Not Just Bees

Life has not been just bees, it only feels like it some days. A couple of weeks ago we had been having an impressive picnic lunch at Mushroom Farm when the talk turned to making bread. Judith mentioned that some years ago she had made Chollah- a jewish bread made with eggs and honey!
I remembered seeing the recipe in the Great British Bake Off recipe book Trev had had for Christmas so next time he made bread he decided to have a go. The result along with his usual tasty bread is shown here.

Delicious and not too sweet, after a day or so it was great toasted with honey or marmalade. Will definately try this again but maybe make two smaller loaves and freeze one for another day!

More Bees Again!

When we moved the bees to Mushroom Farm we were left with the colony in Wragby Hive that hopefully had a queen cup left- but we didn't know. So very carefully we opened up the hive to find out what was going on inside. There were still lots of bees- the brood that had continued to hatch out from the first queen. Most of these bees have emerged now, but the brood box was stuffed full of stores- this hive had had a super on from the very first but still no sign of these bees wanting to move up in the world!!
I removed 2 very full frames of stores and replaced them with foundation to give them something to do! (These are the frames I fed to the new hive.)
We did find a small queen cup - but not very big - hopefully this queen will be ok to keep the bees going when she hatches and mates. But this is the next hurdle- will the queen at Mushroom Farm and here mate successfully and get their colonies up and running? Only time will tell......

More Bees

The intention was that this blog would be about all sorts of things- however the bees seem to have different plans at the moment and here is the next installment of the bee saga!
Newark Hive looks to be thriving- but supers are on, why don't the bees move up? I have more and more questions than answers so far!

The original hive where we hoped one queen cup was left- although the advice was if 2 were left they would sort themselves out- obviously had 2 and the first one to hatch out of the beautiful queen cup we had left, upped and swarmed on us! Luckily for us they seem to like our Amelanchier tree and stayed there while we collected them. This time we took them straight to Mushroom Farm. Following the same procedure we put them in the hive and after a couple of days went back and put in a couple of frames of stores from the old hive and filled up the brood box with frames. So far so good!!

These bees hopefully will be the first of an apiary with Jill, Rob,Judith and Roger on their woodland site. (Follow Rob's blog http://sustainablegarden.blogspot.com/)

Newark Hive

Our new hive came from a joinery near Newark, hence the name!
After eight days the swarmed colony seemed to have settled and was busy enough for us to want to see what was going on. It was obvious that the bees had been drawing the comb from the debris under the hive floor.

Very gently and cautiously, a little smoke and then off with the roof to open up the crown board. The bees were very calm- they had drawn 9 of the eleven frames and were filling them with pollen and stores- some looked polished and then we saw a few eggs. Birgit must be there- and then on the 8th frame in, there she was. Maybe her blue spot wasn't quite so pristine as it had been, she had after all been shaken out of a tree and then a couple of days later brushed into box. Nevertheless it looks as if she has begun to sort out the new colony.

This photograph was taken last year of Birgit in the old hive- she is in the top right, you can just see the blue spot! So we now have two hives that we hope are ready to take us into the summer!!

One Week Later....

Saturday 16th April. Time to go into the original hive- we have taken to calling it the Wragby Hive ( it came from Thornes in Wragby)- to check out the queen cups and assess the rest of the colony. There were not many bees in the super we had left on, hardly surprising because a big proportion of the flying bees would have gone with the swarm.There were lots of stores so no problem there. It was much easier to check the frames- the bees were very calm and busy. There was capped brood, a few larvae, some noticeable drones and more queen cups than we thought!!!

Systematically going through the frames we found 7 queen cups, all sealed. This can only be put down to inexperience and maybe nervous caution when we inspected last week. The 3 we had marked were well developed and we chose one of these to keep, going by the guidelines: Well placed, good size and texture- lots of dimples on the surface-we marked this frame with a drawing pin destroyed the other queen cups and carefully reassembled the hive. Now all we can do for this hive is to wait for 2-3 weeks for the virgin queen to emerge, take her mating flight and start to lay- she will be a white queen this year so we are waiting with bated breath for her to do her stuff. The picture shows one of the queen cups we removed- it is easy to see how much bigger they are than normal worker cells.





Absconding

The bees seem settled in the new hive and we have begun to work out a strategy to deal with the bees left in the original hive. On Saturday afternoon we go through carefully to find the queen cells which must be there otherwise the bees would not have swarmed the day before. Find them we do and mark the 3 frames where we find good queen cups and think we have destroyed all the others- we will go through the hive again in 6 to 7 days to check the progress of these and decide which to keep.
Sunday dawned fine and sunny- another lovely early spring day. All seemed well until about 3 o'clock when Trev rushed in to the house-'They're going again' -What a sight and sound it was. The whole sky appeared full of bees and the sound filled the air. It looked like they were going with a vengeance this time as they disappeared up the lane.
Nevertheless we decided to try and follow- and amazingly they settled in a front garden some way up the lane. They caused quite a stir but people seemed genuinely interested and happy to let us deal with them.
Not so easy this time, they had clustered half way up a tree on the trunk not easy to get a box under or to bang them into it. A different technique was called for- we used the same box- we hoped the smell of the queen might still be inside to help attract them inside- spread the sheet round the base of the tree and used a bee brush to brush the bees in to the box. Again we propped the box up- hoped we had the queen inside and left them to crawl in.
After about an hour all the bees had gone into the box, it looked as if we had succeeded in getting the queen inside, otherwise the bees would soon have flown away again. While the bees were crawling into the box I had nipped back home and got the same brood box ready again. It was just left to securely tie the sheet round the box of bees and carry them home. They were emptied back into the brood box- this time I left a smaller opening on the entrance block to make it a bit harder for them to get out!!

When bees leave like this it is not called swarming, apparently they are absconding. They had already drawn some of the comb on the new foundation ,there was pollen and some stores, so why they went who knows- I put on some light syrup feed to make them feel more like staying and left them to it. we will check on them in about a week, so watch this space!!

Swarm Part 2

So Friday 8th April came- normal day at work, very sunny- looking forward to that cup of coffee sitting outside and relaxing. But no, as I pull into the garage there is Trev looking a bit flustered. The greeting was- 'Hurry up and park the car the bees are swarming!!'

So, luckily they have not gone far- just a few metres in to a tree near the hive, they have gathered on a branch in an almost textbook fashion. This does not make us feel less nervous as we get the equipment ready that we will need- ladder, sturdy box, white sheet, empty brood box and frames....

A quick call to Bob, an experienced beekeeper from the NBKA, who kindly agrees to come round to check out what we are doing.

Everything ready and Trev climbs the ladder while I stand under the swarm holding the box. A quick, hard wallop on the branch holding the swarm and they are in the box, a quick turn over onto the sheet, prop one corner up on a rock and the bees begin to crawl in. It works just as the books say it should and in about 40 minutes time the whole lot are in the box!!

The next step is to hive the swarm- the brood box is ready- 4 or 5 frames removed from the centre and the quick way to hive them is to wrap the sheet round the box, carry it to the hive, up end the box over the hive and give a good strong shake into the hive.  Remember to put in the entrance block- otherwise they all come falling out! Luckily we did and the bees were in the hive. Lower the frames back in gently and as the bees climb up the frames they settle in. Put on the crown board and roof,remove the entrance block so stragglers from the box can fly in- then leave them alone!!!!

Eventually I did get that coffee, while we watched the bees settle down from a distance. The bees were just doing what came naturally to them, but it was certainly unexpected for us quite so early in the year.

I wish I could say that that was all the excitement the bees gave us last weekend but no there was more to come!

Swarm !!

Part 1...
What a bee keeping week! I thought the first thing I would be writing about this week would be the initial spring inspection of the hive. It will be, but the events of this week have certainly meant I am not going to take the bees for granted!!

Last Wednesday the day was lovely and sunny- just right for a first look in the hive this year. I knew that there would be brace comb from the Apiguard eke, because we had already seen this when we had used Apiguard to check the Varroa spring drop. When the hive was opened there was not just stores in the brace comb but also lots of capped brood attached to the crown board. The brood box was very full of bees, larvae, eggs and stores. We also saw some queen cups- play cups we thought- not unusual and we certainly didn't think it could be a sign of an imminent swarm- it was only the 8th of April after all!!!

Thinking of the talk the NBKA had just had I turned over the crown board put an empty super over it and then placed a super with frames and foundation on top of a queen excluder and sought some advice.The advice was to remove the brace comb and replace the excluder, super with frames, crown board and roof. The next day we opened the hive up again and this was done. The stores in the brace comb had all been cleared by the bees, we also removed the obvious queen cups which were all empty. It appeared the hive was busy, full and hopefully ready to get busy with the business of making honey!

However this was to be just the begining of our weekend of beekeeping.............................................

Time Difference

This weekend we were lucky enough to have family visiting. As they travel up to Nottingham from Portsmouth it is interesting that some signs of spring are much further ahead and others are about the same. The asparagus on our allotment is just starting to show a few spears and yet in Portsmouth they have already been able to cut some of this early treat!

Last year we noticed some of our asparagus crowns weren't as strong as others and have ordered crowns of Pacific 2000 to replace them. I am not sure if the female crowns don't produce such strong crops because they put more effort into seed production. The new crowns are supposed to be all male - so we shall see how they do. In the past we have grown asparagus from seed but it takes longer to take a crop- these new crowns should give us a small crop next year and go on to crop for up to 20 years at least.

Spring Ups and Downs

As I write this I can see two long tailed tits browsing through the hazel outside the window- they have been regular visitors for the last few weeks, so hopefully they are nesting somwhere close by. The spring flowers in the garden are beautiful- the days have lengthened and March has been warm and dry- a great start to the gardening year!
On the allotment we have already put in potatoes, some asparagus is shooting and seed sowing is well under way. I just love this time of year!!
For the first time the bees come into the scheme of things - the first inspection of the year looms and already we are contending with keeping the bees healthy. An early monitoring of the Varroa count on the open mesh floor indictated that there may be a problem later in the year. The natural mite drop can be used to calculate the population in the hive. At this time of year a drop of 1 mite a day could mean that as the brood nest increases, so will the mites proportionally and seriously affect the colony.
Our drop had been between 0.5 and 1 so it was decided to put Apiguard on to prevent the problem getting worse later in the year. It is nearly two weeks since we put on the treatment so I hope this week to carry out an inspection and evaluate whether more treatment is needed or if all looks well.
On the positive side of things the hive is busy with lots pollen going in- indicating a growing amount od brood. When we opened the hive to put on the Apiguard we removed the crown board and broke away brace comb that was full of honey- as some dripped out it had to be tasted and was delilcious- hopefully a sign of things to come!