Hive Guide 2011

I'm pleased to announce I've updated the Hive Guide

Hive Guide 2011
I've added several new hive types and a section on plastic frames and how to use Thymol as an effective varroa control in Spring and Autumn.

The purpose of the guide is to help new bee keepers decide which hive to use and some helpful advice on where to start. Click on the link above or the picture in the side bar. The guide will take awhile to download.

Closing down for winter 2010

Once again we are having an Indian summer and its lovely for us, temperatures are a barmy 14'C for this week so far which is way above the seasonal average for October - November. As a result the girls have all been working solidly collecting as much pollen and nectar as they can for winter. During September I fed them then treated them with Apigard, however as of next year I will solely use thymol for varroa control on the recommendation of a very good bee keeper and friend.

Closing Down
On Tuesday Clare and I went to visit the two apiaries to removed all the queen excluder's and any other excess equipment I had stored above some of the colonies. The main reason for this is to reduce the hives down to minimal size and profile. We sliced up a 12.5Kg lump of fondant into about 2 KG lumps and wrapped it in greaseproof paper and cut a slit and placed the slit over the hole in the crown board and finally wished them each good luck.

I may need to buy another box of fondant, although they will be loosely clustered at the moment they are still fairly active, ideally I would like the temperature to drop to around 4'C which is said to be the optimal temperature to ensure the colony remains clustered.

Honey Harvest - Summer 2010

After allowing a few days for the honey to settle I filled 64 hex jars (340grams - 12oz) to sell at my association Honey and Bee Weekend Show at a local country farm. Then filled 10 x 1Lbs jars and left another 10 Lbs in the bucket so I could mix it with a couple of jars of my OSR honey to make soft set honey.

Honey and Bee Show
Over the two days I sold 19 jars which I was very happy about as several members also had their honey up for sale as well.

Some pictures from the show


You may notice it looks a little quiet... It was busy but as I was manning the honey sales table and couldn't take tons of pictures.

Harvest time - August Part III

I've just finished extracting seven super's with various amounts in each, some full others just had a small amount per frame. I didn't have a set of scales with me but a very rough approximation going by the 3 buckets its about 6 gallons worth. No idea how many 12 oz / 340 gram jars this will fill but needless to say it will take awhile but I think I will need a day or two to recover as my arms and shoulder muscles are throbbing.

Harvest time - August Part II

I decided as I will be out of action for approx 6 weeks after a minor surgery at the end of August I need to clear the super's and get the honey extracted this week. This morning the rain held off for long enough for me to fit the clearer boards with the porter bee escapes so now I will need to wait a day or two before most of the bees should move down into the brood chambers. There will always be a small number of bees who refuse to leave, but I will give them a special treat of Apiinvert to keep them happy.

Taken from - Paynes Bee farm website
Apiinvert is a syrup of extremely high purity. It is made up exclusively of sucrose and its building blocks fructose and glucose. For that reason Apiinvert contains no forms of sugar that strain the digestive tract. The high proportion of fructose means that the product shows little tendency to granulate in the honeycombs, even at low temperatures and so prevents starvation of the bees.

Harvest time - August

Harvesting
Its almost time to put on the clearer boards with porter bee escapes to clear the bees down into the brood chamber so the super's can be removed and extracted. I have 7 super's and one national sized brood chamber ready to be removed. During the last inspection I found several of the frames were only about 60% capped, I don't like to remove them until the vast majority 80% are capped. The poor weather over the last few days hasn't been ideal for the colonies to cap cells but I really need to get the super's off and start to treat all the hives and feed a few of the smaller colonies I started this year as they are still a little light on capped stores.

Testing the Honey
I bought a refractometer so I can test the honey, hopefully it will be about 18-20% which is perfect to extract and allow it to rest for a day or two for the bubbles to rise whilst kept warm before I fill the 12oz hexagon jars.

More to follow in the next week or two.

Poly Hive - 15th August

I decided to buy a poly langstroth hive and all plastic frames to trial after I had read so many good reports from others about them.

The hive I bought to start with was a double medium, floor, feeder and roof. I also bought enough one piece medium plastic frames and spent an hour out in the sun painting the molten wax over them as I didn't have a small fleece roller at the time. Below is a video of John a friend of mine showing how to prepare the frames.

I shook swarmed the prime swarm from the Dartington hive into the poly hive and fed them about 3 gallons of feed over the next few weeks. Ideally it was a little late in the season to shook swarm a colony onto new undrawn frames but after a slow start they quickly drew out most of the frames and stored massive amounts of the Apinvert feed I was giving them. The queen began to lay large patches of eggs and by the end of August they looked very happy in their new home.

Inside a TBH August

Decided to film the TBH for the last time this year and put all the footage into one video before I start to think about preparing them for winter.

To see this movie on YouTube Click here




Here is several minutes worth of the August footage.

To see this Movie on YouTube Click here

Wasps July 16th

After the problems I've had queen rearing this year, I ended up getting a couple of queens from a friend of mine. I prepared the two hives 24 hours before hand by removing the drone laying queens from both. At the same time I made a nuc with purely nurse bees from two of my good strong colonies to combine with one of the now queenless hives, I shook in 5 frames of bees which were on brood frames with eggs and larvae and waited 20 minutes for the mature bees to find the entrance and fly back to their normal hives. I sealed the entrance then moved them to my other apiary. Late the next day I put in a queen cage with the candy cap still sealed and left them for 3 days before returning and removing the cap to give the queen the best chance of being accepted before she was released from her cage.
Another 3 days later I was checking one of my other hives when I saw what seemed a non-stop flow of wasps entering the nurse bee nuc to rob it. I opened the nuc to find hundreds of bees and about 30 wasps dead inside but thankfully the queen and about 200 bees were still alive. My only option was to capture the queen in a queen clip and shake remaining live bees out into the queenless hive I was going to combine them with and coat the queen clip and the whole colony with lots of powdered sugar.
3 days later I released the queen from the clip and she calmly walked down between two frames, I will check in two weeks time to see if she has started to lay or if she was attacked and killed.

Last year I only had a minor problem with wasps, but this year it has become a major problem at one of my apiaries. I have had to close down the entrances to a narrow slot on all the hives even though some of them are strong the wasps seem desperate to get in. If the problem continues I may need to fit a plate loosely over the entrance to confuse the attackers how to get in.

All in all, this year hasn't been to good with the problems I've had and the long spells of hot weather and very little rain which has badly affected the nectar flow.

Bee Keepers Curse - July

Prolapsed Disc

Back in June I had mild lower back pain and severe cramp like pain through my backside and all down my right leg. After several visits to various doctors who assumed I had only tweaked a muscle and thought I wanted time off to watch the world cup... 


I was finally referred to a Bupa back specialist who took one look at me walking a few yards before telling me he thought I had a prolapsed disc and I would need a MRI to confirm. 

Above: Two weeks later here is the telling picture.

He explained what options I had and what he could do and a week later I opted for surgery in August.


A warning to all beeks although this injury was not caused by bee keeping, look after yourself and don't try to lift a complete hive or several full supers at a time. The painkillers I was given only knocked the edge off the pain so I could cope, trying to get a good nights sleep is almost impossible.

June 26th 2010 - TBH Inspection

Ray, Linda and Rob joined me at my apiary today. I saved the TBH to last and I was very happy with their progress since last week. The weather has been over 22'C all week and the colony has built a nice amount of comb on 7 bars and the queen has started to lay. I only removed bars 6 & 7 as I could clearly see a small patch of eggs on bar 6 and eggs, larvae and sealed brood on bar 5. As the weather has been so good there is an early nectar flow and the girls are working very hard to collect as much as they can.

To see this movie on YouTube Click here

June 22nd Dartington Hive

This year the colony I had in my home made Dartington style hive dwindled to about 100 bees over winter. The queen was only laying a tiny patch of eggs on both sides of one frame as they couldn't keep the required temperatures warm enough, so I moved them out of the Dartington and I put them into a small 4 frame nuc and pretty much thought they wouldn't last long. Sods law although the colony is still small it is growing and although a little feisty if opened, they have survived partly I hope by the 1:1 feed and pollen pattie I've given them. The other hive is the swarm I got a few weeks ago with sadly a drone laying queen.

Today I went to check on these hives to decide if I should remove the drone laying queen then combine them a day or so later.

I suited up and walked towards the two hives and thought wow thats a loud buzzing I can hear. As I looked at the entrances of the two hives there was no more than 5-10 bees flying about outside them both, it suddenly dawned on me the noise was coming from the Dartington hive as I looked across towards it trying to peer through the long grass where I abandoned it 20 feet away from the other hives to see there was 30+ bees flying around the entrance.

My first thought was they were drawn to the empty combs and the smell looking for stores to rob until I got close enough to see the entrance and about 20 more bees were walking around on the front of the hive. I removed the roof and tried to gently prized up the crown board with my hive tool only to find it seemed unusually heavy, so I put the smoker down and using both hands lifted one side of the crown board up and peered under it to see a large natural comb about 10" wide and 12" deep and the whole entrance end of the hive was full of bees covering the 3 empty frames I left in there and covering the walls, crown board and the natural comb they have built since they moved in. I carefully smoked the bees off the crown board and removed the natural comb and lent it against the side wall so they could access the stores they put in it still and quickly grabbed three more 14x12 frames with foundation I had with me so they have 6 frames.

Happy Days

The Dartington style hive in its old location on the right.

June 19th - Top Bar Hive

After 4 pints of feed the colony in the top bar hive have built enough comb I can see it. So I have stopped feeding as I could see on closer inspection without needing to lift out any of the bars they have now started to store some nectar in the visible comb.

To view this movie on YouTube click here

June 4th Swarm in Top Bar Hive

No visible combs after two weeks.

Since hiving them all they seem to be doing is clustering on the left side of the hive covering 6-7 bars. I would of expected to see some brand new comb by now which lead me to think they were starving so I decided late yesterday to give them 2 pints of 1:1. I had a quick look at the feeder today which only had about 1/4 of a pint left so they were definitely hungry. Traffic at the entrance is good but considering their size I would of expected a lot more. No idea on the status of the queen yet but I will continue to feed them now and hope to see some progress soon.

June 6th 2010

Oil Seed Rape - Extraction

One of my apiary's is only half a mile away from several very large fields of OSR which have just finished flowering for the year. I removed the super's to extract them or the nectar would of quickly crystallized and set solid. After a quick inspection I had 26 frames in total from 3 supers which passed the flick test to check if they were ready to be extracted the rest I left on the hive. Some of the extracted frames still had large amounts of semi solid OSR which could not be spun out so I will cut out the foundation and gently melt them down to separate the wax and then feed this back later in the year.

32.7 Lbs over all

June 4th 2010

I've been mentoring a couple who have a hive at my apiary. A while ago I advised them to put their spare hive out in their back garden as a bait hive. I got a call from them saying a swarm descended into their garden and entered their hive.

Then at about midday my mobile and then my home phone rang, my mum told me about a swarm in one of her friends gardens. 20 minutes later armed with a camera and top bar nuc I'm smiling from ear to ear even though it is only looks like a small cast. (Queen not seen)

Every swarm collectors dream as they were less than 2 feet off the floor.



They swarmed on the 1st May with a similar size cluster which was collected by another keeper, then they tried to swarm again yesterday but returned to the hive after 2 hours which upset the beek who came to try and collect them.

Today
By the time I arrived today at about 12:30 they had been out for about 2.5 hours.

They came from a feral colony who have been in an old decorative chimney pot at the bottom of the garden for about 3 years. Each year they have thrown 2-3 swarms of roughly equal sizes.

To see the movie on YouTube Click here

May 24th - Call out

I was called out to look at a colony in a roof space of a front porch which moved in about a week ago. After a quick inspection and a couple of photographs I was happy to tell the owner he had a bumble bee colony. After a quick search on google I think they are Bombus Hortorum.



Even though it wasn't a honey bee colony I was still happy I could let the owner know not to worry.

May 14th - collecting a swarm

After changing shifts at work and feeling very tired I finally had a day off. I was relaxing whilst reading through several threads on the http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk when the phone rang. I was asked if I was interested in collecting a swarm to which I jumped at the chance.

I took a camcorder and put together this movie.



To watch this movie on YouTube goto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXSLviALnI0

April 2010 Part IV - Final Manipulations

Final manipulations to split the strong hives.
Starting on the left and going round clockwise.

Hive 5 (green) - Empty Top Bar Hive
Hive 6 (green) - Empty Top Bar Hive
Hive 1 (blue) - Queenless (recently split double brood box)
Hive 2 (red) - Queenless Nuc
Hive 3 (blue) - Queen right (artificially swarmed - removed 5 frames)
Hive 4 (blue) - Queen right (split from hive 1)
Hive 7 (blue) - Queenless (split from hive 3)




I started with hive 3 and found the queen to ensure she would be kept in hive 3. I then artificially split this colony to create hive 7 by moving 4 frames with plenty of sealed brood, eggs and larvae and also shook in two additional frames of bees. The reason for adding the bees from two extra frames is to ensure when all the older foraging bees return back to hive 3 more than enough young bees remain to tend the brood and naturally rear a new queen.


Colonies 1, 2 and 7 all have suitable eggs and larvae to rear a queencell to replace their old queens. I will now leave these colonies alone so not to upset or disturb them until early June when they should each have a new 2010 laying queen.


I then opened hive 4 and found the queen in this hive, this means hive 1 is queenless and answers why they were overly defensive the last time I opened this hive. Today they were calm and bring in plenty of fresh pollen and signs of nectar as well.

April 2010 Part III

I decided as the weather was a beautiful 16C today to bite the bullet and split the double brood box hive. I may regret this but as the colony size was massive I was concerned they would suddenly swarm if I missed just one of the queen cells in the next week or so.

After checking both brood chambers had eggs and larvae I removed the top brood chamber and placed it onto a new floor then lifted the two together and set them up a stand 15ft away. As most of the flyers will return to their original site I gave the upper half the super which is about 3/4's full of mostly crystallized honey. It doesn't matter which half have the queen but I will check them both again in a week or so to see which has built queen cells then leave that one alone for the next few weeks to let them bring on a new queen.

These bees are very defensive compared to the carni's I have, these girls go all out to sting as soon as they land. Thankfully a small amount of smoke and they will fly off again with their stingers intact.

April 2010 Part II

Another very busy day dealing with the bees.
A few weeks ago I learnt one of the members of my association had ordered two queens however one of the colonies that was due to be requeen suddenly failed to nosema meaning they had a spare queen. I offered to give them some bees so we made up a four frame nuc from the colony I have just taken over.

This was the first time I'd had a chance to look inside the hive, so I was shocked to see it was brimming with bees even though its a double national colony. The super was 3/4's full of capped honey already and plenty of bees as well so I've added another of undrawn comb to keep them busy until I can get back to check for the first signs of queen cells before I split the brood boxes to make up another colony.

From pic

We also went to see our other colony to inspect them, my fears were correct they are struggling and we only found a small patch of sealed brood and eggs. Although they still had plenty of sealed honey some of it looked pretty crystallized and at a guess only about 1000 bees in total. So we returned home and made up some feed and grabbed a nuc and went back to the apiary and moved the Dartington hive 20 ft away then frame by frame transferred them in to the nuc using the same process as shook swarming as most of the brood frames had mould. I poured a fair amount of the feed into the top portion of cells of two of the frames.

Now its a waiting game, we'll give the colony a couple of weeks to see if they survive and hopefully the queen will begin to lay a frame or two of eggs.

Pictures to follow

April 2010

Had a real busy weekend, as a result this post is a reasonable length.
Saturday - I removed all the equipment from my new apiary site and the garage of the bee keeper who has had to retire and he donated to the association (see previous post) and took it to a safe lock up. This took a couple of trips despite using a long wheel base transit van.

Sunday - I arranged an early meeting for the three others who won bids for hives + colonies to come and see their hives. We walked into the apiary to see only the odd one or two bees were cautiously testing the weather conditions before flying out, we all stood around talking all things bee keeping for about an hour by which time the sun came out and warmed the air. We watched the entrances and the amount of foragers coming and going with bright yellow pollen. Although each of the hives is at different states of spring build up its a great way to show new bee keepers want to expect from thier bees according to the weather and the size of the colony.

Later in the afternoon my wife and I went back to the new apiary to drop off two new top bar hives I made over winter (see tbh project OCT 21, 2009 post) and we were very pleased to see all four hives were now out flying. My hive had a been busy cleaning house and removing the dead and had about 30 odd bees out sunning themselves on the front of the hive and a constant stream of bees who had been out collecting water and pollen.

We then drove to our other site and after watching the entrance for 5 minutes to only see a few bees coming and going. I decided to take another quick look inside under the crown board and once again I was still surprised to see about 40 bees sat on top of the frames, I honestly thought I had lost this colony or I would of only seen a few bees left. I guess they are just slow at building up but until I make a frame by frame inspection its hard to say exactly how they are doing.

New Apiary Site

On Friday I put my name into a bid for an apiary site, as sadly one of the members of my association has had to retired and he decided to donate his site and all his equipment back to the association. I was the lucky winner of the site and a double brood box national hive with a strong colony. So this year I will forge ahead with my plans to start several new top bar hives and also start on a small scale queen rearing operation as well. I intend to breed from my colony that has over wintered as they were gentle and well tempered all last year. Clare my wife said I haven't stopped smiling since I found out.

Some pictures to follow when I've had a chance to visit the site.

Quick Peek

As the air temperature was about 10'C and no wind I went to see the girls today. I lifted the roof off and could hear the gentle hum from inside. As this hive is a Dartington style hive I lifted off the crown board from the unused end of the hive to reveal the block of fondant which has hardly been touched which is great news and I put in about 150grams of a pollen patty. I quickly lifted the crown board from above the colony and could see about 100 bees on top of the frames. As they appear to be in good shape for now with plenty of stores to see them through I don't need to return again until the end of March or early April when hopefully the weather will be warmer and the colony will be expanding very quickly.

Feb 2010

First signs of life from the Dartington hive the other day, the air temps got upto 8'C which is still dam cold but there was very little wind. I watched several bees exit the hive and spiral upwards so I walked round the back and pressed my ear to the hive and gave it a tap and could hear a quick roar from within. Roll on the warmer weather so they can get out and forage some of the early spring pollen.

I'll warn you now this blog is going to become top bar heavy in content in a few months, I have 3 full sized hives waiting to be filled and a 6 bar nuc ready.

TBH Guide

Thank you to all of you who have emailed me about my Hive Guide and I am pleased to tell you I've written a new guide about Top Bar Hives

This year I am converting to using Top Bar Hives as I've built four full sized hives and two nuc's. I also made one for a friend and I'm looking forward to setting them up and starting a colony in them. As I'm currently off work with a bad back (honestly) I decided to write a simple guide on Top Bar Hives to help explain to all bee keepers there is no reason not to build your own hive and use it instead of paying unreasonable amounts on a brand new hive. Included in the guide is a section on how to become a bee keeper for less than £100.