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Sunshine at last

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-05-07T15:22:20+01:00

SUNSHINE AT LAST

It is the first week in May and we have had slightly better weather. There have been a few hours of sunshine and the bees were out getting pollen, and my word, did they get pollen!

So for me, things are looking better. Yesterday there was a spell of about 30 minutes when the temperature was around 25°c, with no wind and plenty of sunshine so I went in to my poorest stock for a quick look . Very surprised to find things much better than I imagined. Queen laying out well; good brood pattern; food stocks high and all together not bad.

This always seems to happen. I think it must be me wanting more

than the bees are able to give. They know when it is time to start increasing the stock, when its time to go and when its time to stop. After all, what do I know about these things! The bees have been doing it for thousands, even millions of years so who am I to think I know better?!

However, I am now quite suited with things and looking forwards to some queen rearing. No sign of drones about yet so it is going to be June before I get a chance to raise some queens, there is no point in even trying without the help of lots of drones.

Speaking of drones, I don’t think we recognise just how important they are to the wellbeing of the colony. In planning a good queen raising set up we should have something like half the stocks in the mating apiary devoted entirely to the raising of drones so that the entire area can be saturated with drones we have selected and chosen to mate with the carefully selected virgin queens.

There is an excellent article in “Bee Improvement”, the news letter of BIBBA the Black Bee Association,written by David Campbell. He gives a list of improvements that can be achieved, getting from a 50% hybrid colony to a 93.75% pure stock in four generations.

Let me try to explain how it works. The first and most important requirement is a pure bred Queen or a pure bred virgin Queen. Drones from a virgin Queen mated with hybrid bees will be pure bred, as the hybrid drones mating with the virgin have no genetic effect on the drones she produces - believe me, it’s a fact!

If we use the queen to raise drones in large numbers and continue using their drone progeny year after year in the same way we will eventually reach sufficient purity to be British Blacks. And it wont take as long as you would think, theoretically it is possible in four years.

Why not put a selected stock to one side for raising lots and lots of drones. Local bees which are black looking will be better than nothing. I have started doing it and I feel it is already beginning to pay off.

Pollen, Pellets and Mummies

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-05-05T11:35:36+01:00

POLLEN, PELLETS & MUMMIES

Nice little article from the
Scottish Beekeepers News Letter.

This month bees will be collecting nectar and pollen from flowering currant, dandelion, willow, cherry, gorse and blackthorn - leading to rapid colony build-up.

On the alighting board, hard grey old pollen pellets may be seen.

These are grey and the same size as a cell unlike the pellets in the illustration which have been harvested by a beekeeper from the leg pods of bees.

The cell size pellets contain pollen which is way past it’s ‘Sell by date’.It has gone stale and hard and has been thrown out by the worker bees.If crushed between the fingers they will break up and show layers and sometimes a trace of colour might still be visible.

The appearance of old pollen pellets is a good indication that the bees are expanding their brood nest.

Chalk Brood mummies can also be observed at the hive entrance. Spores of a fungus are present on the bees, comb and hive parts.

A drop in temperature combined with high Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels allow the spores to germinate and it is likely that protein deficiency in the bees allows them to grow.

After germination the vegetative growths (hyphae) of the fungus invade the larval tissues and kill them after they have been capped.

The dead larvae become chalky white and fluffy and swell to fit the cell. They then shrink and harden to become ‘mummies’

The bees remove the mummies from the hive and they can often be seen on the hive floor and outside the hive. These do not crumble into layers, they are usually smaller and flatter and are often recognisable as poorly developed pupae.

RSS

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-04-30T11:55:54+01:00

What is an RSS feed?
I have one or two websites I like to keep an eye on, to see what’s new and

what has changed, the snag is, I forget to look. That’s where RSS comes in. I regularly receive emails telling me there is something new on one of my favourite sites.

RSS is a bit like a JCB, we have all seen the letters and perhaps have an idea what they are but how many of us know what the initials stand for. Well, RSS can stand for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary according to where you look.

You have probably seen the logo on this website (This is what it looks

like) but hesitated to click on it. RSS is useful if you would like to be informed when something on a website changes, you can then go and look at those changes on the site or have it automatically displayed in your browser.

It can be most useful for blogs or diary pages such as Bill’s Diary on this site. The changes can also be picked up and read on some of the new mobile smart phones as well as on your computer.

So, how do you use an RSS feed? All of the common browsers, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc. have this capability built into them.

The simplest way is to click on the logo on the website. You will normally

be asked at this point how you want to read the feed, this is usually by using your normal browser and you get something like this:

feed://www.blackbees.co.uk/files/feed.xml

at the top of your web browser. Bookmark it and from then on if you select this bookmark you can see the latest changes.

EMAIL
You can also set RSS so that it sends you an email notifying you of any changes. the way you do this varies according to which email programme you use, so I’m afraid it’s over to you for that one.

Miserable weather

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-04-26T10:24:58+01:00

MISERABLE WEATHER

We are heading toward the end of April and it’s been a miserable month for the bees. Far too much rain and not more than a dozen sunny hours - at least in my ‘Part of the woods’.

The bees are well fed with plenty of honey left in the supers from the end of 2011. The honey was left there just in case we had this sort of this sort of Spring. I also added some fondant, to give me peace of mind.

In spite of the rain, the temperature has been higher than we expect at this time of year, so the stocks were only increasing as much as the number of bees to keep them warm through the night time would allow.

However, the amount of pollen the bees have in store causes me concern. With low amounts of pollen the nurse bees cannot produce the food (bee milk) necessary to feed the brood. This means the Queen cuts down on the number of eggs she lays and the stock does not expand as I would hope.

In this part of Lancashire we have lots of pollen producing plants but if the weather is not suitable for the bees to forage, it might as well not be there.

I have tried artificial pollen many times but my bees just ignore it. I don’t have the answer to it. I am sure there must be one, or is it me wanting to push the bees faster than they want to go.

That’s most probably what it is. When I find things going wrong, it’s usually down to me!

I've been watching you

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-04-22T13:38:01+01:00

I’VE BEEN WATCHING YOU !

I know I am only supposed to be the one looking after the website but I couldn’t resist adding another article which

takes a non-beekeeper’s look at a typical beekeeper.

It’s a bit of nonsense really but click HERE to take a look at ‘The Beekeeper’ and see if the cap fits!

TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT THE WEBSITE

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-04-20T17:07:25+01:00

TAKING A LOOK AT THE WEBSITE

I was taking a look at the website the other day and scanning through some of Bill’s Diary entries.

The entry for January 29th 2012 on how to identify a British Black Bee is worth looking at and ‘IT’S WARMER INSIDE’ entered on December 4th which talks about some of the interesting websites we discovered is also well worth another look.

I was also wondering how many visitors to the site take a look at ‘ARTICLES ABOUT BEEKEEPING’

There is some interesting and useful stuff on there which you could well find interesting. You can click HERE to go to the list of articles or it is in the list of pages at the top right of this page.The ‘Keeping Records’ page caught my eye as did the article on different bee races.

Swarm Behaviour

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-04-18T12:36:46+01:00

Picked this up whilst browsing the internet and it intrigued me.
I have never noticed any thing like this myself
but the next time I see a swarm I will try and remember to look.

GET CLOSER TO THE SWARMING BEES

Have you ever watched a swarm in the act of settling on a branch?

Bees seem to be flying around in a chaotic cloud, broadly centred on the new stopover point. Randomness seems to be the order of the day but what I found is that if you move your gaze from side to side slowly across the swarm cloud your eye movement will synchronise with a definite pattern of bees moving together in the one direction.

Amazingly the pattern seems to reveal that each bee keeps an almost constant and equal distance from its neighbour and all are moving together at the same speed.

The pattern you see is, of course, against a background of randomly moving bees but this is more or less a blur against which the pattern stands out. Swing your head in the opposite direction and you see another group of bees in an identical pattern flying the other way.

I wonder if someone could take a picture or even a movie I remember seeing something similar once before; see ‘Stairway to heaven’ in the Newsletter of July 2009. If you want to read the ‘Stairway to heaven’ article it is on page 2 at

http://www.actbeekeepers.asn.au/newsletters/nl_pdfs/July_2009.pdf

So:
a) Did I see a group of bees flying one way superimposed on a group of bees flying in the opposite direction?

b) Did I see bees moving from one side of the swarm, reversing and flying back again?

c) Did I see a group of bees going around in a circle, some in front of the main swarm and some behind?

If so I would be seeing some of the pattern through the cloud. And it is unlikely that they all moved in the one direction clockwise or counter-clockwise.

Incidentally I tried moving my head up and down to see if I could pick up a vertical pattern but with no luck. The bees were going horizontally which is of course best for energy conservation. So I ended my surmising with this hypothesis:

The bees were flying in two orderly groups (two at least) one flying around the swarm clockwise and one flying around anti-clockwise. So why didn’t they collide?

Maybe they fly in ‘shells’ like onion skins or were the two groups flying in the same space somehow avoiding collision, at the same time noting which bees were their neighbours in their particular pattern group? If so, what a remarkable feat!

Another thought kept nagging me; were these bees that fly in patterns be mature field bees that are forming a sort of barrier, a net, a fence, corralling the less mature nurse bees, preventing them from wandering. I urge all beekeepers to look carefully the next time you see a swarm. I need confirmation that I am not going nuts!

For the scientists among you - there are a lot of questions to answer here; may curiosity motivate you. There is always something new to discover about bees. They continually amaze me.

Peter Carden
You can read the article about swarms on page 3 at

http://www.actbeekeepers.asn.au/newsletters/nl_pdfs/December_2011.pdf

Identifying

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-01-29T11:23:00+00:00

IDENTIFYING A BRITISH BLACK BEE
In a recent diary entry I said I would try and help you to distinguish a

British black bee from the rest of them. (You can get a rough and ready idea on the ‘Bee Races’ page which is in ‘Recipes and Procedures)

There are two ways of looking at this, possibly more.

Do we want to identify a perfect, hundred percent British black bee or will a bee that is seventy-five percent British black do for the time being?

Also do we think a hundred percent British black bee can be found in Pendle or do we have to get one from Wales or some other area that has been certified as hundred percent British black by someone.

Finding a hundred percent British black in Pendle would be possible but it will take some finding, but I think it could be done (See End Notes).

In the meantime seventy-five percent British blacks must be about in this area, and could be found if diligently looked for. With two or three years of selective breeding these could be changed to hundred percent British blacks.

In my apiary right now, out of twelve stocks, I guess there are two that could be in the sixty to seventy percent category, but at this stage I’m only guessing. Let me describe them to you.

All the characteristics I’m going to describe are relevant to only the British black, not to any other bee, so by examining them we can rule out all other bees.

“One swallow does not a Summer make” so ALL the characteristics I’m going to describe need to be there and to be certain, other characteristics also need to be there (See End Notes). But we can make a start with just a few “Swallows”.

1 The overall colour should be very dark brown it makes them look black, no yellow or orange showing.

2 Hair on the last band should be longer than 0.5mm, this is very obvious on drones as they look to have hairy bums. (The illustration shows what appear to be dark and light bands. The light parts are in fact hairs growing from the dark parts)

3 The width of the hairs should be less than half the width of the lower dark part (As seen in the illustration)

4 White cappings on the honey stores, not waxy or wet looking.

5 Tend to put pollen under the brood.

6 Wax scales are straight on the back edge. (See illustration below)

7 Winters well on very little stores.

8 Never very large stocks, they can be accommodated in a British standard brood box.

9 Tends to use a lot of propolis.

End Notes.
For a much accurate but rather complicated way of identifying British Black Bees, we would need to take measurements of wing veins and, in the last resort, do a genetic test.

The vein measuring is probably within our capability but a bit beyond my ability to explain it in writing.

Hopefully, there will be instructions on how to make these measurements in the Offshoots website (http://www.offshoots.org.uk/bees_in_the_borough.html) later this year and if not, I could arrange lessons if there is sufficient interest.

Genetic testing is of course beyond us, but it can be done free of charge, if we can put up a strong enough case.

Wax scales (Which can be found lying about in the hive) are tiny. About 3 millimetres across and 0.1 millimetres thick. About 1,100 are required to make a gram of wax.

Stronger stocks

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-04-14T09:25:13+01:00

COME ON UNITED !

As yet the bees don’t seem to be doing anything exciting, just plodding on slowly. They are taking in pollen when they can and appear to be OK from the outside of the hive.

However, a quick look down the seams that are occupied shows a lack of bees.

I suppose there is time yet to get cracking, but it must be a slow job with a few old worker bees having to do all the different tasks and to get enough young bees round them to make it all start ‘Buzzing’.

Mind you, they always do seem to wait for the dandelions before they waken themselves up to what has to be done.

Anyway, I decided to unite two of them and intend to do the same with two more as soon as the weather gives me a chance. The idea being that the united colonies will be so much stronger, particularly at this time of the year, when the old bees that have Wintered are just about worn out and dying in droves and the young bees hatched this year not yet fully up to the tremendous task they have to perform. Hopefully there will be a bit of good weather just around the corner and the dandelions will be good and plentiful, giving the stocks every chance to build up fast.

Then, hopefully, in May I will be in a position to split the hives

into two again, getting my numbers back, taking care of the swarming, and producing honey at the same time. At least, that’s MY idea ! Only time will tell if the bees agree, and it all depends on the weather of course. We will see!

Bees in the Borough

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-04-11T14:30:40+01:00

BEES IN THE BOROUGH

The Bees in the Borough Project is at last up and running. The steering committee has been formed and has had it’s first meeting. Plans are well afoot, black bees have been located and orders placed for Queens.

It is the firm objective of the organisers that Bees in the Borough should be a centre of excellence with in a year or so.

One thing that seems to be at fault is their PR system. Blackburn beekeepers seem to be of the opinion that Bees in the Borough is in no way involved with them.

The fact is that Blackburn beekeepers are very much involved or should be. I have seen the documents used in the application for the original grants and in at least three places Blackburn beekeepers are named as participants in the objects of the grants.

The organisers are also looking forward to real participation by Blackburn beekeeper’s members in the work necessary to make the whole thing a success.

I personally cannot wait to see British black bee drones originating from Blackbees in the Borough flying in great numbers not only about the borough, but all around the North West Lancashire and I will do what I can to assist.

Take a look at their website and keep bang up to date with the latest developments.

www.offshoots.org.uk/bees_in_the_borough.html

Why Black Bees?

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-03-27T07:57:44+01:00

WHY DO WE KEEP BANGING ON ABOUT BLACK BEES?

It might appear that we are merely trying to recapture “The good old days” but this is far from the truth.

Over the decades many foreign bees have been imported which has resulted in a weakening of the indigenous honey bee and a hotch potch of hybrid bees, many of which are quite unsuited to the British climate.

The other day I found an excellent website which has some very useful information about our native bee. David Campbell has given us permission to use his listing of the advantages of the British bee which we show below. I really would encourage you to

take a look at his site at http://www.bees.me.uk/Bees/Welcome.html

Our native bee, apis mellifera mellifera, throws fewer swarms and on average replaces the queen approximately every three years. This native bee has many important qualities that have evolved in the strain over thousands of years, making it entirely suited to our climate:

• Collects significant amounts of pollen
• Excellent winter hardiness
• With selective pure mating is gentle to handle at correct times
• Low tendency to swarm
• Very defensive against invaders; i.e. wasps, and even hornets
• High longevity of workers and queens
• Brood cycle maintained to suit our climate
• Well-managed colony collects significant honey crop, and more than most other varieties in poor weather
• Hairy body: can forage in bad weather and maintain winter cluster temperature with less food consumption

Pollen

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-03-20T09:27:24+00:00

POLLEN
I think most beekeepers are intrigued to see the bees returning to the hive with their pollen sacs loaded with different colours according to where they are feeding.

There is a common misconception that pollen is yellow or at least ‘Yellowish’ but this very simple chart shows that it isn’t true.

……………………..

However, it is much more complicated than the chart shows. Books about pollen identification cost anything up to forty or fifty pounds and this internet link will tell you more about the subject http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen_source.

Don’t try to make a really accurate identification from the colours in the chart on your computer screen. Owing to the ‘Black art’ of computing it is unlikely that any two screens will show the same colours.

………………....

The range of colours is enormous and some plants have pollens which are almost identical. Nevertheless, next time you are by the hives and the bees are feeding, get up close and take a look and see if you can spot what they are bringing in.

Better Weather

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-03-15T11:06:48+00:00

LOOKING FOWARD TO THE BEEKEEPING YEAR
I went to the Lancashire Beekeepers Conference in Preston on March 2nd. There were only six members of the Blackburn branch there! Those who didn’t attend missed a top notch conference with some excellent speakers.

In th

e apiary, the last lot of fondant has been put on those of my hives that needed it, that should see the bees fed for the next two or three weeks. After that I should be alright feeding syrup, as the bees will be able to get out and fly to relieve themselves.

As yet I have only been into one of my hives, the one with the least flying activity, it is very poor indeed. Although it has plenty of food there are very few bees there with just a bit of brood, a patch about the size of a baby’s hand. It seems to be the same thing that caused the loss of the hives at around Christmas time - either faulty queens or faulty drones. Anyway the rest of the hives look to be doing alright.

The weather is being a bit kinder now and this is when everything starts to develop very quickly. If you have not taken heed of all the information that has been fired at you since before Christmas (Getting yourself ready for Spring with all your equipment cleaned and prepared) you are now about to find out how good the advice was.

I am getting caught out with the gardening, all the digging that

should have been done in the back end of last year, has to be done now in a great hurry. The spuds need to go in next week and I have now got back ache!

Anyway I’m thrilled to see the bees working and looking forward to the new season - the swarming and all the other pleasures and perils of a beekeeper’s life.
What a great joy! Hope that you are looking forward to it all.

I have been asked to visit the people at Offshoots next week http://www.offshoots.org.uk/projects.html to see how they are getting along with their Black Bees project. So I will give you a report in the next diary.

Chicken or Egg

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-03-08T16:33:59+00:00

CHICKEN OR EGG
Most of us will have heard the story of the clockmaker who was asked to repair the village clock, that hadn’t run for years. He

climbed up the clock tower, carefully examined the clock and gave it a resounding smack with his hammer. Low and behold the clock started running.

When he charged the village ten pounds and a shilling for repairing the clock, they protested that all he had done was hit it with a hammer, the clockmaker explained “The shilling is for hitting it with the hammer, the ten pounds is for knowing where to hit it and the years spent as a clockmaker learning how to hit it”

I reckon I know a fair bit about beekeeping. For umpteen years I have been helping Bill with either the Beetalk magazine for Blackburn Beekeepers or more recently a couple of websites. Naturally, the information rubs off and without any effort on my part I have absorbed information from a very knowledgeable beekeeper. So, if I know so much about it, am I a beekeeper? The simple and obvious answer is “No, I am not”. Put me in the apiary and ask me to combine two stocks and I could probably give you a ten minute lecture on the theory of how it’s done but as for actually doing it ! Not a chance!

And that’s the chicken and egg bit. Should you read the books and learn all about it or should you get your hands dirty and start beekeeping?

There isn’t a simple answer because you need both theory and practice. However, take a look around your beekeeping friends. Don’t name names but are there some who you would ask to give a lecture on beekeeping but wouldn’t let them near your hives? Are there others who are cracking beekeepers but wouldn’t be able to discuss with you the chemical composition of propolis?

If you are lucky, there will be someone you know who combines both and has that balance between theory and practice - hang on to him - he’s priceless!

Not Excited

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-02-19T08:47:58+00:00

I’M NOT GETTING EXCITED
Nothing very exciting happening at the apiary but it does seem as though things are progressing, even if

only slowly.

The main thing is that the stocks that are left after the death off the three I reported in the last diary entry, seem to be making some progress, even if it is only slowly. The progress I THINK I see is looking at the droppings on the varroa inserts. I would not care to open the hives and go into the bees properly yet. However, all look to have activity, some more than others, as you would expect.

We are now coming in to the time of the year when the bees need the food they have stored throughout last year. Up until now all they have needed was just enough to keep themselves alive, but the queen will

begin to lay eggs shortly and that will mean grubs to be fed. That is the time when lots of food really is needed. It is then up to the beekeeper to make certain there is food for them. Heft the hives and if you are not sure there is sufficient food, feed them with candy or better still fondant.

One thing I have done (and it should have been done before now), is to move all the hives that need to be moved to a different part of the apiary.

In my case I have six hives that I intend to unite around April when they start working, so I have put them close together now. This means they will reorientate themselves more easily, as they have not been flying for weeks.

The idea is to unite the weak stocks together, selecting the queens that I prefer and killing the others, in the hope that they will build up more quickly and perhaps be able to get some honey from the Dandelions and trees which, in my neck of the woods, always seem to come into bloom before my bees are up and running.

I shall be short of stocks but can make them up at swarm time.

Apparently this is how they do things in Russia, where they get the same situation me, that is to say an early nectar flow before the stocks are up to strength and with the ability to go out and gather it.

Don’t try uniting this way unless you feel competent to do it successfully.

Best of luck to you all.

Fish and Chips

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-01-21T14:32:13+00:00

FISH AND CHIPS FOR BEES !

Not quite but Bob Bradshaw uses a salt shaker from the fish and chip shop, filled with icing sugar, for his bees - please read on.

The new year is already here and the oxalic acid treatment still hasn’t been done.

It makes you wonder what to do.

We have not yet had the frost that is recommended before

giving the treatment. I have just had a phone call from Bob Bradshaw who has, this very morning, treated his bees with oxalic acid and he reports the bees were not in a proper cluster - sort of half and half. He fears he may have done more harm than good. I must admit I have no advice to offer him.

You are dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t in this situation. Personally I think I will wait for the frost then give it ten days for most of the grubs to be capped over and then treat. If we don’t get the frost, I will abandon the oxalic treatment and treat with Hive Clean or whatever as soon as is possible.

The weather being what it is, the bees will most certainly be consuming their stores faster than is normally the case, so heft the hives and put candy on, or better still sugar fondant if you are in any doubt about the weight.

We are still talking about the dreaded varroa. Let me tell you about a talk I had with Bob Bradshaw the other week. Bob does not use any chemical treatment on his bees - ever! For the last two years or so he has had no problem with his bees. They over Winter well, produce a reasonable amount of honey and do well all-round.

Bob just uses icing sugar to which, JUST ONCE in a series of treatments, he adds oxalic acid.

Bob took me through his method in detail and this is it.

He thinks the excessive amount of icing sugar he uses is the reason for his success. When he gets into the hive he takes out two or three of the empty frames from the sides to giving him room. Still in the hive, he can now pull two frames apart at the top but holding the frames together at the bottom so as to form a ‘V’ between the two frames.

Using an old fish and chip shop salt shaker, he shakes the

sugar on to the bees on both frames very liberally. He agrees it looks to be excessive but he believes it is doing no harm to the bees. He continues making a V with each pair of frames until every bee in the hive is well covered in icing sugar. This he does about every three weeks or so throughout the Winter months.

He tells me that very little of the sugar finds its way down onto the varroa insert and the day after treatment the varroa can easily be counted to see just how many have been knocked down. He also says that if the hive is opened a couple of hours after the treatment there are very few signs that the sugar was ever there, and all the bees are clean and tidy.

Bob is very enthusiastic about this way of ridding his hives of varroa so I may give it a try on one of my hives this year.

As I am a fanatic black bee keeper, I received an invitation to a jamboree at Burnley town hall organised by Off Shoots to celebrate a very prestigious award. They have won Third prize in the International Best Green Educational and Sustainability Awareness Project

I suppose it is comparable with wining a bronze medal in the Olympic games. They are very proud indeed. Their latest video on beekeeping at Towneley is available at www.gwpl.co.uk Click on You Tube icon (Bottom right of the screen) then Bees in the Borough. It is well worth a look.

All the very best to you all in the coming New Year
Arthur and Bill

Roll on Summer

arfur3@mac.com — 2012-02-10T10:33:04+00:00

ROLL ON SUMMER!
It is February 9th and there is too much snow for me to go up to

the allotment to check on the apiary today. I simply nipped up to throw some feed over the fence for the geese.

Three weeks ago when I went to treat the bees with oxalic acid, I found three colonies dead!

There was no time to try and find out the cause, so in order to stop any robbing, I simply stopped up the entrances to make sure there was no way any bees could get in, and the hives were left to be looked into at a later date.

It was no great shock to loose the stocks as they were in a poor shape when they were packed up for Winter, a disappointment nevertheless.

An old farmer once said to me “If you keep any kind of live stock, you must expect to have dead stock” How very true!

Last week Eddie Jackson came to talk to me about bees and beekeeping. We decided it was a good time to do a post-mortem on one of the stocks I had brought down to my garage for that

purpose. Eddie was given the job of stripping out and making his own diagnosis. He could find no sign of starvation and although there was a slight sign of diarrhoea it could not have been responsible for the death of the stock. There was a lack of dead bees and Eddie and I decided the cause of the collapse was a shortage of worker bees when they went into Winter.

Looking through my record cards, we found the stock was formed from a swarm late in the year, at a time when we had a fair amount of rain and cold weather to go with it, so we guest that the Queen had not been fertilised properly or possibly not mated at all.

One reason for us coming to this decision, is that I find I have less success in getting queens mated than I used to do in the past. There seems to be a greater number of queens that are miss-mated, as though they have not received enough sperm. They start laying and after a short time supersedure cells appear in the brood frames if this happens in the later part of the year there is no satisfactory remedy. Who the fault lies with the queens or the drones I have no way of knowing.

We would love to know how you are getting on. Have you lost any stocks? Please do add a comment.

Are you ready for Winter

arfur3@mac.com — 2011-12-13T09:18:43+00:00

ARE YOU READY FOR WINTER?
When I secure my bees for the winter I put an empty super bet

ween the brood box and the varroa floor. Why? Well, I decided to do this to allow the bees in the brood box room to cluster on the bottom of the brood frames. That is where they should be at the beginning of Winter, with lots of food stored above and around them.

They then work their way up through the food stores, eating it so they can feed the brood the queen starts to lay as Winter turns to Spring.

In spring time, about May, you will find the bees pushed up against the cover board around the feed hole, having used all the food to feed all the brood that is in the hive. It also keeps the brood away from the draughty holes in the varroa floor and the entrance

WINTERING
I have been on the internet again, this time looking at some research from Canada dealing with Wintering success. Bees kept in single brood boxes with single walls, kept out in the open all died out. Double brood boxes with single walls did better and double brood boxes fully insulated did best of all.

When given some shelter from the wind, single brood boxes with

single walls survived It was suggested that an empty brood box between the floor and the brood box could be as good as a shelter from the wind.

So it looks like I might have got it right all those years ago but not for the right reasons. As the saying goes “All’s well that ends well”.

DO YOU GRUNT WHEN YOU PICK THINGS UP?

There is still time to put an empty super under the brood box if you have the courage and you can get a bit of help to lift the hive and gently drop off the floor. Put the empty box in place and put all back together without the bees knowing any thing has happened. Mind you, if your hives are reasonably well sheltered it should be OK and you can avoid straining your back..

Happy Christmas and a honeyfull New Year

It's Warmer inside

arfur3@mac.com — 2011-12-04T10:10:33+00:00

IT’S WARMER INSIDE
I haven’t been up to the Apiary for a couple of days, instead I have

been sitting in front of the computer browsing round some of the beekeeping sites.

The first one I let on was a commercial site in Texas. As well as trying to sell me stuff (All priced in American Dollars) there was some fascinating reading on the various bee products. Honey, of course but also propolis, beeswax and bee pollen. http://www.texasdrone.com/propolis.htm

I suppose a lot of people would describe it as ‘Useless information” but it is another insight in to the fascinating world of the Honey bee.

PROPOLIS
The late Dave Cushman’s site (http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/propolis.html) is still on line and he talks abou

t propolis curtains at the hive entrance to keep everything very safe, no intruders. I was speaking to Ken Pickles at Adingham last week he has a hive just the same, the entrance blocked from end to end with just a lot of holes just sufficiently large for a bee to get through. This is the sort of thing black bees do, so I have made him promise some eggs from the stock next year.

Another beekeeping blog refers to Gin and propolis (Makes a change from Gin and tonic). They suggested it as a cold cure I leave it to you to decide http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?212576-We-have-been-using-Propolis

HONEY MAKES (YOU) SOME PEOPLE LIVE LONGER

Somewhere, in one of the Slavonic countries, there is a honey producing area where the population live much longer and stay fitter than most. It was suggested that their longevity was due to eating the residue honey after the cleaner stuff had been sold. Their honey contained bits of propolis, wax, pollen and other unmentionables. Which leads us on to comb honey. Although I’m not saying comb honey contains unmentionables, far from it, comb honey does take a lot of skill and effort on the beekeepers part to produce. It’s a bit chewy to my taste if eaten off the spoon but on hot toast or a buttered crumpet, something a bit special. Another blog http://www.honeybeesuite.com/how-to-eat-comb-honey/ Talks about nothing else.

LEGENDS AND FOLK TALES
Then there are the history and folklore sites. http://

paganwiccan.about.com/od/beltanemayday/p/BeeFolklore.htm has some interesting bits and pieces. And did you know how professor Dumbledore got his name? http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-dum1.htm

A website at http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/war_bees.htm talks about bees in warfare. On the other hand http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/health-benefits-of-honey.html is all about the benefits of honey. It seems to suggest honey will cure everything. Does this mean if I start eating honey I will live forever? Perish the thought!

CHEERS !

Then there is http://www.meadmadecomplicated.org/ which will tell you more about

mead than you probably want to know. Or take a look at http://www.honeyrecipes.org.uk/ which is full of all kinds of recipes using honey.

There is some fascinating information about beekeeping out there on the web but the number of sites and pages is enormous. I entered honey bee in Google and it came up with about 25,900,000 results. Just entering honey gave 420 million results but I think ‘Honey’ might also refer to areas other than beekeeping !.

Incidentally, it gave me that information in 0.10 seconds - I wonder how they do that?

If you have found an unusual site or one that contains something a bit different, why not add the link in a comment.

From Arthur's Diary

arfur3@mac.com — 2011-11-22T17:02:45+00:00

A SNIPPET FROM ARTHUR’S DIARY
I know, I know - it’s supposed to be Bill’s diary but I saw this today (November 22nd) and thought it might interest some of you.

The three photographs were taken on the West coast of Scotland. It’s a remote part of the Highlands with a narrow road with passing places.

The first picture shows the house in relation to the wind swept sea loch. The black arrow is pointing to three beehives.

The second shots is a bit closer and you can see the hives are protected from the West wind by a mixed copse of birch and oak. Behind and to the North is a range of low, wooded

hills but there is nothing to protect them from the South and East winds and they really can blow.

I’m told by local beekeepers that they have never suffered from Varroa but they do suffer from wind (If you’ll forgive the expression). It must be quite a concern for, as you can see from the last picture, it really is a case of battening down the hatches.

PS This is a couple of days later, it may not look rough but it is a sea loch, well inland and it was blowing a ‘Hooley’. The hives are still secure but the ropes and rocks were certainly needed.

Caustic Comment

arfur3@mac.com — 2011-11-20T13:29:20+00:00

CAUSTIC COMMENT
Getting towards the end of November and the weather is still warm with the bees still working and bringing in pollen. Mind you, I am not complaining, simply enjoying it but as a bee keeper it is certainly a strange experience.

Looking back at the diary entry I made on November 6th about varroa. I wonder if any of you tried using Hive Clean as a test to see the varroa drop ? I haven’t heard much but the two keeper who did come back to me were surprised and very concerned at the results.

We came to the conclusion that as we are but four or five week from the oxalic treatment and the test itself knocked down a lot of varroa, ever

ything will probably be ok. However it does seem to point to the fact that we are not keeping up to the mark with our fight against the beast anywhere near as well as we might.

Two things that you might find useful in the Winter months.

Do you remember the old fashioned cleaner your mother (Or grandmother) used for all her household cleaning jobs? Common household washing soda. Marvellous stuff ! Cleans just about everything. Highly recommended for use in and about the apiary. It’s easy to use, just give everything a scrub or wipe down with it and all comes up clean and is, to a great extent, disinfected.

Just make sure you are wearing old clothing and if you have delicate hands, like mine, use kitchen gloves.

The other thing you can use is a bit different - Caustic soda.

This stuff is vicious and needs treating with the greatest of respect. The thing I use it for is cleaning wire Queen excluders. I find them the very devil to get clean and it takes up too much time scraping and scrubbing.

My method is to mix the caustic soda full strength, as recommended for cleaning drains, then extremely carefully, in some place where I cannot cause damage by splashing AND wearing protective clothing such as gloves and rubber boots, I mop the excluders with an old rag soaked in the bleach solution give them a scrub with a wire brush or a wire pan scrub. Do watch out for the spray from the brush, leave them about fot about fifteen minutes. Give them another mopping with the soda, then hose them off with a jet of water. The excluders will look like new and be totally disinfected.

Any excess soda can be put down a drain that needs cleaning and

hose down anywhere else there could be splashes. If you take great care you will do no harm to yourself or the area you where have worked.

S'wonderful

arfur3@mac.com — 2011-11-06T12:08:56+00:00

S’WONDERFUL !

What a wonderful two or three weeks of weather we have just had, considering the time of year. All my hives have been working hard and the bees are still bringing pollen in. I don’t know were they get it from, but they seem to know were to find it.

I have three stocks that are still taking syrup down. I have contact feeders on them - inverted jam jars with pin holes in the lids so that the syrup is only about half an inch above the comb top bars. This means that when it gets cold, the bees will still be in close contact with the syrup, but there comes a time when the cold stops them taking any food at all and that cannot be far away.

Beekeepers keep asking me what is happening with the

weather, I only wish I knew. It certainly seems very odd, I don’t think I can ever remember such warm weather at this time of year. Anyway, lets not “look a gift horse in the mouth”. If it stays like this until Christmas and it then, as they say, “Takes up”, that will do for me.

I’m getting quite a few reports of heavy varroa mite falls after treatment, even though the average natural daily mite drop had suggested treatment was not necessary! This

would seem to come from warnings regarding varroa infestations - people seem to have been treating hives willy-nilly

In fact, I have just done a full monthly check on all my hives, day by day. What a job that was! The results are quite disturbing. The top and bottom of it is that the natural average daily drop, which we are told gives us a reasonable indication of the mite infestation in the hive, is not to be relied on.

It would seem that there are many reasons why the readings can be wildly wrong. Some of them understandable, some not so. It is extremely complicated

and, if the committee think it a good idea, I have volunteered to do a talk on the subject to the Blackburn Beekeepers Association.

In the mean time if you are concerned about one of your hives and don’t think it is safe to wait till the oxalic treatment at the end of December try a ‘Hive Clean’ treatment and see what the mite drop is in the first one or two days after that.

The sun is shining again so I’m off to the apiary will write some more soon.

Not Really a Diary Entry

arfur3@mac.com — 2011-11-01T10:33:00+00:00

NOT REALLY A DIARY ENTRY
This is just something I looked at recently. For us old ‘uns, using the smoker is almost second nature but for the new beekeepers it might be useful to learn a bit more.

Th

ough the use of smoking bees has been known for thousands of years, the scientific explanation for how it works is more recent.

Under normal circumstances if a beehive is threatened, guard bees will release a volatile pheromone substance, iso-pentyl acetate, better known as an alarm odour. This alerts the middle-aged bees in the hive — the ones with the most venom — to defend the hive by attacking the intruder. When smoke is blown into the hive first, however, the guard bees' receptors are dulled and they fail to sound the pheromonious alarm.

Conveniently the smoke has a secondary effect in that it causes the other bees to instinctively gorge themselves on honey — a survival instinct in case they must vacate the hive and recreate it elsewhere. This gorging has a tendency to pacify the bees.

Take a look in recipes and procedures at SMOKER.
There’s also a lot of information about smokers on the late Dave Cushman’s website at http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/smok.html

Winter Draws On

arfur3@mac.com — 2011-10-21T16:00:04+01:00

WINTER DRAWS ON
As I write, it is now the middle of October and I think I ha

ve just about got my bees ready for Winter (Or at least I hope I have)

Varroa has been dealt with, and I am now ready to go through to the oxalic treatment in late December. I would advise you not to miss that treatment what-ever you do, the oxalic treatment is a must. I will try and remind you but in the meantime take a look at “THE TRICKLE METHOD” in recipes and procedures.

The second week in October has been very cold, particularly at night and the bees have not been taking the sugar syrup that I have been feeding them. However, now it looks as though the weather is to get warmer and, hopefully, this will allow the bees to take some more food down to help them through the Winter, I do hope so as there are two hives that are a bit on the light side for my liking.

In another fortnight it will be the very end of feeding. The bees will go into their Winter cluster and nothing

more can be done to help them through the harsh weather until March, Then it depends on what weather March throws at us.

The only thing to be done is make the hives as secure against wind and wet as best we can. Shelter against the cold wind is to be taken advantage of if possible. If the position of the hive is very exposed, some sort of wind break is worth making if at all possible. Do take a careful look at the roof! A roof on a bee hive is just as important as the roof on you house, if not more so.

Something I’ve just discovered on the internet. There is a new drug available from the National health service. The name is Pharmalgen. It is an anti anaphylaxis drug. Apparently any one who has suffered an Anaphylactic shock and wishes to continue bee keeping can apply to the doctor for this drug and obtain it through the heath service. From what I know about anaphylaxis I don’t think there will be many takers!

The next week or two will be your last opportunity to get the bees set up for Winter so don’t delay do it now.

So that’s what has been happening in my apiary. How are you doing? We would all like to know! How about hitting the comment button and telling us what is happening with your bees.