Category Archives: Photography

Winter wait

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Synopsis: In the winter bees are low maintenance, but they’re not no maintenance. You need to carry out a few regular winter checks to help them overwinter successfully. Here are the first two things to check … I’ll deal with the third and final check next week.

Introduction

The ‘beekeeping season’ runs from spring until autumn. Quite when it starts and stops depends upon your latitude and enthusiasm 1.

More of each have opposing effects in the spring.

More latitude and the season starts later, more enthusiasm and you might be tempted to start colony inspections (the first ‘proper’ beekeeping of the year) in early spring.

I’m certainly enthusiastic but I live in Scotland. I therefore rarely open a hive before mid/late April. In some seasons it might even be mid-May.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to do between the end of the preceding season and the start of the next.

The winter wait (for the start of the season) doesn’t meant that there’s nothing to do.

During the winter months of the year bees are really low maintenance, but they’re not no maintenance.

You need to check the hives at about monthly intervals. More frequent checks will do no harm – these are ”The bees don’t even know they’re being checked” checks – but probably aren’t necessary. These checks are important to ensure the bees overwinter successfully.

Spring is on the way … Fife snowdrops, mid-February 2022

Of course, you should also check after high winds or heavy rain (very timely as I’m writing this as Storm Eunice bears down on the south west) as an overturned hive or a badly flooded apiary aren’t conducive to colony survival.

So, what do these checks entail?

What are you actually looking for?

How can you tell much of anything from an inanimate cedar or poly box on a miserable, cold, wet February afternoon?

Essentially it comes down to three things … the state of the colony, access to the hive and weight.

What’s happening in the box?

Mid-February, it’s 5°C, there’s a squally northerly blowing intermittent sharp hail showers down from the hills. No self-respecting bee would venture out in conditions like these.

Most self-preserving beekeepers would probably prefer to be sat in front of the fire reading Gilles Fert’s Raising honeybee queens 2.

However, there’s work to be done.

What on earth can you judge about what’s happening inside the box on a day like this?

If you’re a relatively new beekeeper (and this applies to some of us who have been keeping bees for many years) you would probably like to know if there are any live bees in the box.

After all, you’ve not see a flying bee for months.

Perhaps they all froze to death in those heavy frosts over the previous week?

Don’t rap sharply on the outside of the box and listen for an answering angry buzz. Yes, it’s a way of detecting whether there’s ‘life in the old box yet’, but it’s an unnecessary disturbance for the bees.

How would you like it?

There are two relatively simply methods, one much more useful than the other.

The first is to use a clear perspex crownboard on the hive 3. It’s then a simple matter to lift the roof and observe the state of the colony.

Colony viewed through a perspex crownboard – mid-February 2022

Here’s one of my colonies from last weekend. I can tell from the size of the cluster that the colony is reasonably strong.

That’s a good start.

The bees are moving on the periphery of the cluster, so they’re alive 4.

In addition, though it’s not entirely clear from this photograph, there are at least 2-3 frames of capped stores at the opposite side of the hive to the cluster.

Condensation

One of the things missing from the picture above is any significant amount of condensation on the underside of the perspex crownboard. This is because the deep inner rim of the crownboard is usually filled with a 50 mm thick block of insulation.

Perspex crownboard with integrated insulation

This is essential unless the roof is very well insulated. Without insulation immediately above the perspex the high level of humidity within the hive will lead to large amounts of condensation on the underside of the perspex.

This condensation – or at least some of it – will then drip down onto the cluster, making it a pretty unpleasant environment for the bees.

So, by simply building a ‘window’ into the top of the hive you can determine the size of the colony, whether it’s alive and possibly judge something about the level of stores in the hive.

All of which, and more, you can achieve another (better) way … read on 😉

I quite like the perspex crownboards I use on some of my colonies. However, I consider them far from essential and can judge the state of the colony much better by ‘observing’ them from below rather than from above.

Open mesh floors

When I say ‘observing’ them from below, I don’t mean a glass bottomed hive and I don’t mean directly observing them from below 5.

If you use open mesh floors (hereafter OMFs) you can collect and inspect what falls through the floor and get a very good idea of the size, state, health and activity of the colony.

Wow 🙂

An OMF should have a white (or pale yellow) coloured plastic tray or sheet that can be slid underneath the floor to catch the debris that falls through.

Not black and definitely not Varroa-coloured 😉

White polystyrene Varroa trays really need painting as they discolour badly after a couple of seasons.

Abelo poly Varroa tray

Abelo poly Varroa tray – draughty and easily discolours. Yuck.

A well designed OMF – and there are many that are not 6 – should have a close-fitting tray so that those gusty February squalls don’t disturb the debris that falls through. The position and type of debris is important and if it has been blown about all over the place – or half-eaten by slugs or ants – then your task will be that much harder.

Or impossible.

Varroa tray – single brood box, busy colony, mid-February 2022

This is a tray from a reasonably strong colony in a single brood box. You can just about make out 10 fuzzy horizontal lines of debris. These lines are made up of stuff that’s fallen through the OMF.

You realise that ‘stuff’ is a highly technical beekeeping term that covers everything from antennae, legs, wax cappings, pollen and Varroa to a range of other unidentifiable crap 7.

Tasseography

Tasseography (or tasseomancy) appears to be an entirely made up word 8 for reading tea leaves.

Deciphering the debris on a Varroa tray is a more exact science than tasseography which – and at the risk of offending any fortune-teller-beekeeping readers – isn’t.

It’s not science and it’s not exact 9. The existence of well-reviewed books on the subject proves nothing other than the gullibility of purchasers I’m afraid 10.

So, let’s look again at the debris in the picture above.

The four rows in the centre/top are darker. These are directly below the cluster and are cappings produced (and dropped) as brood emerges. Brood capping are biscuit-coloured (think a sort of dark digestive, not a pale custard cream), presumably because of the incorporated pollen and associated pupal casings.

In addition, mixed in with these rows is some paler granular debris, and there is a lot more of this in the very obvious rows towards the bottom of the picture.

These are the wax cappings that are produced when the bees uncap stores. If you have a close look at these rows you can also see some white or off-white sugar crystals.

So, we can tell the approximate size of the brood nest, we know they’re rearing brood and that they are busy uncapping stores.

Hive health

The one thing you won’t see on that tray are any Varroa 11. That particular tray was left in situ from 17/1/22 to 13/2/22. I can therefore be reasonably confident that the colony is healthy, with low Varroa levels.

I can see a tall, handsome stranger in your future … and a lot of Varroa

This second tray is from another colony in a single brood box. They are also rearing brood but have yet to venture much beyond the cluster when uncapping stores.

However, looking closely at this tray I can see a disappointingly high Varroa drop … somewhere in the region of 30-50. Again, this tray has been under the colony for a month, so I’ll need to monitor Varroa levels carefully as they build up during the spring.

As an aside, both these colonies have an identical record of miticide treatments 12 and both are in the same apiary. My records show that the colony with the higher Varroa natural drop (i.e. not due to recent treatment, the tray was cleaned in mid-January and they were last treated in November) in winter have consistently had higher mite levels.

All other things being equal – e.g. temper, behaviour, frugality 13 – I would choose to rear queens from a colony with the low mite levels.

The colony that first Varroa tray was from are not ‘mite resistant’.

They will have Varroa.

My post-treatment mite counts showed a modest mite drop and I’m confident that the treatment will have been no more than 95% effective. However, low mites are better than loadsa mites 14 and it will be interesting to see if colonies headed by daughter queens behave similarly.

Entrances

The late summer/early autumn colony reduces in size as the year progresses and as bees die off. At some point in early spring that daily births outnumber daily deaths (Murray McGregor calls this ‘crossover day’) and the colony starts to expand again.

So what happens to all those corpses?

The bees fall down through the cluster to the hive floor. On good flying days the undertaker bees will carry these away and discard them outside the hive.

However, during protracted cold or wet periods when the bees cannot fly the corpses can end up covering the floor and eventually blocking the hive entrance.

Multi-purpose Swiss Army penknife for beekeepers (sort of)

So the second check you need to perform is to ensure that the hive entrance is clear. This might mean removing the mouseguard and gently raking out the accumulated corpses.

In the kewl floors I favour the L-shaped entrance requires a correspondingly L-shaped piece of wire (a repurposed stainless steel spoke from a bicycle wheel) to check it’s clear. The same tool works perfectly well on almost all other hive entrances as well.

Be aware that you might inadvertently disturb workers near the hive entrance … these can fly out and aggressively ‘ask’ you to move away 15.

Tunnel entrances

The only entrances this multipurpose-and-soon-to-be-patented tool 16 is unsuitable for are those on the hives in my bee shed.

Entrance duct and hive floor ...

Entrance duct and hive floor … brood box removed for clarity

These have a 6” tunnel entrance. Even with a torch it’s difficult to see whether the inner hive entrance is blocked or not.

However, since you’ve already removed the Varroa tray it’s easy to look up through the OMF and check it’s clear.

There are two ways to do this:

  1. Prostrate yourself and look though the OMF while at the same time getting a gentle dusting of the stuff raining down from the cluster, or
  2. Use the phone on your camera to take a quick photo (you’ll need to use the flash).

Nothing to see here … other than some clown photobombing the hive checkup

If you do find the floor covered in corpses and the entrances blocked – whether the hives are in a shed or outside) it’s very important to clear them before leaving the apiary.

Blocked Kewl floor

Blocked Kewl floor …

Simply separate the brood box from the floor, no need to remove the crownboard, set it gently aside. Clear the floor and the entrance and replace the brood box.

Fortunately, the floors of my hives were all reassuringly clear of corpses.

In the photo from underneath the floor you can see the bottom bars of the frames and, between them 17 the serried rows of bees on the underside of the cluster. There are a lot of bees in the box.

Winter weight

So, without disturbing the colony you now know:

  • the colony is alive
  • they are rearing brood
  • stores are being consumed
  • something of the strength of the colony (in terms of number of seams of bees present)
  • whether they have low or high Varroa levels
  • if they are free to fly when the weather becomes suitable

Not a bad result for 5 minutes work.

But there’s one more thing to check.

Do they have sufficient stores to survive until your next visit to the apiary?

Actually, not just survive, but do they have sufficient stores to continue to rear brood so that the colony expands to be strong enough to exploit the early season forage when it’s available.

And I’ll deal with that question next week as I’m already fast approaching 2500 words 18 and there’s quite a bit more to cover on hive weights and winter feeding.

 

Say “cheese”

A famous photographer was visiting a famous writer …

“Hello”, said the writer, “you’re the famous photographer. You must have a really good camera.”

“Hello”, said the photographer, “you’re the world-renowned writer. You must have a really good pen.”

Meaning of course that the quality of the camera is not the rate-limiting step in taking great photographs. The camera is just a tool.

I’m not a famous photographer. I’ve not even achieved the status of a totally-unknown photographer. But I do like taking photographs. About 99% of the images used on this site are mine, and I probably take a few thousand photographs a year (keeping several hundred and printing a handful 1).

Light and dark, Loch Sunart

Light and dark, Loch Sunart

I particularly enjoy landscape photography, but a large proportion of my photographs are of bees, beehives, apiaries and beekeeping. These are used in talks, here and elsewhere online and as an aide memoir to compensate for my patchy note taking and even patchier memory.

A picture is worth a thousand words

If you give beekeeping talks they really have to be illustrated. There’s nothing much worse (root canal treatment?) than sitting through an hour of Powerpoint slides containing nothing but text 2.

This website would be pretty turgid without the pictures. Some might say that even with the pictures … oh, never mind 😉

But most readers of this site probably give few talks and write fewer articles. That doesn’t mean a camera can’t come in useful.

My note taking – despite my best efforts – is often less than ideal. A quick snap of the apiary as I leave indicates which hive is where 3. It shows more or less how each hive is setup. Numbers of supers, type of split etc. If the hive numbering is also visible (more on that shortly) it can provide a useful memory boost when completing the notes … or a sanity check that the notes recorded actually relate to the hive in question.

Photographs are particularly useful when identifying diseases and pathogens. A good quality image of a questionable frame makes subsequent diagnosis much easier than relying on your memory. It might also be useful for the bee inspectors or the association’s disease maestro.

Martyn Hocking used a photograph to support his find of an Asian Hornet in Devon last year. A reasonable quality photo sent to [email protected] would undoubtedly help prioritise efforts to repel this new and unwelcome invader.

Tools of the trade

I rarely go anywhere without a camera. Sometimes it’s only my ageing phone, but even that’s got a reasonable camera. Newer smartphones have much better cameras with good video capabilities.

However, although the tale of the photographer and the writer has a lot of truth in it, there are certain circumstances when the limitations of the camera are rate-limiting 4.

For photographing bees or detail (e.g suspected disease) in the hive the usual limitations are accurately focusing on small objects close up and the amount of light that reaches the sensor. For these reasons I usually have a compact camera in the bee bag.

Sony RX100

For years I’ve been using a Sony RX100 5 which has a fast (i.e. wide aperture) short zoom Zeiss lens. This is an amazingly competent camera. It’s little bigger than a pack of playing cards, but the combination of a 20 megapixel sensor (5472 x 3648 pixels) and the exceptional lens generates outstanding quality images 6.

Used in one of the automatic modes the camera generally produces reasonably well-focused and exposed images, automagically increasing the ‘film speed’ (ISO) if the lighting is poor.

Sony RX100 mark 1

Sony RX100 mark 1

Unfortunately, a year or so ago I dropped the Sony onto a tiled floor and it’s never been quite the same since. The lens cover doesn’t always open or close and it has developed some unpredictable electronic hiccups. Although it’s still my ‘go to’ day-to-day camera these problems prompted me to look at an alternative.

Panasonic LX15

This is another 20 megapixel quality compact camera. It has four features that are really useful for the photography of bees and beekeeping. It has a fold-out LCD screen that helps compose the image at waist level. The LCD is also a touchscreen so you can simply tap it to select the focus point and take the image. It has excellent video capabilities, including 4k and slo-mo (high speed, 120 frames/second – e.g. these scout bees inspecting a bait hive entrance).

Finally, it has a feature called ‘post focus’ which allows you to take a photograph and choose the point of focus after recording the shot – more on this later.

However, although the LX15 is a very competent camera, the quality of the lens is not as good as the Sony 7. Although this isn’t usually an issue for images that will be displayed at a small size or online, it’s rather obvious when viewed enlarged or printed.

If you go to the trouble of taking a camera with you and find yourself in front of a stunning sunset or a breathtaking panorama (or mother and daughter queens on the same frame or an Asian hornet), you want to have confidence that the quality of the lens is good enough to record the scene.

RAW

Smartphones and most point and shoot cameras record the image in JPEG format. The image has an automatic amount of contrast enhancement, colour enrichment and sharpening applied by the camera. These changes to the image are irreversible and they usually result in a reasonable satisfactory picture 8.

However, for real flexibility the two cameras above (and many other reasonable quality cameras) have the option to record the image in RAW format i.e. the native data from the sensor. These can subsequently be processed (often quite quickly) on a computer to create the desired final image.

This post-processing allows local and global changes in exposure, cropping, colour, sharpness and contrast. All of my RAW images are post-processed with Adobe Lightroom. Those used online take no more than a minute to manipulate, while those destined for printing and framing get a lot more attention.

The one thing you cannot correct during post-processing is focus. If the subject of a picture is out of focus you’re scuppered 9.

Close ups

Taking close up handheld photographs of a moving subject, like a queen on a frame of bees, is not easy.

There she goes ...

There she goes …

This is due to a combination of the available lighting, the shallow depth of field and the movement of the subject.

Because the bees are moving you need a reasonably fast shutter speed to freeze them. A fast shutter speed – unless the lighting is exceptionally bright – means that the aperture 10 must be set to maximise the light getting to the sensor. You’ll often hear photographers talk about wide aperture, or using the lens ‘wide open’.

And this is where the problems really start. Due to the laws of physics, the wider the aperture, the smaller the depth of field.

Depth of field

The depth of field refers to the vertical slice of the image that is in focus. Anything in front or behind this will be out of focus.

Not only does depth of field depend upon the aperture, but it is also influenced by the distance between the lens and the subject. The closer the subject, the shallower the depth of field.

Shallow depth of field

Shallow depth of field – heavily cropped image

As an example, using a camera 11 focused on a subject 10 metres away the depth of field is 5.79 m (from ~7.8 to ~13.6 m). Everything between these distances will be in focus.

At 1 metre the depth of field is 11 cm (from 0.95 to 1.06 m).

At 30 cm the depth of field is 4mm (from ~29.8 to ~ 30.2 cm).

At anything less than 15 cm the depth of field is 1 mm or less.

Can you hold a camera steady enough to keep the subject within the 1 mm depth of field you have?

What about if you are holding the frame with one hand and the camera with the other?

Inevitably, many close-ups are out of focus 🙁

LX15 post focus capabilities

Probably the greatest recent advances in compact digital cameras have been in their video capabilities. The Panasonic LX15 takes advantage of these to allow you to record the scene and decide afterwards which part of the final image you want to be in focus.

It achieves this by analysing the scene and determining the closest and the most distant objects in the field of view. When you press the shutter it then takes a 1-2 second 4k (3840 x 2160 pixels) resolution video, changing the point of focus throughout.

This short video shows how this looks (the camera was handheld).

You can then, in camera or during post-processing, scroll through the video and choose precisely the frame that has the desired subject in focus. The three images below are all from the video above. The originals are cropped to ~4 megapixels, but reduced further in size and quality to present here.

This is pretty remarkable technology.

It’s worth remembering that, for any individual captured frame, the depth of field is still determined by the aperture the lens is set at. The images above are all at f1.6 (i.e. just about wide open).

LX15 focus stacking

You can even combine frames from the video with different planes of focus to make a composite image with a deeper overall depth of focus, just covering the area of the image you are interested in.

This focus stacking feature, unsurprisingly, doesn’t work well with a moving subject like bees on a frame. Similarly, you either need a very steady hand or (better) a tripod. I’ve only used this feature a few times and don’t see a routine application for it. I’d prefer to modify the depth of field by changing the aperture to achieve the same end result.

Limitations of post-focus and focus-stacking

Post-focus sounds like the perfect solution to solve the problems with close up photography.

The two biggest limitations are the size and format of the final images. These are in JPEG format and ‘only’ 3840 x 2160 pixels (8 megapixels, rather than the 20 megapixels that the camera is capable of with still pictures). These significantly reduce the options for subsequent enlargement and negate most options for post-processing. However, for online use (or emailing to the regional bee inspector) they are more than adequate.

The combination of changing the plane of focus during the short video and the movement of a handheld camera can mean that the desired subject is only fleetingly – if ever – in focus.

Or is in focus at the precise moment a big fat drone toddles in front of your beautiful queen 🙁

I suspect that post-focus will become commonplace on cameras (and smartphones). It’s got a lot to offer, but isn’t yet a perfect solution.

Propolis

Both the cameras mentioned cope well with a periodic liberal coating of propolis. You can scrape it off the camera body easily, but it’s worth trying to keep it off the rear LCD panel. In particular, try to keep the touchscreen LCD of the LX15 propolis-free.

Panasonic LX15

Panasonic LX15

Real bee photography

If you want to see some better quality beekeeping photography have a look at the images by Simon Croson or the wonderful pictures by Eric Tourneret in Cueillers de Miel.

Finally … remember that the best camera is the one that you have with you 😉

Colophon

Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye

Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye

Saying “cheese” makes your mouth adopt a shape roughly approximating a smile. It is therefore an instruction given by photographers to help create more appealing images.

It’s not essential. Walker Evans, a great photographer famous for his work for the Farm Security Administration during the 1930’s didn’t ask his subjects to say “cheese”. His portraits and photojournalism are outstanding.

In languages other than English different instructions are sometimes given e.g. most Latin American countries use Diga whiskey (say “whiskey”), Sweden Säg omelett (say “omelette”) and Bulgaria Zele (“Cabbage”). Lots of countries use a variant of Watch the birdy or Smile at the little bird.

The idiom A picture is worth a thousand words dates back over 100 years to a newspaper article in 1911 about journalism and publicity where the phrase “Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words” was used. Even earlier, Napoleon (1769-1821) is reported to have said “Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu’un long discours” (A good sketch is better than a long speech).

Spot the queen part 3

In beekeeping courses you’re always taught to look carefully at the underside of the queen excluder (QE) when removing it incase the queen is there. If she’s not you can then gently place it to one side and start the inspection.

It sometimes also pays to look at the top of the QE …

Queen above the QE

Queen above the QE

I inspected this colony last Sunday and my notes said something like “beautifully calm, behaving queenright but looking queenless … frame of eggs?”. The colony was on a single brood with a QE and one super, topped with a perspex crownboard. The ‘frame of eggs’ comment indicated I thought it would be wise to add a frame of eggs to the colony – if they were queenright they’d simply raise them as worker brood. However, if they were queenless they’d use them to raise queen cells.

I was running out of time and anyway wanted eggs from a colony in a different apiary. If the colony were going to raise a new queen I wanted it to come from better stock. Alternatively, I’d wait and provide them with one of a recent batch of mated queens once they had laid up a good frame or two to demonstrate their quality. I closed them up and made a mental note to deal with the colony later in the week.

If they behave queenright, perhaps they are …

I peeked through the perspex crownboard this afternoon while visiting the apiary and saw a distinctive looking bee walking about on the underside of the crownboard. Despite being upside down it was clear, even with a very brief view, that it was a small, dark queen. She was walking calmly about the super and wasn’t being hassled by the workers.

I strongly suspected that she was a virgin that had either wiggled through the QE – perhaps it’s damaged or she was particularly small at emergence – and then got trapped. Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, I’d inadvertently placed a brood frame near the super during a previous inspection and she’d walked across. This colony is in the bee shed and space is a bit cramped during inspections.

I know from my notes that the colony had an unsealed queen cell in it a couple of weeks ago so – weather permitting – there should still be sufficient time to get her mated before she’s too old. I removed the super, located her on the QE, gently lifted her off and placed her in the brood box. She wandered quietly down between the brood frames and the bees didn’t seem at all perturbed.

Fingers crossed …

Spot the queen part 2

If you managed to spot the queen in the image a fortnight ago you did better than I did … although she was clipped and marked, there was no sign of her in the bees clustered around the hive entrance. Furthermore, once they’d returned to the colony she was clearly absent (an oxymoron surely?) at the next inspection – no eggs, several well developed queen cells and the usually placid bees were rather intemperate. Perhaps she was lost in the grass, got injured or was otherwise incapacitated during swarming? Perhaps she did return and was then done away with? A pity, as they were good stock, and had already produced three full supers this season. However, I’d also grafted from this colony – see below.

Here’s another picture of a queen that’s a bit clearer … but wasn’t when inspecting the colony.

I performed a colony split using a Snelgrove board. The colony was clearly thinking about swarming, with a couple of 1-2 day old unsealed queen cells present during the inspection. I knocked these back and introduced a frame of eggs from better stock. On checking the nominally queenless half on the seventh day they behaved as though they were queenright (no new QC’s on the frame of eggs provided or elsewhere, calmer than expected etc.). I must have missed a sealed cell (presumably a tiny one) when splitting the colony the week before. After a bit of searching – it was a crowded box – I found a small knot of bees harrying a tiny queen, by far the smallest I’ve seen this year and not really any bigger than a worker. I separated the majority of the workers and managed to take a couple of photos.

The abdomen is not well shown in the picture but extends to just past the protruding antenna of the worker behind her. Overall she was narrower and only fractionally longer than the workers in the same colony. When surrounded by a golf ball-sized clump of workers she was effectively invisible.

Midget Majesty

Midget Majesty

The picture above was taken near the end of May, shortly before I removed the first batch of cells from a cell raising colony set up with a Cloake board. These queen cells were from grafts raised from the colony that subsequently swarmed from the bee shed. The cells went into 3+ frame poly nucs arranged in a circle split, the queens emerged during glorious weather in the second week of June, matured for a few days and – just about the time they would be expected to mate – got trapped in the colonies by ten days of very poor weather.

And they're off

And they’re off …

However, over the last few days the weather has picked up, I’ve seen queens leaving on orientation or mating flights and the workers have started piling in pollen. All of these are good signs and suggest that at least some of the queens are already mated and laying … we’ll see at the next inspection.

Spot the queen competition

I’ve posted before about why clipping the queen helps … here’s a rather more dramatic example. This colony from the bee shed – in the middle of a Pagden artificial swarm – decided it was time to go. Since the queen was clipped they regrouped at the colony entrance so – at least as far as beekeeping is concerned – ‘all was not lost’.

Clipped queen swarm

Clipped queen swarm

“Clipping the queen” refers to the slight shortening of one of the queens wings. This prevents her from flying – or at least from flying any distance or with any control. Whilst it’s not possible to determine whether the queen feels any pain when its being done, clipped queens lead long, natural and productive lives, so I don’t think it’s detrimental to them. It’s certainly beneficial for the beekeeper and beekeeping. The wing on a queen is clipped after she is mated … 😉

I’ll discuss swarm control and prevention in the bee shed (when I achieve it)  😉

This is the first of series of irregular midweek photograph posts.