Diary of a Beekeeper

The First Real Honey Harvest

2010-07-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Friday 23rd July

With the increasing quantity of honey being stored in the hives, it is obvious that a proper extractor has become the only sensible way of harvesting it properly. I ordered one two weeks ago and it finally arrived today (amazingly fast really, considering that this must be by far the busiest time of year for such equipment). Not wanting to hang about any longer we decided to get on with the job straight away.

There will easily be two full supers available - just Beatrix's colony alone has almost three on it. Not having placed a clearer-board on previously (they usually take about 24hrs to work), I just planned to manually brush the bees from each frame and remove them that way - it takes much longer but with docile bees like these ones it isn't an unpleasant job!

I picked out the frames one by one, with a spare empty super standing in the trolley next to me.

I brushed every bee off back into the hive then quickly placed it in the empty super - this had a sheet under it and another one on top, to prevent the flying bees from getting back in again.

It took about an hour altogether, but I wasn't rushing and the bees were very calm. I removed one full super of honey from each of these two hives.

Not wanting to bring any bees back indoors I stopped again a few yards away, once all the flying bees had stopped following me, and checked each frame again for any stray ones. There were a couple which had managed to sneak back in there, but they soon went back home when I brushed them off again.

Having taken them inside (and firmly closed all the doors and windows!) we started uncapping. Rather than using an uncapping knife we used a hot-air gun. This may not be the traditional way of doing it, but it is so much faster - you just gently blow the heat towards the frame from a distance and the wax cappings just melt away to the side of each cell.

It was surprising how dark most of the honey is - all year long it has looked very pale, like on the outside of this frame, but the honey in the centre is clearly far darker from a different source of nectar.

Most of the frames were full of completely dark honey, like this one.

With four frames uncapped on both sides they stand in the extracting machine. Once they are positioned, the lid is replaced and the handle is cranked round. The centrifugal force spins the honey from the frames and it flows down the sides to the bottom of the drum.

It soon started to flow out into the strainer. This double-strainer has two meshes - a coarse one on top (1.5mm) to filter out any large pieces of wax, pollen, etc. then a fine mesh underneath (0.5mm) to make the honey as clear as possible. The honey flowed directly into the storage bucket underneath, which also has a valve at the bottom for decanting straight into jars afterwards.

Before long the much darker honey was starting to come through and it was all flowing smoothly.

Extracting four frames at a time, then replacing the empty ones back into the super, it took quite a while but was good fun - I'm not sure I'd be enjoying it with much more than this to cope with though!

The last few scrapes came out of the drum once the cage mechanism was removed - everything dismantles very easily, making cleaning out with hot water not too difficult. Apparently these last few washings from the bottom can be saved to make mead, but I'm not even considering that for the time being, so it went down the plug hole instead.

Once everything else was cleared away, the storage bucket was lifted up onto a higher work surface, then we could pour the filtered honey directly into the prepared jars. It was easy to cut off the flow using the valve as it reached the 'fill line'.

There were a total of 46 1lb jars of honey, plus the last quarter pound draining into another jar - a bonus for us to keep and sample immediately!

It's a much deeper colour than our previous experimental batch, but still just as runny.

I quickly labelled a few jars up ready to take to the shop tomorrow - it's taken more than 3 years to get to this point but we now finally have real honey for sale!

A Few Running Repairs

2010-07-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 21st July
I didn't want to disturb the bee hives midweek like this but while cleaning the varroa floors last night I found that something was wrong with Charlie's varroa floor. The slide-out tray was stuck fast and wouldn't remove. I gave it a tug with a pair of pliers and a bit split off and it still stayed stuck fast. I needed to get at it from the inside to see what's causing the problem, trying not to cause too much disruption.

It was cloudy and starting to rain a bit, but not enough to bother the bees much.

I removed the entire stack down to the brood box.

Then I carefully lifted the brood box away from the floor section. There was a danger of the queen dropping out of the bottom and getting lost, but I handled it carefully and stood it on a spare upturned lid, just in case.

There was a large discoloured patch across the centre of the slide-out tray and it was still stuck completely fast - it looked like the bees had managed to stick it to the wire mesh grid with propolis!

I had to completely remove the whole floor section and replace it with a couple of spare nuc floors. I don't have a spare full-sized floor but two nucs next to each other are the exact same size. This will only be a temporary fix to the problem - hopefully I can fix the varroa floor quickly.

It looks a bit odd having two entrances like this, but I don't imagine it'll bother them in the slightest.

While I was doing some repairs anyway, I decided to sort out that broken landing board on Dipsy's hive - it's been looking a bit shabby for a few weeks now.

It looks like a disaster area here but this was far simpler because I didn't need to seperate the brood box from the varroa floor, meaning there was no danger of the queen falling out of the bottom of the box this time.

I swapped the broken landing board for a spare one I'd prepared earlier.

The brood box with floor sat straight back on top of it.

I decided to have a quick look to check one of those 'honey bound' frames from the weekend. The bees have taken the stores out, just as expected, giving loads more room for Dipsy to lay.

All finished - much smarter now. I should have got around to doing that weeks ago, it only took five minutes in total.

Looking more closely at the damaged varroa floor, the bees actually have stuck the entire centre section of the sliding tray to the wire mesh grid with propolis, making it both completely useless and also a great place for dirty old grot to get stuck where the bees can't clean it. This shouldn't be possible at all - I don't think it's a coincidence that this is the only varroa floor I've ever bought with the word 'economy' in the title. As usual, 'economy version' is really just another way of saying, 'it's a bit rubbish, but it's cheap enough for you to think it's probably worth buying - though you'll regret it after you've been using it for a short while!'

Some Faithful Old Foragers Return

2010-07-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sunday 18th July

Having relocated the last nuc just a mile and a half away this morning, I stood an empty one on the original site to catch any returning foragers.

I tapped on the roof late in the afternoon to see if any bees were inside and one did come out of the front entrance. I put an almost empty feeder in the roof space, just to give them something to live on for the time being and left it until evening, when all the flying had finished for the day.

I was relieved to find that there weren't many in there at all - not one in the nuc itself and just a few up in the feeder.

This is all that returned to the original site - just seven bees, and two of them are drones. I'm not inclined to drive all the way to the next village, just for the sake of taking seven bees back to their home again. However, I didn't want to leave them here to starve - a pretty rotten reward for their loyalty! I gave them all a good squirt with some sugar syrup and tossed them into the front of another hive. The guard bees there should hopefully welcome these sticky visitors for the night and maybe by tomorrow morning they'll have decided to stay there instead!

Relocating the Final Nuc

2010-07-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

Saturday 17th July

11pm: I'm delivering this last nuc of bees to their new home tomorrow morning so I came out after dark to make sure that all the bees were safely shut inside for the journey.

It was pitch black out by now (these photos were all taken using a flash, obviously) but there were still a couple of bees outside.

Not wanting to leave any homeless bees behind, I gave them a quick spray with the water mister. Thinking it was rain, they quickly nipped inside, then I could bung up the entrance with a chunk of foam padding.

I strapped up the nuc with the cords, one of them holding the bung tightly in place. The torch sat under the top strap pointing the way in the darkness.

I found a spot near the barn where the early morning sun won't hit it. There is very little ventilation in there now and there could easily be a total meltdown in there if it gets too hot!

I went back to the original site and placed an empty nuc there, full of frames.

Because this colony is only being relocated a mile and a half away, there is a risk that some foragers could return here. Standing this nuc here means that any stray ones can be easily caught. Depending on how many (if any) return, I'll work out what to do with them then.

Supering Up

2010-07-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday 17th July
All three colonies have seemed frantically busy this week so I had a check inside to make sure that there was still plenty of room for all this nectar they're bringing in.

Beatrix first. This colony has now rapidly become the strongest of the lot, far more so than either of the other two.

I was surprised that this shallow frame, which has been in the brood chamber for a few weeks now, has still not been built up with drone cell comb, like it was last time I checked it. There seems to be very little wax-building being done in this colony at all, but they are incredibly busy at foraging and there is still plenty of room for the queen to continue laying.

We found the queen quite easily, even without her spot (Beatrix was marked green twice last year and both times the spot disappeared by the next inspection, so we gave up trying. There are still some tiny flecks of green left so we can tell it is still her and not a replacement!) and the health of this colony seems great, though there is already not much room left in the supers.

I added a new super directly over the brood box [This is known as 'bottom supering' - adding the empty super at the top of the stack is called 'top supering']. Many beekeepers have different opinions about which technique is better and my reasoning for using bottom supering is that there is very obviously a much shorter distance for the bees to have to lift the stores. Raising several kilos of nectar those extra few feet to the top of the stack would be a mammoth task for them, so having the space for stores as close to the front door as possible seems to me to be the most sensible thing to do. As I said, opinions are divided on this and I'm sure many would disagree with me.

I also swapped a couple of the supers over so that this pattern is continued throughout the stack, as shown. This does mean a job of heavy lifting for me, just to check how much space they have in the empty super, but it saves them having to lift extra weight themselves!

It seemed less busy in Charlie's colony and they have only slowly built up their stores. There seems no obvious reason for it but it seemed a far less productive colony, though the health was still good.

I was expecting more from Dipsy's colony - this one has previously been the strongest of the three. However there was not a great deal extra in the supers, easily room for another week or so.

I checked in the brood box to make sure that there wasn't a problem here and found this:

This explains a lot - there were almost three frames each side of the brood nest entirely full of sealed honey on each side. This is known as being 'honey bound'. This means that, because of the stores down below, the queen has far less space to lay eggs. I need these bees to move these stores up into the supers so that Dipsy can get on and lay more.

I scratched the surface of the entire comb, damaging all the cappings. This should encourage them to remove it from these frames and take it all up above.

It was surprising that this frame right next to it has such lighter honey than the other one. There can only be a few weeks' difference between the harvest of each nectar source but the colour of honey seems entirely different!

This shows what an advantage having a marked queen is - she's clearly visible, even from this distance (click on the photo for a larger view).

The health in here seemed great as well. Dipsy was laying well but has only been able to use the central five frames, the rest being full of honey. Hopefully now she'll be able to get back on with her job without interruption.

It Wasn't A Laying Worker After All

2010-07-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Friday 16th July

This last nuc proved to be a bit of a surprise today - instead of a weak colony with no brood, trying to raise a new queen, I found this instead:

Three of the five frames inside have loads of sealed brood and the other two are full of stores! Apparently, what I read as the classic signs of a laying worker (patchy, badly positioned eggs) are also the signs of a newly-mated queen just coming in to lay for the first time ever. She must have just returned from her mating flight last week and began to lay her first eggs. She was just trying to get the hang of it, making a few mistakes of course, and then I came along and chucked her outside again, along with all the other bees!

Of course, there was no harm done - she just flew straight back with the other bees and carried on laying again. Judging by the excellent state of the brood here, it may have been just the perfect kick-start she needed to get it right!

Of course this nuc is now suddenly fit for rehoming elsewhere, with a laying queen and three frames of brood. It has had an extra boost because of the frame of emerging brood I added last week. Completely beyond expectations, it will actually need to be installed in a full hive before much longer! We found the queen quickly on this frame above so we could mark her for a new beekeeper.

She's a very long and slender one, and a real fast-mover too! Thankfully she was already located on one of the end frames, full of stores and no brood, so there was no risk of damaging larvae by using the press-in cage.

Once she was securely held in place, I dabbed a small amount of blue paint on her back, christening her 'Blue 3'. After a short while it had dried and she was free to leave again.

She'll be much easier for the new beekeeper to find from now on - I really wish our own queen had been marked so clearly in our first year, it would have made those inspections far quicker for us [but it does mean we've become pretty fast at finding an unmarked queen - usually!].

This nuc is now in a fit state for rehoming. I'll telephone the beekeeper soon and arrange to deliver it over the weekend. This relocation is going to be a bit experimental because this colony will actually only be moved about a mile and a half, as the bee flies, although it is a long journey by road, crossing over the river nearby. This means that there is a risk of a large number of foragers returning to this site, because of the bees' precise navigational skills. I originally said that I wouldn't be able to supply any bees to them because they were so close, but having researched it a bit more, I'm willing to try it as an experiment. I expect that the worst that can happen is that I have a large number of bees return to an empty nuc on this site, and then I can try just driving them back over there to the new apiary each evening until it works. Realistically, this seems very unlikely to be necessary at all, though.

Drone Laying Worker Fix

2010-07-11T12:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday 11th July

This is a well-recognised procedure showing how to remove a drone laying worker bee from a colony. I don't know if it will actually work or not (because there is nothing remotely predictable about honey bees), but the logic is sound. This process relies on the fact that a laying worker is a house bee which, instead of becoming a forager, has begun to lay eggs in the absence of a queen. This means that she has never learned to navigate back to the colony from outside, unlike the vast majority of all the other bees.

The first step is to spread out a large sheet some distance away from the colony (about 20 yards or so should be sufficient, but if you fancy a good trek, it could be in the furthest corner of the apiary), and then carry the whole colony over to this new site.

Back on the original site I set up a spare empty nuc in exactly the same position as the original, with the entrance wide open and the lid off.

I then shook all the bees off each frame to land on this large sheet. Most of the bees didn't even hit the sheet but just flew straight up and away.

I carefully brushed every single bee off, making sure that not one was left on the frame, then carried it back to the original site, placing it in the new nuc in the same order as it was in the beginning.

Before long I'd cleared every single frame and carried them back to the original site, one at a time. There were not many bees still here by now, just a small handful left on the sheet.

They had all returned to the original site immediately and were all busy sending out a signal pheromone to guide the others here. This shows the reason to place the sheet a good distance away, and preferably upwind of the original site. If the laying worker manages to find her way back here then this will all be done for nothing!

Of course the nuc is still now in a terminal condition, without any eggs or a queen - I need them to try to raise a queen, yet again! I chose to remove a frame from Bea's colony - it's a good strong one and can quickly replace one frame of brood by itself.

I didn't want to disturb the brood too much so I just worked my way in until I found a suitable frame for removal.

This is the one I chose - on this side it has capped brood, just about to hatch out any minute now (the cells in the centre have actually already hatched, all the others should be out by the end of the day). These young bees will strengthen the aging population in the nuc colony and replace the few house bees we had to leave on the sheet.

The other side of the frame has some sealed brood but also loads of freshly-laid eggs. The nucleus colony can use these young eggs to try to raise a new queen.

I made a space in the centre of the nuc for this frame of brood.

This secure central location is where brood should usually be found, not up against the walls.

This small colony is very vulnerable - the entrance will need to be reduced to the smallest setting before I leave today. With the lid replaced, this colony now has the opportunity to start afresh. I'll check it again in a few days to see if they have managed to build up any viable queen cells and that there are no more signs of laying workers.

I filled up the spaces in Bea's colony. Everything looked very healthy in here, and a surprisingly large quantity of honey in the stores. There hasn't been a single drop of rain here in weeks, with endless heat. (This is typical of the British climate - cold and wet for months on end, then 6 weeks or so of almost unbearable heat!)

Out of curiosity I looked inside Dipsy's new super too. It has only been on a week but already it is well-filled. We need to prepare to 'super up' these colonies again soon and we only have two spare supers left in reserve!

Beatrix needs another super within the week and so does Dipsy. Charlie's colony is a bit further behind so that can wait a bit longer - fortunately!

Worker Bees Laying Eggs

2010-07-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sunday 11th July

This last nucleus hive was opened two weeks ago and a newly-emerged virgin queen was seen in it. By now she should be successfully mated, with sealed brood visible in the colony.

It's a really hot day again so I was expecting the bees to be calm, but these ones seemed practically asleep. There was very little activity at the entrance, even when smoked.

It was the same with the lid removed - barely a hum from the brood inside. I'd expect an easy inspection in this heat, with most of the bees out foraging, but the early signs were not encouraging for the health of this colony.

Absolute stillness inside too - hardly a buzz from any of them and surprisingly, no sign of any brood on this central frame.

At first I was pleased to find eggs on this frame, but looking closer there were only half a dozen of them, and dotted in random empty cells. Also, not a single one of them was positioned centrally in the cell. It's not shown very clearly in the photo, but every egg was poorly placed, some even right in the corners. These are the classic signs of a laying worker - a completely terminal situation for a colony without intervention from a beekeeper.

One of the queen bee's functions is to suppress the development of the female workers' ovaries. After an extended period of being queenless it is possible for one or more workers to become egg layers. These workers have never mated, so can only lay infertile eggs - which can only become male bees [drones - their sole purpose is to mate with a queen and they do no foraging, housekeeping, or even guarding duties].

The worst thing about laying workers is that they will immediately kill any queen introduced to the colony - it seems that this is what has happened to our queen. We spent weeks trying to raise a queen successfully and when we finally managed it, a blinking useless drone-laying worker killed her! So completely maddening and quite possibly a terminal disaster for this colony.

The only way to save this colony from dying out now is to find and kill the egg-laying worker. Unfortunately, she looks identical to every other worker bee in the colony (even though her ovaries have grown, it wouldn't be visible to us. This also explains why a laying worker's eggs are always poorly positioned - their bottoms aren't quite long enough to reach the base of the cell so every egg ends up stuck to the side or in a corner).

I went back to the house to borrow a spare sheet from the airing cupboard. Most beekeepers would probably consider any more time spent on this colony as a complete waste of effort, it being so late in the season, but I'd like to give this colony every chance to survive, if at all possible.

Supering Up

2010-07-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sunday 4th July

Just a quick job today, adding a super to Dipsy's hive. No photos of the process this time because we had some interested neighbours come over and help out - I got so carried away talking about it all I forgot to take any photos along the way. There wasn't anything amiss here and the varroa count for a fortnight was phenomenally low - not one single mite on the varroa floor. That's the first time there's been a zero count this whole year!

Unfortunately during the same period there were 42 on Bea's floor and 27 on Charlie's so we are by no means 'varroa-free' around here!

Packaging Second Nuc for Transport

2010-06-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sunday 27th June

This is the second colony we are rehoming with another local beekeeper. It was originally supposed to be collected at the same time as the first nuc but it has now had an extended varroa treatment (using brood removal and bait frames). This has set the development of this colony back considerably but it's now in full health so should easily build up their numbers rapidly over the next few weeks.

I came out at 10:30pm and there were still quite a large number of bees crowding in the entrance and over the front of the nuc. They need to be sealed inside tonight so that it is safe to relocate the whole colony tomorrow morning but I didn't want to squash any with my bung! I decided to come out later at night and try again...

As I walked back to the house I heard a real noise coming from this colony, Dipsy's. I could hear a definite humming noise from both of the other hives but this one was almost roaring!

Peeping inside the entrance explained the noise - the whole left hand side was crammed full of fanning bees! They were all sitting there forcing a cool draught up through the hive. Hopefully this is a good sign of there being a large amount of nectar stored in there to evaporate (nectar is about 80% water but stored honey is less than 20% water).

I came out again just after midnight armed with my handy water mister - there were just two in the front entrance and a quick squirt of the water spray made them disappear inside. Before they realised it was just a trick, not a shower of rain, I bunged up the entrance with a wedge of hessian.

I used a short ratchet-strap in one direction (also holding the entrance bung securely in place), then an elastic bungy cord in the other direction - not nearly as fragile-looking as those lengths of packing tape I used last time!

It was pitch dark by this time of night but I didn't want to leave the nuc standing here until morning - the early morning sun on it could be fatal for all those bees shut up inside with so little ventilation. This meant feeling my way along the darkness carrying the nuc back to the barn, with a torch secured under the strap on top pointing the way!

I made it all the way back with everything still secure and found a good shady spot to leave it until the morning.

It was collected at 11am and they should be out in their new home by lunchtime.

The Last Queen Hatches

2010-06-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday 26th June
Just a few quick jobs to take care of today. Both these two nucs need to be checked - N1 needs a varroa bait frame removed and the colony in N2 is due to be rehomed this weekend, assuming that there are no health concerns inside.

N1 first. I have briefly opened this nuc a couple of times already this week - the bait frame has still had sealed worker brood (hopefully trapping every varroa mite in the colony inside it) as well as two sealed queen cells. I need to destroy this frame to eradicate the varroa but the queen seems to be taking much longer to hatch than I expected.

However, finally here she is - a newly-hatched virgin queen and practically all the worker brood is still sealed too.

She seems much slimmer and longer than our previous newly-hatched queens we have seen this year. These bees are all mongrels, not bred from pure stock, so it is not surprising that each queen would have a totally unique (and unpredictable) appearance and temperament.

Having carefully put the queen and all the other bees from this bait frame back into the nuc, we took it away to be destroyed. It goes in the freezer for a spell - it's not easy to bring myself to destroy this quantity of healthy-looking brood but every varroa mite in the colony must be incubating here on this frame too, so it is necessary for the health of the colony.

We sealed this colony back up with an empty frame to replace this one. This queen will need a fortnight to mate and then start raising her own brood.

N2 next - we fed this colony a litre of sugar syrup a few days ago to help them build up those two empty frames from the final step of this colony's bait frame treatment. They have taken it all in from the feeder and started building up that wax foundation.

This is now looking like a very healthy colony, and definitely suitable for rehoming with another beekeeper.

'Blue 2', we called this queen, not wanting to become attached to her! This colony is due to be collected on Sunday morning so I'll come back out later this evening to seal them all in for the journey. (It's only 10 miles away, which is a good thing, seeing as we are in the middle of a small heat wave here - sealing them in for a few hours could be fatal for them in extreme heat like this.)

These are our three permanent colonies - we need to remove some more bait comb from Beatrix's and to check that Dipsy has enough room for expansion. It has been clear that Dipsy's colony is by far the strongest of the lot - the number of bees in that colony is probably about the same as in the other two combined.

Beatrix first - we inserted a shallow frame into the brood box a while ago. When this happens, the bees usually build up a whole load of drone cell comb on the bottom of it. Varroa mites usually find the scent of unsealed drone brood irresistable and will always choose to breed in drone brood if it is available.

Sure enough, the whole bottom of the frame has been built up and has a large quantity of sealed drone brood.

It was easy to slice this whole section off and replace the shallow frame in the hive. Hopefully they will build this up again and we can continually slice off large sections of drone brood regularly without having to sacrifice any of the valuable worker brood.

Dipsy next - it's clear that this is a much more defensive colony than any of the others here. Right from the first moment of opening the roof, the guard bees were just constantly battering at us.

There is still plenty of room in the super, though there are not many completely empty frames left.

There isn't much room in the brood box so it looks like this one may need supering up again soon, just because of the sheer quantity of bees in here - it must be pretty cramped at night!

A good video of Dipsy scuttling about. She is clearly marked but you can see how the queen moves 'differently' to the other bees.

Our First Ever Honey Harvest

2010-06-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday 19th June

Our local beekeeping association (Waveney Beekeepers Group - there's a link to their website on the right -->) was hosting a demonstration of extracting honey today. Being a bit unenthusiastic about the whole honey harvesting process, I have missed this demonstration for the last two years running since I started. However, I don't think there's the slightest chance we can complete this year without going through a dreaded messy honey-extraction! I closed the shop mid-afternoon (many apologies again to the citizens of Bungay, but my bees need me!) and went along.

The demonstration showed honey being harvested in great quantity, with a leaf-blower to clear the bees from many supers at a time, a huge motor-powered honey-extraction device and a giant rapid-melting tray. This was honey being harvested on a large scale but it was clear that all this technology was only necessary because of the speed required to process all this honey.

I was surprised by how uncomplicated it could actually be - I'd been expecting to come away with a whole list of more specialist equipment to buy, but I was reliably assured that it was possible to extract honey (on a small scale) quite easily without a mechanical extractor or any special equipment at all, just what we already have in the kitchen [NB - so long as it is not to be sold]

I came home and we agreed to try to extract the honey from just two frames straight away, just to see if this is actually possible. There's plenty of honey out there on the hives now and, with Father's Day tomorrow, what better gift for the two grandads in the family than a jar of 'home-grown' honey each! (Especially as they have put in hours of babysitting while we attend the bees)
I chose to remove them from Bea's colony - this is the one with the greatest quantity of stores at the moment - I guess that there's about 30lb of surplus honey sitting here right now and there could easily be much more than that by the beginning of August, when we'll be ceasing any harvesting.
This is one of the frames I took out - there were only a handful of bees on it and when I brushed them off they soon lost interest in it. It's a gloomy, gusty day and there were hardly any bees flying - those I brushed off soon disappeared back inside.
With the lid back on the hive, and these two full frames replaced with empty ones, not one single bee hung around to bother me, so I just took them straight indoors.
We got out all the equipment ready - luckily I always have plenty of muslin squares left over from my gigantic marmalade cook-up in February. We had a few empty honey jars (there can't be more than 8lb in these two frames, probably less than 7lb), a sharp knife, a good-sized pyrex bowl, and a regular kitchen seive. I also had to borrow the communal giant preserving pan from next door, so it wasn't technically just equipment we already had in our own kitchen.
The first step is to remove all the comb from the wooden frames by cutting it out over the bowl.
It was easiest to do this is in sections, as the weight of the honey here dropping out can make quite a mess.
The knife sliced thorough the warm comb really easily, no need to heat the knife in warm water even.
With the two frames emptied of all their contents we tried to scrape every last drip from the frames into the bowl.
The huge pan was filled with heated water, then the dish was suspended in it. It's very important not to heat the comb directly because natural wax has a specific 'flashpoint' - if a certain temperature is reached (I forget the exact temp, but it's higher than boiling water) it would just instantly combust - along with all our eyebrows, presumably!
While I attended to the melting, the kids spent a happy few minutes picking over the 'bones' of the empty frames, with sticky fingers and spoons!
I put a plate over the pyrex bowl to keep the heat in and sliced up the comb into small pieces as it softened.
After a few minutes it had all become very soft and easily stirred.
Before long practically every last bit had completely melted, but the wax was quickly solidifying on the surface.
I removed the bowl from the pan and the top surface set very quickly as the air temperature cooled the wax - wax is less dense than honey (as is any dross in it - lumps of pollen, bee legs, etc) so that all floats to the surface, then sets solid. We left it like this for a while for the wax to solidify, then we could continue.
With the wax on the surface cool now, it would be simple to separate from the honey...
... and it just lifted off!
As there was not much wax (surprisingly little, actually), it all broke up as I lifted it off. I removed every bit and placed it with the empty frames for the bees to clean up later.
I returned the honey to the warm water to make it as runny as possible - it still needs to be filtered and it'll be quicker the more runny it is.
I spooned it into the seive, containing two squares of muslin on top of each other, and we funnelled it directly into the empty (and recently sterilised) honey jars.
I'm not much of a honey expert, but it looked just perfect as it poured in.
As soon as one jar was filled up to the 1lb line, we switched to the next one.
Before long. with one of us holding the seive over the funnel and the other refilling it from the bowl, the whole process was almost over - in the end we had about 6 and a half pounds of honey from the two frames (the last few dribbles in the large jar took ages to finish).
We selected two as gifts for the grandparents (with our own home-made labels, of course!), leaving us with a whole 4 and a half pounds of honey - so exciting and so much easier than we were expecting!

[NB - in case anyone reading this is worried, I am fully aware that these labels shown are legally not suitable for sale. Besides, honey which has been artificially heated like this should only be sold as 'overheated' under the title of 'bakers honey'. It is useable and safe but the heating process has altered it and it would normally now only be used for cooking purposes. Therefore this is not a suitable process for commercial honey production, even on a small scale, but is a safe way of extracting a small quantity for personal use, when in a pinch!]

Preparing a Nuc for Transport

2010-06-12T12:01:00.000-07:00

Saturday 12th June

Blue 1 is being collected tomorrow morning so I need to seal up the front entrance tonight, when all the bees in the colony are tucked up inside for the night.
10:00 pm There was no sign of movement from the outside at all - I came out about an hour earlier and surprisingly some bees were still flying then.I stuffed a small chunk of foam padding into the entrance hole.
My proper hive strap is too large to surround this small nuc. I should find a more professional-looking solution for another time, but for now I just secured it tight with packing tape, wound round a few times. It's not a pretty solution, but it makes sure that nothing could accidentally come loose tomorrow.

Inserting Varroa Bait Comb in N2 - Second Attempt

2010-06-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday 12th June

No photos this time - I was in a real hurry because I only had a short time to get this job done. I'd had to abandon the shop for a while mid-morning, so I was rushing through this to get back there.

I removed every single frame with sealed brood from the nuc with the varroa mites (N2, now known as Blue 2) and replaced them with empty frames - this means losing a lot of bee brood but now the only varroa mites present in this colony are the ones surviving on adult bees - and they are now ready to find new cells to infest.

This left two frames of unsealed brood and stores, which I moved to the centre - these are now the bait frames, being the only place where all the hatched varroa mites can breed.

I closed up the nuc and left it, placing all the removed frames in the freezer.

I'll come back later today when I have more time and feed this colony - they don't have many stores left and they'll need a lot of energy to build up the wax foundation on those 5 empty frames.

These two bait frames will be removed in ten days, eradicating every single varroa mite still left in this colony.

My error previously must have been removing the bait frame too late - a portion of the brood must have already hatched and released the varroa before I removed it.

Marking the Queens

2010-06-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Friday 11th June

A new owner has already been found for my two surplus nucs (technically, you can't 'own' bees as such, they're effectively wild insects, living in man-managed hives - they're free to leave at any time they choose, so legal ownership is a whole grey area!). They're coming to collect them this weekend, so I need to make sure that those queens are clearly marked today.
The swarm nuc first - I have great expectations of this colony - they've already entirely spread across the brood box and will need to be put in a full-size hive soon. I'd love to have kept this one, but just three colonies is our limit for now, due to the time it's been taking to manage all these recently.
It took a few minutes to find the queen, they're never easy to find when you need to!
By holding this queen cage over her, I guided her away from the brood onto the honey stores nearby. This queen cage is a ring with nails all around the outside, spaced so that she cannot get out. Once she was over the honey and there was no risk of damaging the brood with the nails, I pressed the cage down gently to hold her securely in place.
With her thorax positioned in the gaps between the cords, it was easy to dab a mark on her back. The international colour code for queens mated in 2010 is blue. This means that it will be clear just how old this queen is, no matter who is looking at her, wherever she ends up!
Once the paint was dried, I lifted up the cage and let her go - 'Blue 1', daughter of Charlotte.
This will make her far easier to spot now - even amongst a mass of bees, as shown in the photo above.
This second nuc next, N2.
Again, the queen was easy to find, then hold in place over the honey stores.
One quick dab later, she is clearly marked, and given the name 'Blue 2', daughter of Beatrix.
... then released to continue her duties. We noticed something very worrying in this colony as we inspected it - this queen's first brood was just hatching out (which means she was mated exactly 3 weeks ago) and we found two bees amongst them with deformed wings. This means that there is still a varroa infestation here - still a small one as yet, I believe, because otherwise the general health is excellent, but it means I can't let this colony be rehomed until I have completely cleared the infestation. I'll plan what to do later, but disappointingly it means that this colony definitely won't be fit for rehoming for a while now.
The new hive next - this is the new queen which we are keeping, in addition to our two existing colonies.
The empty super I added last week has no stores yet but they are building up the foundation wax well.
The 4 central frames are ready for use now and they have just started building up the next ones.
We found the queen after a few minutes and repeated the process as before.
We'll call her Dipsy (after the teasel flower, not just the Teletubby!), she's also a daughter of Charlotte, but hatched a few days later than Blue 1, who swarmed from the hive immediately upon hatching.
We had a lot of trouble getting the green paint to stick permanently to our queens last year so I'm using a different marking system this year - it's a permanent marking pen (also safe and non-toxic, of course) and has been recommended to me. It's certainly much easier to use and the blob I tested on the back of my glove wouldn't rub off!
Just one more job to do for now - I need to insert new bait comb into N1. It should contain a virgin queen now, but waiting for her to hatch meant that I was too late to remove the sealed brood before that hatched too.
There's still time to insert a new bait comb before the queen starts laying, so we selected one out of Bea's colony.
This one's ideal again - full of eggs and larvae on both sides.
N1 - there's still no point spending time looking for a new queen here. If there is no queen, they'll use some of these eggs to raise a new queen and if there is a queen, they'll just seal these eggs over as normal, like the bees did in the other nuc.
We'll remove this bait frame in ten days from now - by then any varroa mites here will be sealed inside the frame as well.

Bait Comb Attempt Failed - N1

2010-06-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 9th July

The awful weather hasn't let up at all this week - I wanted to open this last queenless nuc (N1) on Tuesday at the latest to remove the varroa bait frame but it just hasn't been possible. This is the first opportuntity I've had - I just hope all the brood hasn't hatched out already.
This will only take a couple of minutes - I just needed the tools shown in the photo above.
The frame in the centre is the one to be removed - the queen cells on it will definitely have hatched by now, I'm just hoping that the brood hasn't yet.
Unfortunately it's immediatly clear that the brood has hatched already, and so it has released any varroa mites which they were incubating. This is very frustrating and there's no point in removing this frame now.
This is where the queen cell had been - there's no sign of it now at all. There's no point wasting time looking for a hatched queen now, she'd only be a couple of days old anyway.
The other side of the frame is exactly the same - almost all of the brood is hatched already...
... and there's no sign of the queen cell where it had been just 4 days ago. I don't know if the fact that the queen cells have been torn down means anything at all. The frustration now is that, because all that brood from the bait combs has hatched, the varroa population has now been increased. Thankfully, there is no laying queen here yet and there can't be for a few days more, so it gives us time to insert another bait comb at the weekend and try again - hopefully we won't be so unlucky with the weather next time.

Removing the Borrowed Nuc

2010-06-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 8th June

Still rotten weather, just constantly cold and wet again. It doesn't matter though - this job will only take a couple of minutes and the bees will hardly even notice that I'm here.
There's not much sign of movement here today - hardly surprising with such cold wet weather.
It only took a moment to whip off the old brood box, shake out the couple of bees inside it, then replace it with the new lid.
I closed up the entrance to the smallest setting too - there's not likely to be much activity in the next few days with such cold weather.
I can take these parts away to clean them before I return them. This involves scorching them all over the insides with a blowtorch - this completely removes any detritus still inside and kills any traces of bugs and diseases which could otherwise be transferred to another apiary.

Transfer From One Nuc to Another

2010-06-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

Monday 7th June

Since the new equipment has arrived I've quickly made up one new nucleus. I'm meeting the beekeeper I borrowed the spare nuc from on Thursday and I'd like to be able to return his nuc to him.
This is all untreated wood so it's suitable for moving the bees into straight away - I don't use any glue either, just nails (though the instructions say to use PVA glue), simply because it would make any necessary repairs over the years almost impossible if the wood is glued as well as nailed.
This is the nuc to be replaced - it is actually larger than my own models, holding 7 frames instead of 5. This works out well because I can select the two frames with the oldest sealed brood on for removal - hopefully this should eradicate any trace of varroa which could be here.
The nuc needs to be raised up higher too as the weeds are starting to grow up fast now. I'm not using very strong boxes as this will be a very temporary site and won't have to support much weight.
With the existing nuc moved to one side (stood on top of the new lid, upturned), the new nuc is placed on the original site - but is now a few inches higher up, of course.
I transferred the frames over, keeping the same order, and checking for frames of sealed brood.
With the new nuc now full of frames there were still quite a number of bees still in the original nuc. They didn't shake out very easily and the queen could have been amongst them so I just upturned the whole box and stood it on top of the new nuc. It was just starting to rain, but with the roof placed on top, the colony is well-sheltered now.
With this upturned box placed over the crownboard, all the bees in it will quickly move down into the brood nest. As the old nuc is larger, there is quite a gap along one side.
I didn't want to leave a gap there for long as it could encourage robbing by other bees so I stuffed it with a few handfuls of weeds.
With the entrance fully-open, many bees sat there fanning a beacon pheromone out - they often do this after any disturbance, as it helps any lost bees find their way home again. You can see some bees automatically flying back to the spot where the original entrance was, a few inches below the nuc, but they quickly found the new entrance.
The rain started to pour down at this point - it's fine to leave the nuc like this for a while now, I just need to remove those last parts before long so that I have time to clean them up ready to return them on Thursday.

Supering Up

2010-06-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

Saturday 5th June - 10 minutes later

I came straight back out with the two supers - it'll only be a quick job to add these empties to the hives, ready for the bees to fill up.
They each contain ten empty frames. The frames are not actually completely 'empty' - they each contain a thin sheet of pure beeswax, embossed with a hexagonal pattern. This gives the bees an accurate guide to work from - they would naturally fill a completely empty box with wax comb themselves but it wouldn't be so perfectly straight like these sheets are, and it would be impossible to lift them out without greatly damaging the comb. Largely destroying the comb used to be the only method of harvesting honey until the modern beehive was invented. This is what led to the belief that beekeepers had to endure thousands of stings to get the honey - nowadays stings are far less common because this system allows us to work with the bees without harming them.
Beatrix first - they'd already stuck the roof down tight in the hour since we opened this hive!
Because this colony already has a full super on top, I split the empty frames up in amongst this one too.
This means that the top two supers here are now both half full, the bottom super is still completely full.
This is the other hive needing a super. It currently has just the brood box.
It needs the metal queen excluder sheet on top of the brood box first. This is covered in holes which are just too small to allow the queen to pass through, but the workers can. Placing this metal sheet here means that the queen cannot get up into the super and lay eggs there.
This should keep them busy for a while now, so we probably won't need to look in this colony for a couple of weeks now.
Beatrix is now just over 1 year old, she was artificially swarmed this year and has a very low mite level.
.
Charlotte is exactly the same age (hatched on the same day) and the colony is in an almost-identical state to Bea's, though with less honey stores.
.
The swarm nuc came from the new hive and now contains a laying queen, hatched just a few weeks ago. I need to transfer this colony to a new nucleus so that I can return the nuc I borrowed. The queen also needs to be marked and some frames of sealed brood are to be removed. This colony should then be suitable for rehoming elsewhere.
.
The new hive contains the queen I saw hatch before my eyes, just a few weeks ago. She is now mated and laying well. This colony has a higher level of mite drop but we have now just completed the bait comb removal treatment so I expect that to drop significantly now.

N1 has no queen right now, but has queen cells due to hatch out within two days. The bait comb needs to be removed soon to tackle the varroa problem here.

N2 has a laying queen and hopefully the varroa has been greatly reduced here too. Once the queen is marked, this colony should also be suitable for rehoming elsewhere.

Removing Varroa Bait Comb Frames

2010-06-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday 5th June

Quite a lot to get through today - those bait combs from a fortnight ago need to be removed, we hope to find that any new queens have now mated successfully, and it's possible we'll need to add supers if the honey stores are becoming full.
.
Beatrix: 3 mite drop in two weeks
Last time we checked, this hive had one full super and the other one was about three quarters full, though there was still plenty of room in the brood box.
Sure enough, both of these two supers are now completely full. This hive will need another empty super put on today - we didn't bring any out with us but we have enough spare ones back in the house and it will only be a five-minute job to do at the end.
There is still some room in the brood box here - three empty frames on each side of the brood, which fills the six central frames.
I remember being surprised by this last year - a really black pollen being stored in the frames.
I can't remember which flower has this pollen, it might be broad beans - whatever it is, it doesn't look very appetising! There was nothing to concern us in this colony, I just need to remember to add a new super later.
The two nucleus hives next. Each of these contains one frame of bait comb to remove and may also have a laying queen now.
N1 first. The bait frame is in the centre.
Lifting it out shows that most of the eggs and larvae have been sealed over and there is also a queen cell to one side.
A closer view of it here.
Looking at the other side of this frame shows exactly the same thing - mostly sealed brood and another queen cell.
This colony is still clearly queenless - the queen cell I left in there was not successful and they have used a couple of the eggs from the bait frames to attempt to raise a new queen. We can't remove this bait frame now until the new queen has hatched - we'll have to come back in a couple of days and do it then.
N2 next - the bait frame is also here in the centre.
It's very similar to the other one, but no queen cells here.
Looking on another frame shows more sealed brood - this means there must be a laying queen in here somewhere.
Sure enough, here she is with plenty more larvae in all stages. This queen needs marking, but we'll come back and do that another time - there's a whole list of jobs to do already today!
We removed this bait frame and gently brushed off all the bees back into the box...
... then slid the remaining frames together and inserted a new empty frame at one end. Hopefully this colony has now had the vast majority of the varroa mites removed.
.
Charlie: 15 mite drop in two weeks.
Just a quick look inside this colony - we need to check if this one needs supering up as well.
The two supers on it are each about three quarters full and there is a similar amount of space in the brood box as in Bea's colony. There's no need to add a super just yet but a fortnight of decent weather might change that.
.
The New Hive: 48 mite drop in two weeks
I need to repair that front step - yet another job to add to the list for another day!
The two bait frames are in the centre again. I pulled out the end frame nearest me first of all and immediately saw the queen on it...
... and she's obviously much larger now than when I watched her hatch a few weeks ago. She's clearly a laying queen now - very fortunate as this is the colony we are planning on keeping and overwintering. We need to start thinking of a name for her now!
Sure enough, there was plenty of developing brood here - this colony looks in fine health now.
We removed the two bait frames and the sheer quantity of bees here is surprising - this colony has effectively 'lost' two swarms already this year (the first when we artificially swarmed Charlie from it and the second when the cast swarm came from it) and it is still in fine strength.
We slid all the frames together and filled the gaps at each end with new empty frames.
Even with those two empty frames in, there isn't much room in this hive. I wasn't expecting to need to add a super to this one so soon but all these bees need something to keep them busy - I'll come out later today and add an empty super to this hive, as well as Bea's.
The Swarm Nuc: Not much to look for in this small colony - the new queen we saw two weeks ago should be happily laying by now.
Sure enough, there is sealed brood already - I'll remove the oldest when a frame is fully sealed and that should take care of any varroa mites that came in with this swarm colony.
We found the queen quickly - she's a really healthy-looking large one.
It's a shame we can't keep all these queens and grow them on but we have to limit ourselves to three colonies for now - it's just taking us far too long to do each inspection (not to mention all this endless blogging!). So long as we can be sure that these nucs are in fine health, there will be other beekeepers in the area glad to give them a good home - we just mustn't become too attached to them first (of course, this is why I am forcing myself to refer to them as N1, N2 and Swarm Nuc - once we've named the queen it would be too hard to let her go!)

New Equipment Arrives

2010-06-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 2nd June

After my embarrassment of having to borrow equipment from another beekeeper two weeks ago (at a time when I'm sure he probably actually could have used it for his own purposes), I immediately placed an order for enough equipment to see me through - hopefully for a long time!

I buy all my beekeeping equipment online from a well-known national company (just Google 'beekeeping equipment') - it is expensive, but you get what you pay for. The quality of the cedar wood is superb and the company has exceptionally good green credentials - also very important to a beekeeper! I buy it all in flat-pack and assemble it myself, which is surprisingly simple after some practice - I can now make up a complete nucleus in a couple of hours and a full hive in three.

I usually take the parts to work with me and assemble them in the afternoons when it's quiet (one of the joys of being a self-employed shopkeeper) and it's becoming a regular tourist attraction in the town centre after the year we've had so far!
The latest massive delivery arrived today and it looks a bit like a warehouse in our garden now!
By the time all this lot is assembled we'll have enough to cope with a total of five nucs and five complete hives, including all the sundries to go with them. Considering my intention was to have just three colonies only (I'm still hoping to end the year with just three colonies), I really think that this will be enough now.

Inserting Varroa Bait Comb Frames

2010-05-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday 22nd May

It's now necessary for us continue with the varroa treatment plan we started several weeks ago. It is not recommended to disturb colonies with virgin queens but this is an ideal opportunity for varroa treatment with them being in a broodless state. It means that all the varroa mites present (and there has been a sizeable infestation here, especially in N1 and N2) are currently only surviving on adult bees, just waiting for some suitable bee brood to infest.
If we insert some bait frames now, every varroa mite in the colony will enter them to breed. Destroying these bait frames before they hatch out should eradicate the entire infestation without using any chemicals at all.
This does of course mean sacrificing some frames of otherwise perfectly healthy bee brood, but with varroa mites being such a devastating parasite it is a sacrifice well worth making.
.
Beatrix: 1 mite drop in a week
We have already successfully used the bait comb treatment on this colony - it now only shows one single mite drop in a week, a phenomenal reduction from the original infestation. We are now using it to provide the bait combs for the two original nucs.
We selected two suitable frames, one for each nuc. They need to be full of eggs and larvae. This one is ideal - a small amount of pollen stored around the edges and the rest of it full on both sides with freshly laid eggs. These stand up on one end and look like minuscule grains of rice.
We have selected young eggs on purpose, rather than developed larvae, so that the nucleus colonies can actually use some eggs to raise a new queen, just in case the single queen cells I left in each one have not yet produced a queen. If they don't need to raise a queen they will just assume these eggs are hers and treat them as their own.
This other frame is in an identical state, with plenty of fresh eggs and a small quantity of developed larvae.
I carefully brushed every single bee off these two frames and carried them over to the two nucs.
N1 first. There was no sign of a queen or any brood at all so we removed one frame of stored honey and placed the bait frame in the centre, where you would normally expect to find brood developing.
N2 next. This is in an identical state - no sign of a queen and no brood at all.
Having brushed off every bee from the two frames of stores we swapped them over to Bea's colony. We closed these three colonies up and continued with the next ones.
.
Charlotte: zero mite drop in a week.
This colony has also had successful bait comb treatment and will provide the bait comb for the new hive.
As we scanned through the brood frames looking for suitable ones to remove we saw a right mess on this one - a wax moth larva [see here] has been eating a load of the brood cappings! As soon as I took the photo above my wife shrieked - there was an inch-long wiggly thing waving at us out of the brood! It is actually just visible in the photo above, on the far left side, caught just before it popped out and did the gruesome wiggle at us!
I quickly dug away the cappings where it was with my hive tool but it had already popped back in, ghastly creature! It made our skin crawl to look at it, I just hope a bee will be quicker than I was the next time it comes out for air! Yuck!!
.
New Hive: 30 mite drop in a week.
This is the first bait comb frame, loads of young larvae on both sides.
And this is the second frame, slightly further developed larvae but still unsealed, so an ideal temptation for a varroa mite!
There was also no sign of a laying queen in this colony yet but she would only be a week old now - she should be laying within the next few days, hopefully.
There is nothing more we can do now but wait for a fortnight and then remove and destroy all these bait combs and hopefully all the varroa mites with them!

Watching a Queen Hatching

2010-05-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

Saturday 15th May - half an hour later

Having telephoned an expert for advice I came straight back out to remove all the surplus queen cells from each colony. I need to leave only the one largest and healthiest-loooking cell so that there is no risk of her producing a cast swarm upon hatching, like the last one did.
As soon as I lifted the first marked frame out with a queen cell I noticed something very exciting - the queen was actually hatching out before my eyes!
This cell was the one shown still sealed over just one hour ago - the one on the same frame as the empty cell which produced the cast swarm. I couldn't get a good photo of her hatching out and as I rested the corner of the frame down to try to take a better photo she ran off the side of it!
By pure luck, I caught a glimpse of where she had run to - she'd scooted straight into the corner of the brood box and I managed to take a couple of pictures of her.
Surprisingly, she isn't remotely 'fluffy' like the worker bees usually are when they have just hatched [see an example here], though she is clearly much larger than the other bees already.
She didn't hang about for long and I didn't want to distress her so I just watched her scurry off down into the brood box.
At least I now know for sure that this colony has a live queen in it - I quickly worked my way through every other frame removing every single queen cell on it.
I saved them all in a tub to have a closer look at later, though it was clear that some of them were actually empty! It just shows that it's impossible to tell from looking at it just what is really inside.
I need to do exactly the same in both the nucs now - this one first.
Having removed every inferior-looking cell, these two looked the 'best' to me, but which one to save and which one to leave? I just had to plump for one as they both looked identical.
I decided to keep the one on the left - it was surprising that such a large queen cell still only contains a small pupa, as shown in the picture.
This nuc next, as you can see I've already accumulated a whole pile of discarded queen cells.
I chose to leave this cell in this colony - it was noticeably the largest and fattest of the lot. I decided to open up the end of that one extremely long queen cell I'd photographed earlier, thinking that if it contained a fully-developed queen already I could just manually release her, but surprisingly it only contained a small undeveloped pupa, despite the vast size of it!

All these came out of this one nucleus. It's not pleasant to have to cull all these developing queens but for the sake of the colonies we can't risk so many cast swarms issuing from them, as there would be little chance of any survival.

Which Colony Produced the Swarm?

2010-05-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday 15th May

It could be quite a long job today as we now have six colonies to inspect - it used to take us over an hour just to go through them when we only had two (I can't believe that's only a few weeks ago!), so we'll have to just whizz through them this time.
.
Charlotte:
This colony was artificially swarmed a little while ago and they have plenty of room -we are not expecting to find any evidence of swarming here.
A good pattern of eggs and brood here and they have started building up good stores already.
Sure enough, Charlie is still here, laying happily. Nothing to concern us in this colony so we quickly moved on to the next one:
.
Beatrix:
Just like the previous colony, this queen has already been artificially swarmed so everything should be fine in here.
Just like in Charlie's colony, they have started building across the brood box but there is still plenty of room for expansion.
Sure enough, we found Bea quickly. This a relief because it shows that we did artificially swarm them correctly - there seems to be no evidence of swarming here at all now.
.
Swarm in Spare Nuc:
Time to look at the swarm we caught two days ago - they should have started settling into their new home.
They have already built up the foundation on a couple of frames, just on the further side.
We found the queen quickly enough - there aren't many bees here as it was just a cast swarm. A cast swarm occurs when a new queen hatches and, instead of staying in the hive and leading the colony herself, she immediately swarms from the hive, even before mating, taking all the flying bees and as much honey as they can carry. This seriously depletes the strength of an already-weakened colony and I thought I'd taken all the necessary precautions to prevent this from happening, but obviously that didn't work!
Sure enough, she's a virgin queen. As shown in the photos, her abdomen is visibly far smaller than our other two queens because, as she has not yet mated, her ovaries haven't swelled up yet. A fertile queen is an egg-laying machine; she can lay more than her whole body-weight in eggs in just one day! This young queen will need to mate in the next few days and then hopefully we will find that she is successfully laying eggs next time we check.
These are our first two nucleus hives. These have been queenless so far but we are hoping to find laying queens in them now - either one of these (or even neither of them!) could have produced the cast swarm.
.
N1:
The drawing pin stuck in that frame above is there to remind me which frame we left in there with a good queen cell on it...
... but looking at this frame there is no sign of the queen cell at all.
Instead there are two different queen cells, clearly ripe and ready to hatch...
... and then on another frame two more, also ready to hatch at any moment! We found a total of six ripe queen cells in this nucleus.
.
N2:
This colony is the exact other half of the previous N1 nucleus.
Again, the frames with queen cells was marked with drawing pins, and again, there was no sign of the cells we had left there!
Instead there were also loads of different, ripe queen cells!
This one was huge - apparently this can happen when a queen tries to hatch out but the workers won't let her - every time she nibbles her way out they just stuff a bit more food in there and seal her up again! I have no idea why they are doing this, it just seems bizarre.
We counted a total of five ripe queen cells in this nucleus, also with no trace of a hatched queen.
.
By a process of elimination, the swarm must have issued from this last colony, the hive we found the swarm clinging on to.
I had relocated this hive shortly before the queen was due to hatch so that she would not have any flying bees to take with her in a cast swarm but I must have moved it too soon, despite all my careful calculations.

Just like before, the frame with the queen cell was marked with a drawing pin, and just like before, there was no sign of that queen cell!

Instead there was this huge empty queen cell.
It's a very long one, like she was sealed in there well beyond her 'due date' and it is now obviously recently vacated - the jagged edge where the queen nibbled her way out is still visible. This is clearly where the swarm queen came from two days ago.
There was also this other ripe queen cell on this same frame..

... and as we checked through the brood box we found a total of seven ripe queen cells! This means that, if every hatching queen in our apiary were to produce a cast swarm (which seems quite possible now that I've found that my date calculations were incorrect) we could possibly have a total of 18 more cast swarms flying out, all within the next few days! Oh, good grief!
We managed to zip through all these inspections in record time - the whole process took us about an hour and a half - but there's obviously much more work to be done here. Time to phone up our local expert beekeeper for advice - again!

Catching Our First Swarm

2010-05-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

Thursday 13th May - one hour later.

I drove off to fetch some spare equipment and returned soon after (this is why it is vital to have good relations with your local beekeeping group - they are very aware of the daft mistakes beginners always make, even when they are just doing what the textbooks instruct!)
We stood the spare nuc next to the swarm, with a couple of the empty frames removed to make room for the bees landing in there. We also bunged up the entrance hole to stop the queen from disappearing out of the bottom of it.
While my wife held the nuc up close beneath the swarm, making sure that that the empty frames didn't slide back into the gap, I gently brushed all the bees down into it. They fell in large clumps, all clinging to each other.

I gently swept a few of the last stragglers in there as well, then we set the nuc down right where it was.
Hopefully the queen landed in there too because then they'll all send out a signal to come and join her there. If she happened to fall away from the box they would soon congregate to where she is instead.
The only thing to do now is to put the crownboard on at an angle, as shown, with the entrance hole still bunged up. Leaving the nuc like this will give them time to gather all the flying bees in the swarm safely together in the nuc.
After about ten minutes it was clear that the swarm was happy to stay there in the nuc, so the queen must be in there after all. We removed the bung in the entrance block and securely replaced the lid.
I came back out about two hours later, at dusk, when all the flying bees would be inside for the night. There was no sign of activity so I moved the nuc a few feet away so that it'll be easier to inspect it at the weekend. I'm only expecting this to be a temporary site - we already have the three colonies we want for this year but now we also have three extra nucs of bees as well!
There's no way of telling which of our colonies produced this swarm - we'll just have to wait until the weekend to see if we can find out.