Synopsis : Our recent study on landscape-scale coordinated Varroa control suggest there are benefits for colony health. I know it makes sense, but how many actually do it?
Introduction
In the magnum opus last week I discussed how bees discriminate nestmates from non-nestmates at the hive entrance. Inevitably I had to discuss the processes of drifting and robbing as these activities, together with the peripatetic drones, largely account for the ‘foreign’ bees arriving at a hive entrance.
I described drifting as a short-range phenomenon, predominantly of bees with immature cuticular hydrocarbon profiles 1, on their first few orientation flights. In contrast, I described robbing as a potentially long-range event that could occur over at least one kilometre.
I should have re-read the literature and refreshed my memory of what others have already reported for these activities before writing the post 🙁 .
Synopsis : The manufacturer’s instructions for miticide use are often poorly worded, confusing or contradictory. Many beekeepers already struggle to control Varroa and this makes things worse.
Introduction
How many beekeepers read the documentation that accompanies the miticides they use for Varroa control? How many understand what all the terms – including the pharmacological ones – mean?
Posology anyone?
What about the phrase “Withdrawal period”?
Can all miticides containing the same active ingredient be used in the same way? If not, why not?
What about repeat usage? Can you repeat a treatment (if needed) if the instructions do not explicitly state that repeat treatments are not allowed? 1 Or can you only administer a second application if the instructions explicitly state that it is allowed?
And if a you are allowed to apply a second treatment, can you administer a third? What about treating in November and the following January? Two different calendar years, but well under one year apart.
Don’t expect any answers to these or related questions in this post 😉 .
Out, damn’d mite …
The intention here is to highlight the slightly shambolic nature of the documentation that accompanies (and sometimes does not accompany, but which you are probably expected to read!) the miticides approved for use in the UK. I don’t have time to cover all the miticides in a single post so will restrict this post 2 to two containing formic acid and one that contains oxalic acid.
And … while we’re at it … which are the legally binding instructions? Those in teensy-weensy lettering on the purchased product or the ones listed in the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) database?
MAQS and FormicPro
MAQS (Mite Away Quick Strips) and FormicPro are very similar products.
Actually, they are so similar that it’s rather difficult to tell them apart.
MAQS
The packaging is similar – a cardboard box or plastic tub filled with sachets, each containing two strips impregnated with formic acid (and some other stuff – but what isn’t specified). Even the price is similar; two doses (by which they mean sufficient to treat two hives, or one hive twice, cost an eye-watering 3 £16.50. I’ve not checked other suppliers, but Thorne’s list the 2, 10 and 30 dose boxes of MAQS and FormicPro at identical price points 4.
FormicPro
If you bother to read the online documentation (which you should) you will see that both are marketed by NOD Apiary Ireland Limited, and that each strip contains 68.2 g of formic acid. Even the description of the individual gel strips is very similar:
Brown, semi-rigid to soft gel strip covered in a biodegradable laminated paper, which maintains form (FormicPro).
Each strip is an off-white to caramel coloured gel wrapped in white laminated biodegradable paper (MAQS).
So, we have the same active ingredient, formulated in the same way, packaged in a similar manner, with identical diagrams for how to apply two strips to the brood box. The temperature range recommended for use is identical and both have similar warnings about queen damage.
The same but different
But, although MAQS and FormicPro appear to be essentially the same, from a practical beekeeping standpoint they are very different.
MAQS can be used with honey supers on the hive but FormicPro cannot.
Of course, pedantically, that’s not exactly true.
You could use them ’any-damned-way’ you please, but you would probably be breaking the rules.
You are allowed to use MAQS when there are honey supers present, but you are not allowed to use FormicPro – in all other regards an identical product – when there are honey supers on the hive.
Here are the relevant words from the online SPC’s (Summary of Product Characteristics) 5:
Supers with honey must be removed from the hive prior to product application. See Section 4.5. Honey stored in super(s) put on for the treatment period must be removed and not used for human consumption. Spent strips must be removed before supers intended for harvest are placed on the hive (FormicPro – section 4.11 ‘Withdrawal period’).
The strips may be applied during honey flow; put on honey supers if honey flow is anticipated, to allow adequate space for colony expansion (MAQS – section 4.5 ‘Special precautions for use’).
There is one other difference as well … you can buy FormicPro whereas MAQS appears to be out of stock from all the suppliers I’ve checked.
Perhaps it has been withdrawn already by the manufacturer … ?
This is going to confuse a lot of beekeepers who have come to value MAQS as a short-term and effective treatment for Varroa management during the season.
Many will continue to use FormicPro in the same way that they used MAQS … which could be problematic if they are visited by a Seasonal Bee Inspector.
Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC)
Any miticides you purchase should be accompanied by a set of instructions – on the outside of the box, or the foil packet or wherever. These are often like ’ant tracks’ – illegibly small printing, almost impossible to read without the use of a binocular microscope 6.
Api-Bioxal … where’s my microscope?
Importantly, the packet will also carry a lot number and a use by date – you need to keep records of the former for several years 7 after use. I almost always forget to write this into my notes, but I always photograph the packet so have a dated copy on my ‘phone.
Use the VMD search facility to avoid the budgie treatments
If you want to review the official documentation for the miticide you need to visit the Veterinary Medicines Directorate Product Information Database. With a bit of rummaging around (Hint .. the search facility is your friend 8 ) you can usually find at least two official documents for each authorised product:
A document prefixed SPC (the Summary of Product Characteristics).
A document prefixed QRD (for Quality Review of Documents), which is the Product Literature; essentially the labelling and text that is supplied when you purchase the product.
If you read these you will find a large amount of duplication. These documents are periodically revised – the MAQS and FormicPro paperwork is all dated June 2022, with MAQS being first authorised in 2013 and FormicPro in 2021.
Discrepancies and confusion
Aside from the ‘biggy’ (not being allowed to use FormicPro when there are supers on the hive) there are other discrepancies or confusing text in these documents.
I’ve already listed one example …
The MAQS SPC indicates the ability to use the product when supers are present under section 4.5 ’Special precautions for use’.
In contrast, the FormicPro SPC indicates that the product cannot be used when honey supers are present under section 4.11 ’Withdrawal period’, though they do refer to section 4.5 (where, perplexingly, only empty honey supers are mentioned).
Section 4.5 seems to me to be the logical place to mention the ever-so-slightly-critical matter of not being allowed to use FormicPro when there are honey supers present.
Does anyone proof read or sanity check these documents?
If so, why don’t they ever define the term withdrawal period?
If you do a search online for ’withdrawal period’ there are all sorts of things about hormonal birth control and legal contract cancellations, but you need to scroll down to the penultimate item on the first page to get the relevant meaning:
The time that must elapse between the last administration of a veterinary medicine and the slaughter or production of food from that animal, to ensure that the food does not contain levels of the medicine that exceed the maximum residue limit.
And that’s from the European Medicines Agency; it wasn’t until somewhere on the third page of results I could find anything from the VMD 9.
Helpful? Not 🙁 .
Of course, there’s an argument that if you’re applying the ‘medicine’ then you should understand all the paperwork and seek further advice if needed.
But I suspect many do not.
More vagueness
Whilst very specific in places e.g. duration of treatment, maximum temperature for use 29.5°C (Really? Does that 0.5°C make a difference? How many domestic thermometers are that accurate?), the documentation also carries other contradictory or vague instructions.
Both MAQS and FormicPro contain the following words under Section 4.4 (‘Special warnings for each target species ‘) of the SPC
Use according to local treatment recommendations, if available.
Who makes these local treatment recommendations? Are they legally binding? Can you just invent them? What can they cover or not cover? Could the local treatment recommendations state “Use five strips for a month”?
And what about disposal of the used, unused and waste products? Here you will find instructions in two separate places in the SPC.
When removed, dispose of by composting (FormicPro, Section 4.9 “Administration”).
The strips do not need to be removed from the hive after the application period of 7 days as the honey bees dispose of the spent strips. If they are removed, dispose of by composting (MAQS, Section 4.9 “Administration”).
And, confusingly …
Any unused veterinary medicinal product or waste materials derived from such veterinary medicinal products should be disposed of in accordance with local requirements (MAQS and FormicPro Section 6.6 ‘Special precautions for disposal’)
So can they be composted, or do ‘local requirements’ take precedence?
I can’t even be bothered to comment on section 4.6 ‘Adverse reactions’ which helpfully define very common, common, uncommon, rare etc events, but then only apply them to one adverse reaction, despite listing many others.
Grrrrr.
I’ve spent a career trying to make sense of badly worded, confusing, verbose, self-contradictory documents (until the arrival of ChatGPT this was the norm for both student essays and University administrative paperwork) but some of these instructions still baffle me.
Api-Bioxal
The active ingredient in Api-Bioxal is oxalic acid (OA). I’ve discussed this extensively in previous posts. There are several other miticides listed on the VMD database that have OA as the active ingredient; Oxuvar, VarroMed (which also contains formic acid), Dany’s BienenWohl powder/solution and Oxybee. Of these, the last two may not be routinely available in the UK.
I’m going to restrict my (brief) discussion to Api-Bioxal as it’s the only one I’m familiar with and because it highlights a different form of internal infernal contradiction in the official instructions and paperwork.
The Api-Bioxal SPC and instructions clearly state (in section 4.5 ’Special precautions for use’ … or ‘the logical place’ as it should be known) that it should be administered when supers are not present on the hive.
In addition, it also clearly states that the withdrawal period is ‘Zero days’ 10.
Sublimox vaporiser … phoretic mites don’t stand a chance
The duration of application for MAQS and FormicPro is seven days and the formic acid permeates the cappings and kills mites in capped cells. In contrast, Api-Bioxal is a single shot treatment … it may (or may not) remain active in the hive for some time after administration, but you essentially apply it and walk away.
Job done 🙂 .
Oxalic acid does not penetrate capped cells and so is only effective if the colony is broodless. The instructions are clear on this point (to their credit).
A single shot used once … or twice?
The instructions describe two approved methods of administering Api-Bioxal. Trickling a 4.2% (w/v) solution made up in 1:1 (‘thin’) syrup onto the visible seams of bees, or vaporising a hive with up to 2.3 g of Api-Bioxal.
Administration by trickling … Up to two treatments per year (winter and/or spring-summer season in brood-free colonies). The treatment should be made in a single administration.
Administration by vaporisation … Maximal dose 2.3g per hive as a single administration. One treatment per year.
I think the ‘single administration’ means that you cannot split a treatment into two e.g. vaporise 1.15 g twice, or trickle 2.5 ml per seam and then repeat it the following day.
What’s odd is that trickling can be conducted twice per year, whereas vaporisation cannot. What about vaporising in December and January? i.e. once in each of two successive years … which could even be on successive days (31/12 and 1/1).
This is odd for two reasons – firstly it seems strange that the same compound can be administered a different number of times depending upon the route of administration.
Well, OK, perhaps it’s really bad for the colony to be vaporised? In that case it would be understandable, though some explanation of the point would help.
The good old days … trickle treating colonies before Api-Bioxal
Trickling and vaporising do cause differential damage to colonies, but it is trickling that does more damage. Trickled OA damages open brood and studies from the LASI group in Sussex showed that colonies trickle-treated when brood was present were subsequently weaker than those that were vaporised (Al Toufailia et al., 2015).
Conversely, several studies of repeated vaporisation have shown that it is well tolerated by the colony.
So, in this instance the instructions are at odds with my understanding 11 of the current science.
Zero days
If the withdrawal period for Api-Bioxal is zero days (it is), can you add a stack of supers to the colony the day after vaporising or trickle treating a colony?
Which is a little odd as the oxalic acid remains active in the colony for several days after it is added. If you apply Api-Bioxal and then monitor mite drop on a daily basis over about a week it often peaks a day or two after it is administered, but goes on at a reducing rate for ~5-6 days. Whilst it could just be taking its time killing the mites 13, I think it is more likely that residual activity remains for several days.
Perhaps the wording in the instructions on ‘honey flow’ precludes this, but you can certainly add supers before a honey flow and I’d argue that the wording isn’t completely clear cut.
Licensing
I know almost nothing about the licensing of veterinary medicines. My understanding is that a license is applied for, supported by evidence of efficacy, toxicity etc. and that it is restricted in terms of the range of methods used to apply the miticide.
Therefore, if the manufacturer only applies for a license for trickling or vaporisation, then that’s what they get (if approved). Varromed (an OA solution) can be administered by trickling and spraying. When made up for spraying the OA solution has a long shelf life as there is no sugar present.
But that’s not an option for Api-Bioxal 🙁 .
Beekeepers are restricted in what they can (legally) do by what the manufacturer sought a licence for, even if there are better ways of administering the active compound, or even if the scientific evidence (sometimes preceding licensing, and certainly preceding updates of the documentation) indicates that – for example – repeat administration is both safe and effective.
Trying to make sense of it all
In Scotland a Working Group has been established to try and resolve some of these discrepancies and provide better advice to beekeepers on the use of the currently licensed miticides.
The Working Group involves representatives from a variety of interested parties including an acronym salad comprising SASA, VMD, BFA, FSS, SBA, SRUC, SEPA, APHA, DEFRA, DAERA, NBU and some academics and ex-academics with a particular interest in honey bee health.
I have written a lot about Varroa control on this site. In my view it is relatively straightforward to control mite numbers using the currently licensed miticides appropriately. In my experience it is easier to do this in Scotland, where we have lower winter temperatures and a greater chance of an extended broodless period.
However, Scotland – unlike the Midlands where I have also kept bees – offers some additional complications where Varroa control is concerned. Our most important (by £££) nectar source is heather which yields late in the year, too late in some years to subsequently protect the winter bees from mites and viruses.
Balancing the needs of the bees (low mites and viruses to overwinter successfully) with those of the beekeeper (hundreds of kilograms of heather honey) requires a careful balancing act and a good understanding of the benefits and limitations of the miticides available.
In turn, this needs good documentation and better advice that is both easily accessible and understandable by beekeepers.
And … to my surprise – and I look forward to it being confirmed or refuted – I’m told that the SPC is the legally binding document with regard to the use or misuse of licensed miticides.
I’ve (had to) read them all now … have you?
References
Al Toufailia, H., Scandian, L., and Ratnieks, F.L.W. (2015) Towards integrated control of varroa: 2) comparing application methods and doses of oxalic acid on the mortality of phoretic Varroa destructor mites and their honey bee hosts. Journal of Apicultural Research 54: 108–120 https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2015.1106777.
Synopsis : Getting good answers involves asking good questions. But remember that the bees have no concept of what is ‘best’, or of the calendar.
Introduction
If you’re just starting beekeeping it’s likely you will have a never-ending list of questions about the somewhat arcane and often perplexing hobby you are embarking on.
And if you’ve been beekeeping for years (or even decades) you might have the same number of questions, albeit somewhat more specialised or esoteric 1. You’ll also probably be involved in answering some of the questions from less experienced beekeepers.
Hive tools … which is the best?
Getting good quality and appropriate answers broadly depends upon three things:
who (or what) the question is directed at,
the wording of the question, and
whether the answer is simply factual or involves a subjective assessment
Let’s take a simple example …
Q. What is the scientific name of a bee? A. The scientific name for the order of bees is Hymenoptera, but this encompasses many different species of bees, not just a single type of bee. To specify a particular species, a scientific name would be necessary, for example, the scientific name for a honey bee is Apis Mellifera.
… so, let’s be more specific …
Q. What is the scientific name of a honey bee? A. The scientific name for a honey bee is Apis Mellifera.
By asking a more specific question you have received a better answer.
Unfortunately, it’s still not completely correct.
There is a convention on the capitalisation of scientific names; the name of the genus (in this case Apis) is always capitalised, but the name of the particular species (mellifera; meaning honey-bearing) should start with a lowercase letter.
The correct answer should therefore be Apis mellifera.
Or what?
You may have noticed the who (or what) in the list above. The ‘or what’ was deliberate because, increasingly these types of questions will be answered, not by humans or beekeepers 2, but by a machine.
In fact, the two questions and answers shown above were answered by a machine … in this case one called ChatGPT. In this post, ChatGPT responses are shown in red text. The only reason you may not have heard of ChatGPT 3, released just 2 months ago, was because you’ve been living as a hermit in the Tora Bora cave complex for the last few years.
If ChatGPT is new to you then you’re going to have ample opportunity to experience it – or its successors – in the next few months and years. ChatGPT is described as a chatbot which has been trained through supervised and reinforcement learning. It can do a range of things that are a lot more impressive than not quite getting the scientific name of honey bees correct … it can compose music, write computer code and pass written exams for medicine. It can produce essays and it is causing considerable concern in education, where students are already using it for homework 4.
Perhaps I’ll save myself some late night writing by asking ChatGPT to do my homework …
Write a 500 word article for beekeepers about hive tools and Taranov swarm control, remembering to include a handful of poor quality puns and some truly shocking, punctuation.
I asked it to do this … it generates the answer in less than a minute. I’ve added the answer as a separate page as I don’t want to get even more distracted from the topic of the post today.
Factual inaccuracies
ChatGPT does OK on the poor puns (beeeing, buzz-worthy etc.) but less well on the shoddy punctuation, unless you count the Oxford comma.
It does much less well on Taranov swarm control. Indeed, I had started by asking it to “Describe how to conduct swarm control using the Taranov method” and received the following answer:
The Taranov method is a technique used for swarm control in beekeeping that involves manipulating the hive to prevent swarming. The process begins by identifying a colony that is likely to swarm and removing any queen cells, which are the cells that contain developing queen bees. Next, the beekeeper will divide the colony by removing a section of comb with eggs and young larvae, and placing it in a new hive box. This creates a population imbalance in the original hive, which triggers the bees to start raising new queen bees. Finally, the beekeeper will monitor the hive to ensure that no new queen cells are forming, and will continue to remove them as they appear. This method aims to reduce the likelihood of swarming, by keeping the colony balanced and preventing the development of new queen bees.
Which is almost completely wrong. I’m not going to describe Taranov swarm control, but it’s not that. If you want to know (and it is an intriguing method, though not one I have used) I suggest you ask an experienced beekeeper, not a machine. It requires a simple, correct, factual answer.
Subjective or qualified answers
The other thing ChatGPT is not good at is answering questions that require some experience and/or may be subjective. For example …
Q. What is the best type of beehive for a beginner? A. For a beginner, the Langstroth beehive is considered the best option due to its standardized dimensions, ease of management, and wide availability of equipment and accessories. Additionally, it is commonly used by many beekeepers and has a strong community of support and resources available.
… OK, what about something even more important?
Q. What is the best type of hive tool for beekeeping? A. A J-shaped hive tool is widely considered as one of the best for beekeeping. It is versatile, durable and can be used for a variety of tasks such as prying apart beehive boxes, scraping propolis and wax, and removing frames.
The first answer actually isn’t bad, particularly if you are in the US. However, the justification is a little odd and could equally well be applied to a National, Dadant 5 or Layens hive.
The ‘best hive’-type question is one commonly asked by beginners and one where a better question improves the answer. If you instead ask ChatGPT for the best beehive for a beginner in the UK it recommends a National hive (justified by compatibility).
However, the answer ChatGPT gives to the ‘best hive tool’ question is clearly wrong.
Simply the best … no contest!
Anyone with even passing experience of opening a hive knows that the claw-type hive tool is by far and away the most practical, comfortable and good looking 😉 .
The ’widely considered’ in ChatGPT’s answer is the giveaway. It’s (obviously) never used a hive tool and so cannot speak from experience.
Flame wars
The examples above are trivial but they do show both the abilities and shortcomings of ChatGPT. But it will get better – more accurate, more factually correct, better at providing qualified subjective answers (and hiding the fact that it has no direct experience of any of the things it is comparing).
You’d better get used to it as it will revolutionise our interactions – direct or indirect – with computers; websites, discussion forums, computer programming, teaching, student assessment and – increasingly – creative work as well.
It’s going to put a lot of people out of work 🙁 .
I’m already out of work, so I don’t feel too threatened, but perhaps it’s also going to eventually replace the beekeeping blogger.
As an aside, I thought a ChatGPT-powered ‘user’ on a beekeeping discussion forum like Beesource in the US, or the BeekeepingForum here in the UK would be – at least briefly – entertaining. Some of the discussion threads on these can get really out of hand, even with strict moderation (a thankless task).
ChatGPT can already interact conversationally, its command of the subject and of English (and, of course, a range of other languages) is already better than many readers/contributors, and it would be a whole lot more persistent in an online argument (though it is currently not particularly creative when it comes to insults).
It’s going to render many of these discussion forums worthless and is already banned from some of the computing forums. The scientific journal Nature has established ground rules for its use – it cannot ‘share’ authorship (!), its use in data analysis must be documented etc.
I already find many discussion forums unrewarding … they might get a lot worse, at least in the short term. Since many beginners use them a lot, I thought it was worth mentioning.
Better answers
Although I’ve been wandering some way off topic there are some important points embedded in the first half of this post.
The question you ask influences the answer you get.
In beekeeping, your local environment and your latitude are particularly influential in the lives of your bees.
I gave a talk this evening on queen rearing. One of the questions was ‘How early in the season can I start?’
That’s a perfectly good and valid question, but answering it requires knowing something about the local climate and colony development.
It also varies from year to year … for example, a cold spring delays things.
Some might simply answer ‘mid-May’ or ‘late-April’ … indeed, questions like that may be asked by someone wanting a calendar-based answer.
Unfortunately, beekeeping isn’t that simple. Beekeepers on the UK south coast can often start queen rearing two months before I can here in north west Scotland.
My answer involved something about drone availability. A drone takes 24 days to develop and a few days after that to become sexually mature. Studies have shown that the peak of drone brood production occurs about one month before swarming (Page and Erickson, 1988), though production starts earlier.
And the correct answer is …
So a better answer is to keep an eye on your colonies, observe drone brood production increasing and – 3-4 weeks later (or perhaps a little before 6 ) – start your queen rearing with every expectation the bees will have got the timing about right.
One of many …
In a cold spring they’ll start producing drones later, at a more southerly latitude they’ll produce drones much earlier than they will in northern Scotland.
Yes, the answer is more difficult to understand than ‘the 19th of April’, but it’s much more likely to be correct because it is based on an understanding of the biology of the bees.
It’s also likely to be correct most years. You can test this by keeping notes. You’ll then have something to refer back to next year and the one after that, and you’ll be able to answer, with compelling authority, anyone who asks you the same question 😉 .
In about 30 years you’ll be able to review your notes – of drone production and queen rearing successes – and see whether the timing needs revising 🙂 .
In doing that you’ll have completed the transition from seeking a calendar-based response, to understanding the drivers that determine colony development and reproduction, and end up with an answer that is generically applicable, qualified and based upon personal experience.
Expect biased answers
My preference for a particular type of hive tool is based upon personal experience (and unrelated to the fact that I bought 20 of them very cheaply a decade ago). Do not underestimate the importance of personal experience in answering beekeeping questions … or its ability to generate biased, unqualified or even completely incorrect answers.
Ask three experienced beekeepers a question and you’ll get five answers … one will be completely wrong, another will involve ‘brood and a half’ (also wrong … obviously), a third will answer a different question altogether and the final two will express diametrically opposing views about whether the J-shaped or claw-shaped hive tool is ‘best’.
The answer you get is based upon the experience of whoever you ask … and how willing they are to answer.
Be warned, it’s not unusual for the most (usefully) experienced and the most vociferous beekeepers to be different individuals. In fact, it’s not unusual for the most vociferous to be much less experienced than they sound.
For a subject as practical as beekeeping, practical experience is far, far more valuable than ‘knowledge’ gleaned from the internet (after all, you might have been reading something written by ChatGPT).
I know the difference between the Miller and Hopkins methods for queen rearing. I’ve not used either (yet) so I don’t know which is better – either outright, or in particular circumstances.
This can all be a bit overwhelming as a beginner … use your judgement, listen, check some of the answers in a good book 7 or a reputable online source, ask a follow-up question.
Nobody knows all the answers and it sometimes feels as though the more knowledge you acquire, the more questions appear.
Answer your own questions; observation and understanding
There is no ‘best’ hive, or 8 hive tool. The bees don’t care and – through experience – you’ll find what suits your beekeeping.
It’s likely that the ‘best’ anything in beekeeping – bee, hive tool, hive, smoker, forage, honey, hive stand, extractor, queen excluder etc. – is a meaningless concept.
It’s an irrelevant question as far as bees are concerned. There may be good ones and bad ones, but it’s surprising how tolerant and accommodating the bees – and a beekeeper – can be.
I’d strongly recommend that anyone starting beekeeping ignores articles with the word ‘best’ in them – except perhaps this one.
Ask meaningful questions and look for insightful answers.
The ‘when to start queen rearing?’ is a good – albeit incomplete – question and I suggested how I would (or did) answer it above.
In that example it is really by observing and understanding the bees that you answer the question. I think those are two of the most important skills to acquire as a beekeeper; doing so will always help you get better answers, not least because they help answer them yourself.
Asking an experienced beekeeper gets you part way there but it doesn’t come close to working something out yourself.
Do an experiment
I used the word ‘arcane’ in one of the opening sentences. It means mysterious, obscure or little understood. Despite sounding a little like the word archaic – meaning old fashioned or belonging to an earlier period – it has a totally different etymology. Arcane is derived from the Latin arcānus meaning ‘closed or shut up’, whereas archaic is from the Greek ἀρχαϊκός for ‘ancient’.
Nevertheless, bits of beekeeping are both arcane and archaic.
Sometimes they’re ‘old fashioned’ because experience has shown that a particular method works reliably well, so is promoted and becomes widely used. However, sometimes it’s because ”it’s always been done like that” and everyone unquestioningly follows the approach without asking whether there are other – perhaps better – ways of achieving something.
A foundationless frame is a frame containing no foundation (helpfully, the clue is in the name) . Every foundationless frame you use saves you about £1.40 based upon the current price of foundation. What’s more, because commercial foundation contains miticide residues, every frame you use reduces traces of miticides in your hive.
And, if you read online about making foundationless frames you’ll find lots of descriptions, many of which include instructions to provide a wax, or waxed, starter strip attached under the top bar for the bees to start drawing comb from.
When I started using foundationless frames I – unquestioningly – followed these instructions, cutting 2 cm strips of commercial foundation and nailing them in place in my frames.
Foundationless frame
And they often fell out … which prompted me to ask a question I should have done in the first place, and to do an experiment.
Ask the bees
Where do bees naturally start drawing comb?
Wherever the swarm ends up. If it’s in a previously unoccupied tree hole, or loft space, there are no convenient strips of wax foundation to be used as guides. The cavity may be completely empty.
Clearly they don’t need a starter strip to work from.
However, the beekeeper does not want the bees to build comb totally haphazardly. We want them to stick within the confines of the frame or it becomes impossible to manipulate. It’s therefore useful to provide them with ‘guides’ on where to start … they might not follow them, but they almost always do.
So, by understanding what the bees do naturally, qualified by our own selfish interests in managing the colony, we can ask the bees what suits them … a strip of wax foundation, a waxed wooden guide or a lollipop stick.
And, having worked out which the bees prefer, we can make a decision based upon what also suits us.
Take your pick …
I therefore did a simple experiment. I built a dozen or so foundationless frames, each containing three randomly positioned starter strips under the top bar – one third wax foundation, one third waxed wood and one third plain wooden lollipop stick (or ‘tongue depressors’).
Over the course of a season I used these in a variety of colonies and observed which of the starter strips was preferred … indicated by which the bees chose first, or which they avoided.
And the results are in …
It made no difference at all. There was no correlation between the type of starter strip and use by the bees.
They just don’t care.
So I only now use plain wooden starter strips. They are quicker and easier to prepare, impervious to the steam wax extractor and much more robust. I use them in full hives and in my mini-nucs for queen mating, simply gluing the wood in place.
Kieler mini-nuc topbar frames – no need for foundation or waxing
A little understanding of what the bees do, coupled with a little experimentation and some observation, allowed me work out the answer to the question ’What is the best material for starter strips’9.
I should note that many other have reached exactly the same conclusion independently. I’m not claiming to have discovered this first, but I did formally test what the bees preferred.
Some ChatGPT creativity to end with
To finish I thought I’d ask ChatGPT to do something creative.
Rather than eliciting incorrect answers about Taranov swarm control I asked it for a poem, in the form of a haiku 10, about honey bee swarms;
Golden bees swarm forth Honeyed scent on the breeze Nature’s sweet bounty.
Not bad 🙂
References
Page, R.E., and E. H. Erickson, Jr. (1988) Reproduction by Worker Honey Bees (Apis mellifera L.). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 23: 117–126 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4600197. Accessed February 3, 2023. Note: this might not be accessible online, so you could try this instead – Page, R.E. Jr (1982) The seasonal occurrence of honey bee swarms in north-central California. American Bee Journal 121:266-272.
Synopsis : Join a beekeeping association, get a mentor, get local bees, manage your hopes and expectations, get your bees through the winter. Simples.
Introduction
Three years ago I wrote a post on ”Start(ing) beekeeping” courses. That was mainly written from the perspective of the tutor. As with many posts on this site, it was read a lot at the time and then rapidly sank down the rankings, being overtaken by posts on swarm control, Varroa management and queen cells … all topics that should have been covered in a course on how to start beekeeping.
Hmmm? … I wonder why that is?
Today’s post is about the same topic, but from the perspective of the beginner.
What should you be doing and what should you not be doing?
What should you expect from your first beekeeping season?
This is different from what you might hope for.
It’s important that you manage your expectations (or someone manages them) as the alternative might well be disillusionment.
Hope for well-tempered bees, balmy summer days filled with the contented buzz of busy foragers 1, and a whopping honey crop to jar for friends and family (and the local shops).
Expect disappointing weather, temperamental bees and possibly even lost swarms, several head-scratching ”WTF? I don’t understand … 🙁 “ moments, worry and – perhaps – some honey.
Nothing like enough to recoup your expenditure, insufficient for your family, let alone your friends, but enough to call yourself a beekeeper.
Except … not so fast.
Hives in the snow
To call yourself a beekeeper I’d argue that you need to get your bees through their first winter.
This last part is so important it should be the primary goal of your first season.
Everything else is a bonus.
Beekeeping involves practical skills
And, unfortunately, you cannot learn these in a draughty church hall on alternate Wednesday evenings, or by reading and re-reading Ted Hooper’s Guide to bees and honey over the Christmas holidays.
At best you can learn the theory from books or from a beginners course.
The theory is useful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s no substitute for doing a few hundred hive inspections and keeping good notes over several seasons.
The books or a Powerpoint presentation cannot convey the weight differences between frames of stores, sealed or open brood, the subtle – and sometimes not so subtle 😉 – difference in behaviour of a queenright and queenless hive, or the physicality of colony inspections in high summer.
They can describe them, but that’s not the same as experiencing them.
One thing they are particularly poor at conveying is the feelings experienced when you open your first really full hive.
Lots of bees
For some ‘beekeepers’ this is the last beekeeping they do.
The ’sheer weight of numbers’ can be a bit overwhelming for some people.
They like the idea of being a beekeeper, but not the weekly interactions with tens of thousands of insects.
Beekeeping ‘taster’ days
Many local beekeeping associations run a ‘beekeeping taster day’ sometime in late spring or early summer. For £30 (or whatever … I’m probably hopelessly out of date) you receive a short introductory talk, before getting dolled up in a profoundly unflattering beesuit and shown the rudiments of using a smoker.
You then both observe and take part in a hive inspection.
A tasty taster day
An experienced beekeeper will open the hive and talk you through the first few frames, but then you’ll be handed the hive tool and helped to ‘have a go’.
If you’re lucky the ‘taster’ day will end, appropriately, with a honey (and mead) tasting session.
I think these are an ideal way to see if you suit beekeeping.
If you recoil at the sight of thousands of flying, crawling, stinging 2 insects then you have the answer. Try watercolour painting, or metal detecting or mixed martial arts instead … and thank me for saving you the additional £970 it would have cost to get you started as a beekeeper.
However, if – as I hope – you find the sight and smell and sound of a hive captivating, if the hive inspection is finished well before you’ve asked all the questions you want to, and if you wonder why you’ve wasted the first forty years of your life as a watercolorist, a detectorist or a cage fighter, then Welcome!3.
These taster days have to be held when the weather is good and the bees are calm 4, perhaps seven months before the winter ‘start beekeeping’ courses. It’s a pity they cannot be juxtaposed.
Join your local beekeeping association
Beekeeping is an essentially local activity. The bees forage within a radius of 2-3 km of the apiary. The available forage influences how the colony develops as the season progresses, the local weather determines which trees and flowers grow and produce nectar, and when that nectar is produced.
Local beekeepers know about these things and are best placed to provide help and advice. Any training they provide will be ‘biased’ (for want of a better word) to local conditions. They’ve dealt with the variably late springs, or the nectar dearth in June, or the ‘boom and bust’ nature of beekeeping in intensively farmed land.
Many beekeepers are very sociable, enjoying a long chat over a cup of tea and biscuits.
You might not be, and you don’t have to be, but access to the wealth of local advice will be invaluable during your formative months and years as a beekeeper.
I fully expect a comment to the affect
”Nonsense … I was given a swarm in a box in 1980 and am entirely self-taught. Never joined the local BKA and never wanted to. I learn from my mistakes and a library book 5”.
All no doubt true, but that does not mean that the learning process wouldn’t have been smoother, or perhaps faster, with a little local assistance.
And it might have been a bit more enjoyable as well.
Remember also that the introduction of Varroa in ’92 made overwintering colonies significantly more difficult, and – three decades on – it remains the biggest problem for beekeepers.
You will also get ample opportunity to learn from your mistakes, even with help from the local association.
Attend a ‘start beekeeping’ course
Although I started by saying that, as a practical activity, you cannot learn beekeeping in a lecture theatre, the general principles of beekeeping are important and can be taught in classes, or learned from books. These principles include things like the:
fundamentals of swarm control (not the to and fro shuffling of boxes in a Pagden’s artificial swarm, but the principles that underpin most swarm control methods; separation of old workers and the queen from young workers and brood/queen cells … or preferably queen cell singular)
You can acquire all this knowledge from a good beekeeping book in the company of a wood-burning stove and a large glass of Barolo.
Homework
In fact, I’d strongly recommend you do this anyway.
But I’d also recommend you attend a ‘start beekeeping’ course run by your local beekeeping association. You’ll meet local beekeepers, you’ll make friends, you’ll get advice on equipment and apiaries and you’ll eat a lot of chocolate biscuits.
But I don’t think it’s necessary to attend one of these winter course before starting keeping bees. If your association runs evening/weekend apiary sessions and allows you to tag along then do so. Attend the course the following winter, but don’t delay the opportunity to do some practical beekeeping if offered the chance.
Get a mentor
If your local association does not offer some type of mentoring system then move house to an area with an association that does.
Clearly 6 I’m not being serious … but it does reflect how important I think mentoring is.
An association that doesn’t offer some form of active mentoring to all trainees underestimates the difficulties beginners experience and their need, over at least 1-2 seasons, to have some practical help and advice readily available.
Alternatively (or – even worse – as well), the association is offering too many places on the ‘start beekeeping’ course to provide the necessary follow-up support.
These courses can be lucrative; 50 places at £100 per person is a welcome boost to association coffers, but effective training involves more than 8 evenings in the church hall with tea and biscuits 7.
No amount of chocolate biscuits compensate for a lack of mentoring
Are there 25-50 association members available and willing to provide mentoring for those beginners? Remember, the association probably ran the course last year for the same number … who will still need mentoring as they are probably about to get their first experience of swarming.
And, while I’m on the subject, can the association provide nucleus colonies to all the beginners they train? I think mentoring and the provision of nucs are important, and sometimes overlooked, responsibilities. I’ll return to nucs shortly.
Walk before you can run
Beekeeping is a broad church. All sorts of people get involved and there are all sorts of ways to keep bees. These include the type of hive used e.g. removable frame hives – Nationals, Langstroths, Smiths – top bar hives, skeps, tree hives etc and the methods used to manage the bees in those hives.
Perhaps try a National hive first … just sayin’
The majority of beekeepers in the UK use what I would consider ’standard’ management methods – a removable frame hive on which interventions for swarm control are employed and in which Varroa levels are minimised with appropriately used miticides.
But some beekeepers practice and promote others ways of keeping bees; encouraging swarming and avoiding the use of any chemical treatments.
I don’t think these management methods are suitable for beginners. Both are likely to result in the loss of colonies. Most swarms do not survive and it takes exceptional skill to keep bees without chemical miticide control.
I know some associations already promote ‘treatment free’ beekeeping on their winter courses for beginners. I worry about the survival rate of the colonies … and the proportion of beginners that eventually become beekeepers.
My suggestions would always be to learn to keep bees using the ‘mainstream’ methods before trying alternatives.
You might like the idea of keeping bees in skeps, eschewing chemical treatment and allowing them to swarm freely. After all, that’s more natural8. However, you’ll only become a beekeeper if you don’t lose your colonies through swarming or disease.
And if you do repeatedly lose your bees, you’re much more likely to become disillusioned with beekeeping and abandon it for something easier, like quantum physics or ultramarathons.
Become competent in the widely-used mainstream methods of honey bee management and then, by all means, try something different.
Learn one method and learn it well
I’ve discussed this topic recently. Learn the principles that underpin a management method e.g. swarm control, and learn one way of employing those principles to achieve a successful outcome.
Use it, and use it again.
Use it until it becomes second nature, until you can totally depend upon it working, until you understand all the subtleties and nuances, the wrinkles and caveats.
I see little benefit in an association teaching Pagden’s artificial swarmand the Demaree methodand a nucleus method of swarm control. It might make sense to an experienced beekeeper 9 but beginners will inevitably get confused.
The winter course might feel more comprehensive, but if attendees are just getting bamboozled by all the options then it’s not really helping them.
Personally, although it’s slightly unusual in that it doesn’t exploit the separation of [old bees + queen] from [young bees + brood], I’d teach the nucleus method of swarm control. It’s easy to understand, uses a minimum of additional equipment and – done properly – is 100% effective.
You also get a ‘free’ nuc from it … which conveniently brings me to … 10
Source local bees
Scientific evidence showed that, in a Europe-wide study, local bees did better than bees that were imported. The data indicated that they were better able to tolerate Varroa and that the colonies were larger when they went into winter. Other scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that strong colonies overwinter better than weak ones.
For these reasons alone it makes sense to source local bees when you start beekeeping. Buy a nuc from someone in your association, or offer to help your mentor for the season and get ‘paid’ with a nuc (you helped split) the following spring. An overwintered local nuc is probably the best option …
Alternatively, put your name down for a swarm and be prepared to go on a few trips to capture one.
A bait hive deployed in mid-April in good time for the swarming season ahead
Perhaps also put out a bait hive and one might well come to you.
Over the last decade or so I’ve rarely encountered a really poor quality swarm. They certainly can occur, but the majority would – after a careful check of Varroa levels and other pathogens – be fine for a beginner.
Your mentor will help you with those checks … er, you have got a mentor, haven’t you?
Have patience
Don’t be in too much of a hurry to get your first bees.
Assuming ‘normal’ spring weather the difference in getting your bees in early April or late May is irrelevant. Neither will get you any honey from the spring nectar. In addition, the weather is often rather changeable in April making your first few, slow, careful hive inspections stressful for the bees as the brood gets chilled. You’ll hold the colony back and not gain much useful experience.
Late April 2016 … OSR and snow
Wait until the weather is better and nucs headed by a current year queen are available.
In Scotland that might be at least late June.
Of course, many beginners will choose to ignore this advice … they’ll order a nuc from one of the large commercial suppliers and collect it as early as possible. The bees may well not have been in the box very long, and the queen is likely to be imported.
By any definition these are not local bees … and they certainly won’t be in 3-4 weeks as all the bees will be then from the introduced queen. Will the seller provide help if things go awry?
The price of early-season nucs 11 reflects the demand, not necessarily the quality or suitability for a new beekeeper.
Your first season
I briefly touched on hopes and expectations earlier. Let’s finish by looking at a messy combination of these masquerading as what I consider priorities for the season:
Successfully overwinter your colony. This has to be the priority as without it you have to start all over again. Successful overwintering requires three basic things:
a healthy colony with low Varroa and virus levels
a strong colony
sufficient stores to maintain the colony through the winter
Pathogen management, which 90% of the time means monitoring and treating (if needed) Varroa. Learn how to spot signs of virus damage and how to count mite levels in the colony. Understand the advantages and limitations of the various treatments that are available. Learn when to apply them for maximum effect, so that you use them as little as possible.
Acquire the skills needed to judge the colony. Is it queenright? Are there the expected ratios of eggs, open brood and sealed brood? Is the colony expanding? Learn how to identify queen cells – even the carefully hidden ones – and to distinguish between play cups and charged cells. Try and understand the link between environmental conditions and colony temperament … which additional means you need to …
Learn how to confidently and competently inspect the colony without overly disturbing or distressing the bees. Only then will you be able to distinguish between a clumsy inspection and a poorly tempered colony, or a usually well-behaved colony that is tetchy because it’s queenless (there are other, more definitive, signs) or because the nectar flow has dried up.
100 kg of honey per hive … if you’re gonna dream, dream BIG! In a normal season you should expect some honey from a spring-bought nuc, but consider it a bonus.
Your second season
Assuming you started the previous year with a late spring or early summer nuc (or a swarm) then this is likely to be the first season your colony will attempt to swarm.
Since it is preferable to have two colonies12 – the comparative performance makes judging problems or environmental changes much easier – the logical thing to do is to use a swarm control method that creates a second colony.
The previously mentioned nucleus method, classic Pagden, or a vertical split will all readily achieve this.
Here’s one I prepared earlier
What’s more, any of these three – conducted at the appropriate time for your local climate and forage – should barely interrupt the spring nectar collection. This means that you should get a spring and summer crop in many areas.
Apart from that it’s more of the same and steady as she goes.
Priorities 1-4 (above) remain equally important in your second season.
And sometime late in that second season, as you pile up the now emptied supers in the shed for year 3 (and consider buying an additional shed as you need the storage space), take a moment to congratulate yourself upon becoming a successful beekeeper 🙂 .
Don’t fool yourself that you know it all, or even that you know enough.
You don’t.
But I don’t either and I did all of the above about 15 years ago and am still learning.
Facebook users
Blah, blah, blah … I don’t think anyone reads this far down and at least two people signed up to Facebook notifications last week. I’m pulling the plug on new post announcements on Facebook very soon 13 so please register instead on one of the social media links in the right margin – Twitter, Instagram or Mastodon.
Synopsis :“It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.” Here are some related ones of mine and the lessons I (again) learned from them.
Introduction
This is the 50th post of the year. Usually 1 this is the week in which I write some erudite words 2 about the season in retrospect.
What went well, what could have gone better and what was an unmitigated disaster. The highs and the lows, together with a smattering of the in-between bits that actually constitute the majority of the beekeeping year.
Writing these review-type posts is quite enjoyable 3. I have to go back through my hive notes which inevitably brings back a flood of memories of warmer days, heavy supers, lost hive tools and unmated queens.
Laden foragers returning …
These notes are succinct – rarely more than ~10-20 words – littered with acronyms but surprisingly informative. At least they are when you take into account their dates and the timing of the development cycle of workers, drones and queens.
And, as a bonus, they are also legible.
Hive records
I’ve mentioned before that I take my hive inspections records on a digital recorder in the apiary and then transfer them to a spreadsheet with the company of a coffee 4 later.
Testing, testing, one, two three
Whilst this approach misses the immediacy of a scribbled note on a sheet of paper under the hive roof, it does allow me to easily refresh my memory before the next apiary visit.
It also means they don’t blow away, get damp, eaten by slugs or require me to have a functioning pen in my beesuit … the recorder lives in the bee bag, so is always available.
By looking at the hive records in advance I’m reminded that – for example – I need more supers for hives #23 and #27, that the former had a good open queen cell on frame 7 (OC/7 in the notes) which should now be sealed 5 and that nuc #13 has a recently mated queen who will need finding (!), clipping and marking.
And by looking at the same records in mid-December, with the temperature plummeting outside, I can see how the season progressed week-by-week in my three main apiaries.
The nuc was sold a fortnight later, the queen in #23 eventually emerged but was lost before she got mated (or perhaps on her way back) and supers filled so rapidly that I regretted not adding more at once.
It was a great year for honey, the best since returning to Scotland in 2015.
But that can wait until the review of the season … which will now be next week 6.
Impressions vs. reality
I give a lot of talks on beekeeping. Whilst a talk might be about bait hives, swarm control or queen rearing, the questions afterwards can be more wide-ranging. It is quite fun to get questions on apparently random beekeeping topics (I’ve done ’ask the expert’7 panels at beekeeping conventions which are enjoyable; for one question and four panel members you get six different answers and a good-natured argument … no wonder we run out of time).
Some of the more ‘left field’ questions can be a challenge and require a degree of lateral thinking. I’m more than happy to acknowledge that I’m sometimes stumped for an answer … I understand the question, but I cannot explain why whatever happened 8, er, happened.
However, the very fact that I’m asked for an opinion at all suggests that I give the impression I know what I’m talking about 9 when it comes to almost any subject about honey bees.
I don’t.
Hive inspections
Even if you just restrict the topic to the hive, its contents and what’s happening in it on a week-to-week basis, the apparent impression some have of my understanding can be wildly different from reality.
I know that because of my hive notes.
And I’m acutely aware of this because I’ve just re-read them … 😉 .
Perhaps I’m not being entirely fair. If you read the entries for any individual week in isolation it’s clear I sometimes don’t have a scooby 10 what’s happening in the hive.
It’s obvious because as well as acronyms there’s a dusting of ??? throughout the notes 11.
Not every hive and certainly not every week (thankfully), but more often than I’d like.
However, the regular repeat visits combined with the utter predictability of honey bee development, and comparison with adjacent hives, usually allows me to work out what’s happening with some certainty.
I think the take home message 12 here is that hive notes are veryuseful. Even if you don’t quite understand what’s happening in the hive, record what you see.
At the next visit, or the one after that, it should start to make sense.
And, when you re-read them in midwinter with the benefit of knowing what happened time, tea and a roaring stove, you’ll at least learn what to do in the same situation next year.
Or what not to do 🙁 .
Train wreck
But, there remains this disconnect between that impression of insightful understanding and the day-to-day reality of some of my apiary visits.
These are are not always as polished and assured as I’d like …
Photo by Roberto Prusso from 1913
… frankly, they can sometimes be a bit of a train wreck.
I reassemble the hive leaving the queen in a JzBz cage in my pocket.
Hives are inspected in the wrong order, meaning I might have to re-open one again to the understandable irritation of the bees.
I leave the hive tool inside a hive and can’t find another, or put it in the wrong pocket of my beesuit so it falls through the hole, down the inside of the leg and into my boot.
An elusive unmarked queen is found on my third run through the brood box … at exactly the same time as I find a suicidally psychotic worker inside my veil. I have insufficient hands to hold the frame, the queen and the worker (though, truth be told, I’m probably not intending to just ’hold’ the worker if she’s that agitated). The queen is abandoned until the following week.
Many are reassuringly ‘composed and unruffled’; I open the box, the bees are wonderfully calm. The queen is on the second frame I check, but the first had eggs anyway so I didn’t need to see her. However, since I found her and she’s mated and laying well, I mark her and clip her wing. The colony barely notice her absence and I run her gently back in between two brood frames to get on with her business.
Returning a marked and clipped queen – not distressed, just sauntering down between the frames
This is the beekeeper I’d like to always be … not that other ham-fisted muppet in an ill-fitting beesuit.
Here are a couple of queen-related examples from the season just gone. At the time I was flummoxed. In retrospect I’ve learned a few important lessons.
Or re-learned those that I had been taught already … and subsequently forgotten 😉 .
A tale of several queens
Almost all of my swarm control these days uses the nucleus method. In comparison to the widely-taught Pagden artificial swarm it only requires an additional nuc box. In my experience, it is almost totally foolproof as long as:
you take care to only leave a single queen cell in the hive; remember, this requires a visit one week after removing the queen. They cannot swarm if you leave just one cell.
you don’t make the nuc too strong; if you do there’s a chance it might swarm anyway.
My colony #7 contained an ageing but really lovely queen. I’d used her last year for queen rearing and hoped to do so again. At the start of May I’d obviously tempted fate by noting … ’Strong. Lovely BP. PC only … graft next week’14.
Lovely BP (brood pattern)
And, of course, the next week (the 8th of May) there were a couple of big, fat, 3-4 day old (i.e. open) queen cells and it was clear they were making plans to vamoose. I made up a nuc (number #47) with the old queen and moved her to a distant apiary.
One cell was left in box #7.
This box had overwintered with a nadired super and the original queen had snuck down in April and laid it up. Irritatingly, she’d chosen the frames of drone comb … not the end of the world because the queen was so good, but I didn’t want the new queen to do a repeat performance so moved the super above the queen excluder (QE). I discussed this in Early season inspections back in April – go there for all the gory details.
Upper entrances
Drones emerging above a QE is a recipe for carnage as they try and squeeze through 15, so I added a thin eke that included an upper entrance. The drones could fly from this and, in due course, they did.
Hive with an upper entrance
In the meantime, the new queen should have emerged and got mated … but she was nowhere to be found. There were polished cells in the brood box and the colony was behaving as though it was queenright.
On the 12th of June I decided to give it ’one more week’ and, eventually, I then found her in the supers on the 19th, together with several frames of open brood.
D’Oh!
Since there was no sealed brood she had presumably been slow getting mated and only started within the last week or so. I clipped and marked her and returned her to the brood box.
But she didn’t stay long.
My notes on the 21st of July include the comment ’no eggs’ (there had been on the 12th) and at the end of the month I found a new laying queen in the box.
She’s still there … or was when I last checked the colony (’lovely, well-tempered bees’ I was pleased to record in my notes) in mid-September. I presume the previous one hadn’t been ‘up to scratch’ and so was superseded sometime in mid-July .
Lessons learned
When I removed the supers (unsurprisingly disappointingly light 🙁 ) and the plastic QE I found the latter had a couple of cracks in it. Although these didn’t result in any gaping holes, it’s possible the QE deformed sufficiently to let the queen through.
Lesson No. 1 – try and avoid using those inexpensive cheap plastic QE’s. A framed, wired excluder costs less than three jars of honey and is a good investment. I bought more at the start of this season, but still didn’t have enough.
You know it makes sense
However, I suspect the queen didn’t get into the supers through the QE.
I expect she instead returned from her last mating flight and entered the hive via the upper entrance. It’s not at all unusual for returning queens to end up in the wrong hive altogether, so simply mistaking an upper for the lower entrance is understandable.
Lesson No. 2 – ideally avoid upper entrances altogether on hives containing virgin queens, or at least orientate them to the opposite side of the hive.
What happened to the nuc?
The original queen was moved to another apiary in nuc #47 created during swarm control. A fortnight later (22/5/22) they were moved to a full hive 16 and three weeks later (12/6/22) I found a single charged queen cell in the middle of a central frame.
Although I suspected supersedure (ageing queen, single QC etc.) I’d seen the queen and she was still laying well. I therefore transferred the frame with the open cell to a neighbouring queenless and poorly tempered hive in the same apiary. She emerged, was mated and laying well by late July … and is heading the colony through this winter.
However, back to hive #47 … they attempted to swarm ~10 days later. Since the queen was clipped the swarm returned to the hive, but the queen was lost 🙁 .
I knocked back all but one of the charged open cells and guesstimated that she would emerge on the 6/7th of July. On my next inspection (on the 5th), the queen was quacking in the cell 17. My maths suggested she should be mated around the 20th but I didn’t open the box again until the last day of July when I found her laying well.
And it was about then that things started to go ‘pear-shaped’18.
Hands like feet
I fumbled the first couple of attempts at picking up the queen to mark her.
In my defence … it had been a long afternoon. This was the last of about 15 colonies I’d inspected and the supers were very heavy. It was hot, the sun was bright and I was really tired.
I’d removed the supers and set them aside, lifted the QE and found the unmarked laying queen after just a couple of minutes.
The first attempt at picking her up was pretty reasonable, albeit unsuccessful, but the second was badly botched. She skittered across the frame, clambering over and under the workers without giving them a chance to move aside.
Lesson No. 3 – when it comes to picking up queens, if at first (or at the most, second attempt) you don’t succeed, do not’try, try and try again’. Close the box, leave her for another day when both she and you will be calmer.
Of course, I persevered 🙁 .
On the third attempt she took off, seemingly in slow motion, but still too fast for me. She circled around, briefly landed on my shoulder, lifted off again and then – like Baron von Richthofen – was obscured by the dazzling sun.
I never saw her again.
But it gets worse …
I’ve had queens fly off before. In my experience they often (perhaps over 50% of the time) manage to return to the hive. They fly poorly and often crash land in the grass. It’s therefore important not to stampede about like a herd of wildebeest, but instead to calmly reassemble the hive and quietly retreat.
Ideally without moving your feet.
I managed the former but not the latter, cursing my failure to learn from ‘Lesson No. 3’ … it is not the first time that I’ve attended that lesson 🙁 .
I rarely inspect hives in August. This hive was on the other side of Scotland and I didn’t open it again until I removed the supers during the summer honey harvest at the end of the month. With only one and a bit filled supers there were relatively few bees above the QE … but there was a queen.
At least, there was evidence that there had been a queen present as there was a ~5 cm patch of brood on opposing faces of two of the super frames.
Small patch of brood – all of about the same age – in a super
I didn’t see the queen, and only discovered the brood as I shook the bees off the frames to remove them for extraction.
It was a patch of similarly aged brood; there were no younger larvae or eggs, and only a few cells were capped. It must have been laid 7-9 days previously.
Remember, I’d not opened the hive in the last 23 days.
There was no upper entrance and the QE was wired.
And the final lesson today
I ended up uniting the hive over a QE with a known queenright colony. I simply laid some newspaper over the top bars of the latter, added a QE to hold it in place and added the ’is-there-or-isn’t-there-a-queen-in-this-box?’ upper brood box onto which I shook the bees from the remaining super frames.
Newspaper and queen excluder
I do not understand the brood in the super.
The brood pattern indicated it was laid by a queen (rather than laying workers – in which case it would be scattered all around the frame). However, the age of the brood suggested she had only laid for a day or so. The brood looked like worker, but I didn’t photograph the frame until it was back in the extracting room and it was a bit bashed about by then.
My best guess is that the queen that flew away landed back on top of the open stack of supers next to the hive. However, that was over three weeks earlier. If it was the original laying queen that I’d failed to mark (or even pick up) then why didn’t she continue laying at the same rate?
Why the fortnight’s hiatus?
And why did she stop laying having only just started?
I’m afraid we’ll never know.
Which doesn’t mean that there’s not a lesson from this sorry debacle:
Lesson No. 4 – if a mated and laying queen does fly off, check the hive again one week later. If she’s back she’ll be laying and all will be well. If she’s missing in action there will be queen cells, but no remaining larvae young enough to rear queens from. Knock back all the cells you don’t want and let them get on with things 19.
One final queen
If you rewind about 1500 words you might remember that I found two good open queen cells in box #7. The one I didn’t leave in that hive I used to requeen an adjacent hive (#6).
Waste not, want not 😉 .
A week previous I’d already started swarm control on colony #6 by removing the queen to a nuc. I’d intended to let them requeen themselves 20 but the availability of a good queen cell from much better stock was too good an opportunity to miss.
I knocked back all the queen cells in hive #6, confident that there were no larvae young enough start as queens.
I added the frame from #7 with the queen cell and she emerged on about the 17th of May. She was mated and laying well by the 12th of June … probably earlier but I hadn’t checked at the intervening visit as I’d been taking three full supers of spring honey from the hive. I got a further three full supers of summer honey 9 weeks later.
The bees are well tempered and productive. They went into the winter very strong … headed by the same queen.
Sometimes, actually most of the time, everything ’just works’ 🙂 .
And a final word
The tale of misadventures recounted above was probably the only truly shambolic part of my beekeeping year in 2022 21. It was just a coincidence that it all originated from one hive. Some of it was self-inflicted, but other bits were just dumb luck.
Shambolic, but not catastrophic, and it all ended OK.
And I learned some valuable lessons.
Again 🙂 .
Notes
The opening quote, “It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes”, is attributed to Warren Buffet.
A few readers signed up to receive notifications either about new posts or comments added to the post last week will have received repeat emails sometime on Tuesday evening. These were seemingly due to a hiccup in the server software and outside my control. With thanks to those who brought this to my attention, and apologies to the recipients. The current commenting and notification software is becoming ‘unfit for purpose’ due to subscriber numbers. I have plans to change, both along with some other developments, sometime next year.
