the bees are OK (so far)

I inspected the bees this morning, straight after breakfast.  Apart from checking that the hives were still intact and the right way up, and one quick look to see that they didn't need more space, I didn't disturb them in July.  Two had already swarmed by then, I didn't believe the one that requeened this spring would swarm, and the swarm I collected had to sort itself out, so I would have been stressing them to no good purpose.  Today I thought I'd better finally see how things were going.

All seemed to be pretty well.  I found eggs in the third frame I looked at in the number one hive, which told me that the new queen had hatched successfully, and returned from her mating flight without getting lost or being eaten by a bird or a hornet.  Once I'd seen the eggs I didn't even go through the rest of the hive.  There were no eggs yet in the number two hive, but the bees seemed quiet and some of the cells in the brood nest had been polished, so I'm hopeful that there is a queen in there and that the bees expect her to start laying any day soon.  Another inspection in a week or two should confirm whether this is the case.  The number three hive, as I expected, had not swarmed.  There was still plenty of brood, of all ages, as though they know they need to make up for their late start this spring.  Queens can stop laying in the late summer, but this lot are still working hard.  There was a bit of honey stored in the super, and I should get a very small crop this off that hive.  The swarm was tiny, but there were eggs and brood of all ages.  They are very dark bees, that set up a loud and not entirely amiable hum as soon as I took the lid off their little box, though they stopped as soon as I put it back.  Today was humid and not ideal weather to be inspecting bees, so I won't form a firm view on their temperament on the basis of this one inspection.  I'm not convinced that by autumn the colony will be large enough to meet the criteria in the textbooks for successful overwintering, but at the moment I'm inclined to think they'll have to take their chance.  I don't especially want to risk upsetting my other colonies by trying to combine them.  The empty hive I'd left up there on the offchance hadn't attracted another swarm, but I think I'll install one earlier in the season next year.

By late summer wasps can be a nuisance to bee colonies.  They will rob the honey if they can, much as they eat apples and plums on the trees.  Wasps mainly attack weak bee colonies with inadequate defences, and if the bees become demoralised the wasp incursion can get so bad that the colony is destroyed.  I was pleased not to find wasps inside any of my hives.  One reason for opening hives as infrequently and for as little time as possible at this time of year is to avoid letting wasps in.

In the meadow, on the way to the bees, I discovered an area of freshly trampled grass, with a hole the size of a bucket dug in it.  A few wasps hung around the hole, and there were some grubs in the bottom.  It must have been a wasps' nest, and I should say that it had been dug out by badgers, probably last night.  Once the residual wasps have disappeared I'd better pick up the stones, before they can get mixed up with the power scythe or the lawnmower, and find some earth to fill in the hole.  I hope that the badger, having had a tasty meal of insect grubs, won't start on the beehives.  Badgers are a known risk to beekeepers, and I have been lucky that so far I have not had any problems.  The solution would be to surround the beehives with an electric fence, but it would be an awful nuisance, keeping it clear of vegetation and making sure the battery was charged.  When I used to listen to the Archers I formed the distinct view that electric fences always let you down in the end.  But maybe the badgers won't make the extrapolation from wasps in the ground to bees in wooden boxes.

Back in the house, I saw a green woodpecker probing the lawn outside the sitting room window.  This has been an astounding year for ants, so it may have been after those.  Our lawns are not the most pristine, but I would far rather see woodpeckers just by the house than have an immaculate, pest-free bowling green.

a reassuring bee inspection

I went to inspect the bees first thing after breakfast.  I should really have done them by yesterday at the latest, since that was ten days since the previous inspection.  In theory, if they had decided to swarm immediately after the last time I looked at them, then by yesterday they could have had a new queen sealed inside her cell waiting to hatch, leaving the old queen free to abscond with half the bees and the honey.  However, I was out yesterday and on Tuesday, and working over the weekend, when it was far too windy anyway.  It was a bit cool, breezy and dull this morning, but the forecast was for it to get worse rather than better through the day, so there didn't seem anything to be gained by hanging around.  The best placed people to be beekeepers must be those who are fully retired or work from home, and have no pre-arranged social life, who would be entirely free to stick to their ten day inspection limit, and pick their weather window.

Fate was smiling on me.  There were eggs in the two main hives, showing that the queens had been laying at least until very recently, and no queen cells, showing that they had not yet begun to swarm.  I even saw the queen in one of them, on a day when I didn't especially need to, striding around purposefully on the comb in one of the middle frames.  I made sure I put that one back very carefully.  The sub-optimal weather had made them a bit grumpy, but not dangerously vile.  The third hive had managed to go queenless over the winter, and on 8 April I gave them a frame from one of the other hives containing fresh eggs.  The textbooks say that they should use these to rear a new queen.  I hadn't been right through that hive since, on the grounds that if they hadn't managed to make a queen then I'd give them a queen cell at the point when the others started to swarm.  I had a quick look today, to see if they had sorted themselves out, and saw uncapped brood, demonstrating that they have made a queen, and that she has successfully gone out and got mated without coming to any mishap like being eaten by a bird.  I shut them up again without looking at the other frames, given that I'd found out what I wanted to know, and the weather was iffy.

Neither of the big hives had put much new honey or nectar in the supers in the past eleven days, which makes me think that the dry weather really is affecting the nectar flow.  I'd better feed the small colony, as after their queenless hiatus they will be short of workers.  They won't do anything useful this year, but if they build up to a size where they can survive the winter then they might give me a crop next year.  Unfortunately, the big colony I used to give them the frame from which they reared their new queen has turned out to be not as good as the other, less productive and not as placid, so it's unlucky I didn't use the better one.

I wore my beesuit into the house, and stood in the kitchen for a few minutes before taking it off, listening for buzzing.  I retrieved two bees from the window, and one from the door of the fridge.  I think as many beekeepers get stung after they've finished opening the hives, at the point where they take off their protective clothes, as during the inspection.

One of the friends at yesterday's lunch is the secretary of our local beekeepers' association, who gets the phone calls from the public about swarms.  She says there have been very few so far this year, though she has had a lot of calls about bumble bees and wasps.

the bees are looking good, so far

I have just been to check the bees.  The two big colonies, that came through the winter queen intact, are looking good.  Both have lots of young brood in all stages of development, and eggs, and are still not showing signs of swarming.  I am very pleasantly surprised that they haven't got to the swarmy stage yet, but it makes my life much easier, and increases the chances I might get some honey this year.  The colony with a proportion of golden bees in it, that nine days ago was just starting to lay down stores in the shallow super box above the deep brood box where the queen lives, had completely filled the super by this morning.  I was worried that the nectar flow might be limited by the drought, so again that was unexpected but welcome.

I like to inspect the bees first thing after breakfast, if possible.  In chillier weather I might need to wait until the day has warmed up, but in general first thing is best.  Bees don't like the smell of human sweat, so opening the beehive after having a shower and before doing anything else too strenuous in the garden seems best.  And I like to look at them when I'm in a calm, focused state of mind, so after a good night's sleep is better than later in the day, when it may have notched up its share of aggravations and annoyances.  These two hives are both even tempered, and a pleasure to handle.  It is a long time since I've been scared handling bees, but it doesn't do to take them for granted.  Bees are like the sea.  They have nothing personal against you, but get them at the wrong time, in the wrong mood, or nasty bees, and they can be dangerous.

I didn't see the queen in either colony.  Neither is marked with a spot of coloured paint, which will make life much more difficult for me when they do start to show signs of swarming, and I need to find her as part of the swarm control procedure.  I have never managed to mark my queens in a dozen years of beekeeping.  You can't risk using any old coloured paint, since some solvents will dissolve an insect's exoskeleton, so you have to get a special pen from a beekeeping supplier to be on the safe side.  Earlier in my beekeeping days I dutifully did this, and by the time I found the queen the pen had dried up.  If I did find her to mark her, and had a working pen, I am afraid of squashing her, although what beekeepers do is practice marking drones, which can't sting.  I don't clip my queens' wings either, as some beekeepers do, to prevent her flying away at the head of a swarm.  This partly by default, because I scarcely ever see her, and by choice, because I am afraid of accidentally chopping her leg off in the process, but also as a matter of policy.  Suppose she falls on the grass when I'm opening up the beehive.  How is she to get back into the hive if she can't even fly?  And it seems disrespectful.  Yesterday I ate meat and deliberately squashed a snail, so refusing to cut an insect's wings off on ethical grounds is not a rational position, but there it is.

Bee eggs are like little threads of white cotton.  When first laid they stand on their ends, and over the next couple of days gradually descend until they are lying down, then hatch into white, c-shaped larvae.  The eggs are much easier to see in a good light than on an overcast day, and I do the bee inspections wearing my reading glasses inside my veil, as by now I couldn't see the eggs with my seeing glasses.  Before the queen lays an egg in a cell, the worker bees polish the cell, and if she has stopped laying, or gone, they will start putting nectar in the empty cells in the brood box, so one of the things you are looking for is not just the presence of eggs, preferably standing on their ends, but whether there are polished cells.  The beekeeping books and courses explain all the individual signs to monitor during an inspection, but after a few years it starts to work on a more gestalt level, and the main thing you are looking for is 'Does this look right?'.

I gave the most advanced colony two empty supers to work on, and put the full super at the top of the heap with an excluder board under it, fitted with Porter bee escapes.  These are tunnels made of plastic and wire, that give the bees easier passage one way than the other.  If I have fitted them correctly then when I go back on Tuesday I should find the top super virtually empty of bees, and be able to remove it safely.  I am not really sure whether I should take it yet, or leave it a few days longer.  At this time of the year they might have been foraging on oilseed rape, though there is none very close to the hives, and rape honey solidifies in the comb soon after collection.  If it sets in the comb I won't be able to extract it by spinning the comb in a centrifuge, but will have to chop the comb and set honey out in lumps, and melt them gently until they separate.  I have never done this, as I don't generally get rape honey, but friends who have say it is an unbelievably slow, sticky, tedious job.  I don't normally get honey as early as mid-May, so they might have been on rape this year.  With non-rape honey, that takes longer to set, you know it is safe to take when the bees have covered it with a wax capping, and you know it is still too watery and not fully converted from nectar to honey, if when you pick a frame up and shake it briskly, droplets of liquid fly out.  The bees had just started to cap this honey, and I don't think any nectar fell out when I shook it, though it was difficult to tell because so many bees fell off it.  The bees are only at the end of the garden, however, so if when I bring the honey into the kitchen next week I decide it isn't quite ready, I can always give it back to the bees for a couple more days.  Honey that is still too watery and not yet ripe will ferment and spoil in storage, so it's important to get this bit right.

Addendum  Blogspot are already making money out of Cardunculus, by advertising to me.  I posted today's entry, and ads for beekeeping equipment flashed up.  So that's how it works.  I suppose they have been since 1st January, which suggests it isn't a very effective form of advertising, since I haven't really taken any notice of them.  I certainly haven't clicked on any links.