New queens take to their thrones …

Following on from my last blog entry where two of my three honey bee colonies had seemingly lost their queens between the hive inspections in March and those carried out in April I now needed to act reasonably fast if I was going to be able to save either of these colonies. Both of the hives had already been given frames of young eggs taken from my strongest hive, Ogwen, in an attempt to get them to draw out an emergency queen cell, that in turn would lead to a new queen, but this had failed so it was time to try and source new queens elsewhere.

I contacted a couple of local beekeeping suppliers and had replies back to say  they would possibly have mated queens by mid-May, I also e-mailed the Kent beekeepers association to see if anyone else locally could help me or offer any advice. Additionally the blog is ‘published’ to Facebook and a few people kindly commented to say that either they had experienced something similar this year or to offer some advice.

Normal queen cells formed in the hive on a frame

I was very fortunate that I received a reply from beekeeper in north Kent, Bob Fitzpatrick,  who is  having success with the dark art of artificial queen rearing and who also had fresh queens in his hives ready to go. Bob produces bees for a local beekeeping supplier at Bluebell Hill. Like the rest if us his bees have been struggling with the weather this year, and although he has managed to get them to produce the  queens, there have not really been many good days for these virgin queens to fly and mate.

A queen bee will attend only one mating flight, early in her life,  she flies to a ‘drone congregation area’ where hundreds, or possibly even thousands, of unrelated drones (male bees) are waiting. The drones then pursue the queen and several of them will mate with her whilst still in flight. The queen will store up to 100 million sperm in her oviducts and these will be used to fertilise her eggs for the rest of her life, when she starts to run out she will be replaced. The drones do not survive long after mating as they have served their sole purpose to fertilise a queen.

On  Monday morning I drove up to Bob’s house to meet with him and collect  two newly hatched queens to deliver back to my now, slightly grumpy, queen-less colonies. These queens were formed after eggs taken from worker comb were grafted into special ‘cups’, the bees then draw these out to form the larger cells that will hold a developing queen and the larvae are then fed a diet of royal jelly rather than the pollen rich diet received by the workers and drones. Once the cells have been drawn out and capped (sealed) they are placed within a small cage so that  the new queen hatches in a place where the breeder knows her age and is able to move her into a small hive (nucleus or ‘nuc’) with worker bees to start a new colony.

Queen rearing cages

The queens were given a little fondant for their journey, to prevent the queens chilling the cages were wrapped loosely in newspaper and then they were taken directly to their new hives about an hour away.

You cannot simply open a queen-less hive and drop a new queen in as the existing workers would not accept her and she would be killed. The cages have a small opening in the base for her to escape from but this is partially filled with a soft fondant or candy. The bees have to chew through this fondant from both sides to release the new queen and by the time she is free her royal pheromone has taken control of the colony and she is now in charge!

Queen rearing cage with ‘hatched’ queen cell on top

The weather on Monday improved significantly into the afternoon, but unfortunately the queens would still have been playing Houdini and by the time they had escaped the weather had again declined and the wet windy weather conditions returned. There have a been very few moments of sunshine breaking through since but I do not know if any of these have been long enough for the queens to leave the hive or if these replacement queens will now be stale by the time the warmer weather arrives this  weekend.

Before I put the queens into the hives on Monday I checked again to make sure there was definitely no queens present that had just been missed. Snowdon, my first hive,  was undoubtedly still without but I have never been to sure about my second, Tryfan.  In March there were eggs, larvae and brood present so the queen was definitely in there and laying but by April there was nothing there but also no supercedure cells were formed. I have checked and  checked again for the queen in this hive but she was not  found and there was no longer any evidence of her. However on Monday the bees in Tryfan seemed to have cleared an area of pollen and stores  in the central frames ready for brood rearing and there were now a few eggs in the cells, and certainly not the random or multiple eggs from laying workers. I did not know if these were definitely a new addition and therefore the queen was still present but had stopped laying during the recent cold wet weather (whilst the forager bees have been unable to leave the hive to collect nectar and pollen) or if they were old and abandoned eggs that I had missed under the poor light conditions during the earlier inspections,  so I took the gamble and  introduced the new virgin queen anyway.

Marked Queen

I checked the hives again briefly today (Thursday) and both new queens have escaped their cages, however those eggs I saw last week  are now developing larvae meaning they were freshly laid when I saw them  and there was a queen present all along, however the introduction of the new virgin queen may have led to her, or the reigning queen,  being killed or injured so we are back to a waiting game until the next inspection to see what the outcome is for this colony.

If there are eggs and a marked queen  present then my original queen has survived, if there are eggs with an unmarked queen then the new queen successfully mated but if there are no eggs and no queens then I am back to square one, only time will tell.

The other very  important influence of the poor weather this year has been the amount of spring feeding required.  After an unseasonably warm and sunny March the colonies had built up fast and filled the hives to the seams with young workers all ready for the spring nectar flow but when the cold wet weather set in the  now enlarged colonies trapped in the hives have rapidly used up the last of their winter stores. As such the hives have required regular feeding throughout April and into May with a light sugar syrup (1kg sugar to 1 litre water) in order to prevent the bees from starving, it is amazing that my strongest colony can empty a full contact feeder of syrup in about two days so just goes to show what they woudl be using to sustain the colony if they were flying.  Feeding this time of year should be done with some caution as it can also encourage the bees to swarm and there seems to be a lot of that starting locally now.

August arrives with lost queens and egg laying workers – is this the end of my colonies?

It’s always the way that everything seems to come along just when you have really limited time, like carrying out last minute hive checks the week before you go away of a family holiday and finding that there is loads to sort out….

Following the artificial swarm earlier in the season I had left the old hive with the new queen well alone to allow her to hatch, mate and start laying eggs. The new hive (with the old queen) was checked and they seemed exceptionally strong as a colony as the bees had drawn out the comb rapidly filling every inch with brood, honey and pollen, all within a matter of days and ‘getting grumpy’ with the lack of space in an 11 frame brood box within a fortnight (note – getting grumpy means they rush out to meet you when you arrive at the hives and all want to get inside your veil to sting!)

When I came to check on the new queens progress I knew I was a little overdue, a combination of bad weather, commuting for work and a young family leaves me on a tight time bee schedule. I was hoping to open the hive and find a beautiful new queen with at least five frames of brood, good pollen stores and plenty of the golden stuff but unfortunately my visit revealed quite the opposite. No queen was found and I can only assume she never returned from her mating flights but even worse there were eggs in the hive but these were randomly laid (in a pepper pot fashion), the eggs were not perfectly placed at the bottom of each cell and there were multiple eggs per cell.

Multiple eggs in each cell as laid by workers (4 shown in this cell!)

I knew straight away that this was the sign of a beekeepers nightmare – the egg laying worker! With the lack of a queen in the hive the colony slowly dies as there is no regeneration of the workers. In some cases a number of workers will then develop active ovaries and start egg laying, bought on by the lack of queen pheromone that normally suppresses the ovaries of the workers. The workers have not mated and are not fertile and therefore they can only lay drone (male) eggs.

Erratic egg laying with drone brood from an egg laying worker

Deformed worker brood comb now being used to house drone brood

Their bodies are not adapted for egg laying and being smaller than the queen they do not reach the bottom of the cells and they do not have the queens methodical approach of laying eggs in cleaned cells together so that they can be tended, there may also be several egg laying workers in one hive.

Lack of time didn’t allow for me to go home, read a book, speak to a bee master or look up the best way to deal with it on google so I made a decision to unite the queen laying worker colony with the very strong artificially swarmed colony using the paper method, in which the queenless colony is placed over the queen right colony with only a sheet of newspaper between them, with a few small tears in it. This allows the bees to chew their way through and merge the colony with minimal loses due to fighting and the resident queen takes control of the whole colony.

Uniting colonies using the 'paper method'

Feeling quite pleased with myself I rang my friend Paul who pointed out that this was the one thing that the books recommend not to do and a egg laying worker in a colony is really a lost cause, I checked and he was right – it now looked like I may lose both colonies instead of just the one but it was now to late to change anything – it was done!!!

After returning from my holiday I attended the hives for a routine check, now expecting the worst but was very happy to find that against all the odds the old queen, artificially swarmed into a new hive back in June had seen off her ‘laying worker rivals’ and was heading a very strong colony with a large brood area and good stores. I am happy that this colony when treated will be strong enough to pull through the winter months ahead.

Brood boxes united with queenless colony on top

two colonies united together

Checking my other hives I discovered that another colony that had been in shutdown conditions whilst the new queen hatched, mated and started laying was also queenless but here there were no laying workers and a new buckfast cross mated queen has been ordered from Paynes bee farm for introduction into the colony this weekend. The hive had swarmed back in early July but the old hive had not been checked in order no to damage the queen cells, but on the recent inspection there were no ‘used’ queen cells found so I can only assume that the queen fled without leaving a new queen behind – possibly due to weather conditions or hive conditions, guess I will never know but again I am hoping that this has been spotted early enough to remedy and save the colony.

A busy week lays ahead with a new queen to be established, final honey extractions from all hives, the application of varroa treatment and starting to feed sugar syrup back to the bees …. lets just hope that the rain clears long enough to get into the hives.

A beekeeping library

Whilst it is quiet on the actual bee keeping front over winter it is the perfect time to catch up on some background reading, take onboard new knowledge that can applied to your bee keeping practise throughout the following year and increase your enjoyment and understanding of the actual bees themselves and not just the practice of trying to maximise a honey crop.

Bee library

Since I started with the bee keeping about three years ago I seem to have gathered quite a few books on the subject, some bought by me and others given as presents. My first book on the subjest was ‘Bees at the bottom of the garden’ which seemed to be a popular choice for including in the bee keeping starter packs that the equipment suppliers provide. This was great introductory book but soon led onto more slightly  indepth books on the subject.

With the risk of being called ‘nerdy’ I thought I would briefly add a few web reviews the books I have here:

Beekeeping is a hobby any interested amateur could explore - that is the message of this work which aims to take the mystique out of keeping bees. Alan Campion uses his own experiences to describe in plain terms how to go about setting up a hive, and what to expect from your bees.

This is a comprehensive and attractive lifestyle guide to beekeeping - from finding your bees to getting them home, housing them, collecting honey and using their produce.It includes a detailed look at the history of bees and beekeeping, and an extensive introduction to help you to fully understand your bees and keep them happy.Whether you have a tiny balcony or acres of land; live in the middle of a city or in the countryside surrounded by flowers, this book caters for every situation, discussing the different types of hive available for every eventuality.It features a detailed section on gardening for bees, as well as comprehensive advice on how to safely collect your honey and wax, with recipes and ideas on how to use them."Bees" fuses contemporary lifestyle design and an authoritative text, to appeal not only to those who already have bees, but to those who are thinking of having them or even just like the idea of having them - it will 'sell the dream'.

 

Intended for both new and experienced beekeepers, this invaluable and highly illustrated volume provides answers to virtually every beekeeping question - from avoiding swarms to setting a hive up for winter."Guide to Bees and Honey" also presents expert advice for readers who plan to maintain a few hives for personal, recreational use, as well as those who want to expand an existing colony into a commercial venture.Also included in this volume is a section on the Varroa mite - a particularly nasty parasite that has proved fatal to many British hives. It explains what it does, how it spreads, and effective ways to treat and prevent infestation.

Offers concise, up-to-date information on beekeeping tasks, including how to prevent, capture, and control swarms, when and how to harvest honey, and dealing successfully with queens.

This is one of the great beekeeping books of all time. Manley draws on his commercial esperience to explain all aspects of beekeeping. This is a book which is a joy to read, you read it, then reread it. As your experience improves you will understand more & more of the value of Manleys words. STRONLY RECOMMENDED

Bees make honey; we all know that. But what happens between the bee buzzing around our garden, and the sticky knife in the jar, is a mystery to most of us. Based on careful observation and years of experience, Michael Weiler here reveals the secret life of bees. He looks at all aspects of a bee's life and work and vividly describes their remarkable world. Did you know that it takes approximately 12,000 bee-hours to make one jar of honey? (At GBP5.30 per hour, that would mean one jar should cost around GBP63,600.) This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in the intricacies of nature and our world.

There is growing evidence to show that honey is hugely beneficial to our health, from its antibacterial properties to helping relieve hay fever to even inhibiting the growth of cancer cells. Drawing on her background in the biological sciences, Gloria Havenhand reveals how we can harvest the beehive for anything from reviving tonics to beauty treats. Not only does she demonstrate how honey is essential for healthy living, but tackles other under-appreciated and lesser-known bee products such as propolis, a sticky resin, which can help skin conditions such as psoriasis; pollen used to relieve hay fever and boost the immune system and royal jelly and beeswax uesd in cosmetics to rejuvenate the skin. With increasing numbers of people interested in ditching drugs for natural alternatives to combat health problems from allergies to acne, this book is a timely look at how the beehive can help us look and feel better.

This book is designed to present detailed information about the anatomy and physiology of the honey bee in a clear and concise format. Each of the eight chapters covers an aspect of bee biology and all are copiously illustrated. The author has drawn most of the diagrams from her own dissections, giving a realistic, rather than idealistic impression of the parts involved. Also included, are an appendix giving the background to scientific terminology, a wide-ranging glossary including phonetic spellings and suggestions for further reading. This is a book that will inform anybody who is interested in this fascinating insect. It is based on the examination modules set by the British Beekeepers' Association, but this text will prove interesting for anyone wanting to know more about our honey bees.

On top of the books membership to the British Beekeepers Association also includes a monthly magazine called BeeCraft. The local branch of the BBKA also have a book library with some of the rarer books as well as newer titles. http://www.bee-craft.com/

https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/

Apiary inspection and adding more honey supers

We have now reached that time of year where the swarming risk is hopefully over and the adult bee population is reaching its peak for the year, with about 80,000 bees per hive, so there is a lot of activity going on both in and around the hive. The beekeeper can hopefully relax a little and now also get some idea if there will be any ‘honey surplus’ to take as a crop this year.

Many reports have said that this year has been the best for honey production in about the last 5 years, with the long cold winter helping to reduce parasite numbers in the hive and the warm spring and hot dry summer allowing plenty of time for the bees to get out and forage and bring back the nectar and pollen. On an average year a normal hive will produce around 50lbs of honey but some beekeepers are reporting crops three times this size for 2010.

As this is the first year with my own bees they have all been given new wax foundation, sheets of bees wax that has been ‘stamped’ with the hexagonal comb pattern to encourage the bees to draw the wax out more rapidly. The bees use up around 4lb of honey for every sheet of wax that they draw out and there are eleven frames in the brood area (where the queen is allowed to lay eggs) in both the deep and shallow boxes, and then a further ten frames in each of the honey supers above. A quick calculation indicates that my bees have drawn out over 90 frames of new foundation this year of which 22 were deep brood frames so this means that they have probably used up over 360lbs of honey in energy just to produce the comb already. Following the honey extraction the ‘wet’ comb is then returned to the hives and the bees are allowed to clean it up of any remaining honey and then it is carefully stored away for the winter to prevent damage. Next year my bees will have a massive headstart at the beginning of the year as they will not need to start from scratch with drawing out the comb but will have this years returned to them. The comb then needs renewing every few year to prevent disease and spread of parasites.

At my last visit to my hives on July 20th I checked the honey supplies that the bees have stored, both in the brood boxes and in the honey supers. The honey in the brood boxes will be left to help sustain the colony over winter but some of the honey from the supers above will be extracted for my use, gifts to friends  or for sale. The three hives, all standing shoulder to shoulder, have varying amounts of honey in them but my ‘daughter colony’ from the splilt swarm has already drawn the comb and filled and capped two full supers above the ‘brood and a half’ and the third super was added during the visit, the hive is now beginning to resemble a high-rise block next to its neighbours.

Since my last inspection visit I have managed to get down to the apiary on a couple of occassions without hive duties to carry out – a rare oppurtunity for me  as normally I get a short ‘time window’ to travel to the hives, smoke and inspect the bees, make any changes and then get home again. It really is a pleasure just to have some time to sit back and watch the bees arriving and leaving the hive,  laden with different colour pollen, and others simply there guarding the hive so its amazing to see the level of activity around the hive entrance at this time of year and knowing that every returning traveller is helping secure the future of the colony as well as adding to the honey crop!

Apiary visit and checking for Varroa destructor in my hives

Its amazing how fast seven days go but with a busy weekend ahead it was neccessary to check the bees earlier today just to see how they were getting on since the last visit. The hives are really beginning to build up well with strong colonies in them all and good brood patterns on the comb and they are bringing in good amounts of nectar and making honey now so they should have enough stores for over wintering and maybe even a little for me to take out and enjoy! With this in mind I made a flying visit to Thornes in Windsor to pick up some 40 kg honey tanks to allow the settling, or ripening, of the honey after it has been extracted from the frames and strained as it will need to sit for at least 24 hours to allow any air bubbles to rise t the surface of the honey before it is poured into the jars.

The third hive that had the swarm put in it back in June had an extra shallow brood supper added last week – this was made up of all new undrawn wax foundation and again the bees have amazed me with how fast they can draw out the wax comb when there is a nectar flow on – about half of these frames have been drawn out on both sides in the week and partially filled with honey already – I had a taste of some of the honey filled brace comb today – it’s an amazing experience to taste totally fresh, unfiltered, strained or unheated honey straight fom the hive, the aromas fill your mouth and go to the back of your nose and you realise why honey is refered to as the  ‘food of the gods’.

Now that the colonies are hopefully past swarming, the queens are laying well, the brood has expanded and there are many adult worker bees in the hive bringing in the honey my mind has turned to looking again at the health of the colonies. The weekly visits are always looking for irregularities in the brood as this can indicate a number of viral, fungal or parasitic problems within the hive of which there are very many, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_the_honey_bee

I have varroa mesh floors on all the hives and this is meant to reduce the mite count by 40% but as yet I have yet to see any mites in the hive, on the bees or on the floor board during mite checks. I decided to use the uncapping fork to lift some drone brood from the comb today as these are likley to be the host areas for varroa mites and gives you an indication of the amount of mite present in the hive. The only problem with my newly queened hives is that there is a lot of worker brood but not much drone brood at present at the moment. I checked the hive that had the most drone brood but after several ‘excavations’ I had only found one mite – I am hoping that this is a good sign and that the strong colony is dealing with the mites but it does also show that they are present, whereas prior to this I had not seen any evidence of their presence in the hive.