 castes. We finished this fairly quickly and moved onto the next part which was talking about the different castes and comparing how long each takes to develop from egg to bee; this is a link to wiki site that shows the times if interested. This is important to know as it helps with swarm control. Next weeks course includes swarm management so I won't go into that this week.

I have saved the most important part of this weeks course while last. During the apiary visit Ivor said that he does have a few nucleus hives ready for us and hopefully will be able to collect mine next Wednesday! This means I need to pull my finger out and get to my Dad's allotment during the week and prepare the site. I must admit that I am buzzing with excitement at the thought of finally being able to say I'm a Beekeeper!