“Christmas is nearly here” - by Malcolm Wilkie

Christmas is nearly here and finally it is a quiet time in the apiary for the beekeeper. Autumn has been wet and like many of you I have wrapped my hives in a breathable roofing membrane. This keeps my wooden hives dry but lets out any moisture that the bees are producing.

Above is what Helen did for her bees at the end of October. You have to cut out a section so you don’t block up their entrance, of course. Keeping the bees dry really does make a difference as wet hives encourages fungal infections to grow on the bees and colonies will suffer. Even at this late stage this is something you could do on a dry day. I just fix the membrane on with drawing pins and crudely cut a section for the entrance.

If you have a WBC hive or a poly hive then this is not something you have to do (the outer skin of the WBC keeps the inner boxes dry and a poly hive sheds water, unlike wood which can retain moisture even if you have been careful and treated it with linseed oil).

All may be quiet with the bees (although these exceptionally mild temperatures are encouraging them out ) but there is still something you can do to help colonies. Bees often decide to take a brood break between mid-December and very early January. Because this is so this enables one to treat a colony with bad varroa with oxalic acid, either by the trickle method or by sublimating them. Please refer to my article last January if you are going to sublimate them, and make sure you have the right mask. By doing it now when there is no brood you will kill 96% of the mites. There is no real difference in efficacy between the two methods although if you are using the trickle method a Queen can only be treated once in her lifetime so write down in your records what you have done in case you are tempted to use this method again next year. With sublimation the number of times a Queen is treated does not seem to matter.

I have found boxes of bees that have been treated with either method have done really well and have romped away in the Spring. Keith would encourage you to monitor your natural dead mite drop for a week and then to go on bee base and use the varroa calculator as he does not like bees just being treated prophylactically. And he is absolutely right. Count the drop, do the calculation and then only treat if you need to.

If you decide on the trickle method it would be best to buy oxalic acid already mixed in to sugar syrup. Let the bee farmer get the correct concentration for you as otherwise you could kill your bees. The trickle method works because the bees pass the syrup containing the oxalic acid between themselves via trophallaxis. However some bees will get a higher dose as they will have come directly into contact with your syrup and so inevitably there will be some casualties. But for the greater good of the colony........

Finally an idea for a Christmas present. If you have been keeping bees for a year or two and have not read Bill Turnbull’s novel ‘The bad beekeepers club’ then you should ask to be given the novel for Christmas. It is hilarious. I suspect most of us will recognise aspects of our own beekeeping in what he recounts or even things we may have done ourselves. However on no account should it be given to the wife or husband of the beekeeper unless they have a good sense of humour!

Happy Christmas everyone and happy beekeeping.

Malcolm Wilkie 11th December 2018

The National Honey Show, Sandown Park Race Course

Just a brief reminder to everybody that we have the National honey show coming up at the end of October. This is held at Sandown Park racecourse in the outskirts of London.

You can have a look at the program of lectures and the workshops that are offered on line. This year I am particularly interested in one of the lectures that Clarence Collison will be giving.  That is because he will be looking at factors affecting Queen quality. I think that some of us are beginning to have problems with Queens and I have seen two colonies this year where although there were a lot of bees and a new queen, the Queen never really started to lay eggs. I find this quite alarming and is the first time I have come across this.

The honey show is held over the course of three days. The best day to go is really Friday. However there are interesting lectures and workshops every day. If you are interested in doing a workshop it is absolutely fundamental that you book that on the 1st of September. If you don’t, you may find that it is booked out.

There are also sessions for beginners or people who have only been keeping bees for a couple of years. These are always interesting sessions and a Master beekeeper always takes these.

I will be taking up my honey to show, as well as other people’s honeys. If you are interested in doing that you can download an entry form and I could take that honey up for you on Thursday morning, 25th October. It costs £1 to enter and I would suggest entering class five because the judge gives a comment about every single honey in that class. If you are not going up, I will report back with any comments. This is a gift class and you do not get back your honey – so be warned.

N.B.No incipient granulation, please. If you get three jars of honey to me well beforehand I will titivate and enter two jars having stood them in my honey warming cabinet. I need three jars in order to ensure the best presentation of the two required jars.

Malcolm Wilkie 30th August 2018

“You can never have too many crown boards” - by Malcolm Wilkie

This has been an exceptional year for honey. Those who have managed their colonies correctly will have had honey to extract.

Once the honey has been extracted from your supers one is left with the problem of getting the bees to clean up the mess you have created.

Firstly it is advisable for supers to go back on the colonies that evening. The later, the better. This is to cut down on the possibility of robbing.

Secondly how should you put the supers back onto your hive? You will still have your crown boards with porter bee escapes in place on your hives. With your hive tool, remove the escapes. Then simply place the wet supers that belong to that hive back on top of the crown board. If you are lucky you may be able to do this without any smoke. However personally I still light  the smoker.

Leave the supers on the hive for two or three days and then remove them if they have been cleaned out. These can be stored in your bee shed once they have been sprayed with Certan against wax moth.

Sometimes a colony doesn’t play ball. They start to chuck nectar back into the supers that have been removed. So you need to do something. Place an empty super on top of your crown board, place another crown board on top of the empty super, place your supers that you want cleared out on top of that crown board, then replace another crown board on top of all those supers and then finally replace the roof. In other words you never can have too many crown boards!

Oh, I hear you say, I will just leave the supers for the bees. Mistake! If you are keeping your bees on 14*12 frames you shouldn’t really leave them a super. That brood box is big enough for them to over winter. In fact giving them an extra super will create a much bigger volume and colder environment for them during the winter months. WBC owners don’t have to worry about this of course because of the double skin provided by the lifts and poly hive owners also will probably get away with creating a larger volume. For me the ideal as an owner of wooden hives is to have them in the 14*12 brood box with the outside frames filled with honey. Of course bees will survive given a bigger volume as long as there are loads of them and the hive is situated in a nice warm winter site. However if this is not the case they may struggle, and you may find yourself at the beginning of next year with bees that have survived but have developed fungal infections or that simply do not survive.

So what am I going to do with that super of honey that I haven’t extracted?

Two options. Certan and store in your shed. Or try and get the bees to rob it out and place the honey in the brood box.

You can get them to rob it out by following the advice given above for clearing wet supers. i.e. you need loads of crown boards. I will do this with some supers in early September once the temperatures have started to fall.

Below is a picture of what happens if you don’t use Certan. Once again advice is, do as I say, don’t do as I do! There is a good reason, of course, why I have a picture!!!

Malcolm Wilkie 16^th August 2018

“My Colony's Queenless! - Is it really” - by Malcolm Wilkie

“I have messed up, I don’t have a queen and my colony is doomed”

Reply from an experienced beekeeper: “are you absolutely sure?”

Newbee: “Yes I am absolutely sure”

Experienced beekeeper (thinking to themselves) “Here we go again, yet another one who thinks they don’t have a queen”

I suspect most of you will have noticed that there is no let up with the nectar flow. Today I saw my honeybees working a huge eucalyptus tree that was in flower. Incredible what is in the environment when you start looking.

I have gone and helped a number of people including newbees who have gone into their brood boxes and just found the whole brood box clogged up with stores. They have concluded that they have no Queen, particularly if it is a new queen that they have not yet seen in lay.

Before going out and buying a queen they need to think logically about the situation. We have for the last couple of months had the most exceptional nectar flow and the bees, programmed to collect nectar, have done so daily. Some colonies have put off the Queen laying eggs in order to take advantage of these exceptional conditions. Other colonies, where splits have been done, have not bothered to get the new queen to do her job. They have been far busier taking advantage of the exceptional conditions in the environment.

Now here’s the rub. Owners of that colony panic. The thing is the bees aren’t panicking, it is the beekeeper! They examine their bees and conclude that there is no Queen. However if the colony is calm (and it does not have to be super calm) it is highly likely that there really is a queen after all. No evidence of eggs or brood is not necessarily a sign of a queenless colony. This is particularly the case if there are a lot of bees. When we artificially create a big colony by letting them have only one queen cell the bees are not really motivated to put their queen into lay. They know and she knows that they are big enough to survive the winter.

However you should be concerned if there is no brood at this stage of the year, even if the bees don’t seem to be so. This is because the bees that are hatching during August and September will ensure the survival of your colony next year. So you need to make sure that your queen comes back into lay. How are you going to do this? Well the first thing that you must do is create space in the brood box for your queen to lay eggs! Go through and remove the outer frames of stores. Put them in your extractor and spin out the honey. Then, replace them into the brood box in a central position. This will artificially create the necessary space for your queen to start doing her job. If your Queen has started to lay but the brood box is chogged up with too many frames of stores then these spun out combs can be placed next to the brood nest.

In addition if you have a new queen who seems reluctant to come into lay it is always a good idea to give her a frame of eggs or young larvae as this will often kick start her into laying. If you do this one week, the likelihood is that the next week she will be on that frame adding eggs around the edge of the brood nest. You can then stop panicking!

Just remember the bees know better than we do but you can help the situation by doing what I have suggested above.

Malcolm Wilkie 3rd August 2018

“Getting Capped Honey” - by Malcolm Wilkie

Hi everyone, those of you who are getting honey are wondering when the bees are going to finally cap it so that you can do an extraction.

Well, here is a tip from Keith that Helen has used to get her honey successfully capped by the bees.

She took a wire frame Queen excluder and added three pieces of wood on three sides. She then placed it above the brood nest, creating an extra entrance below all the honey supers but above the brood nest (this obviously replaces the Queen excluder she already had in place). This new entrance faces exactly the same way as the entrance below. This enables a lot of air to flow into the colony which is what the bees require to cap the honey. It also means foragers can go directly to the honey supers to unload nectar. A win win situation.

Another thing that you should do if you want your honey capped, is to rearrange the super frames. Place any that are capped on the outside of the honey super and those that need capping near the centre. Remove a frame or even two from the super in question and create space between the frames. All of this will help with capping.

Sorry, yet another thing to do in your busy schedule as a beekeeper!

Malcolm Wilkie 13th July 2018