Tag Archives: Isaac Hopkins

The Hopkins method (and more)

Synopsis : Three short(ish) related topics; the spring honey harvest, queen rearing without grafting (the Hopkins method) and a brief mention of swarm control. And, if that wasn’t enough, a bonus discussion on keeping virgin queens in an incubator.

Introduction

I started writing this post at sunset on the longest day of the year. In my part of Scotland it’s light enough to work outside from about 3:30 am until 11:30 pm which means you can get a lot done … if you have the energy and distant, deaf or understanding neighbours.

With the good weather we’ve had for the last 2-3 weeks the bees have been out well before I’m drinking my morning coffee and don’t stop until after my evening glass of Barolo.

In my experience, some of the earliest to start are the scout bees that appear at bait hives before foragers are really busy. Some might even stay overnight, though perhaps these are scouts ‘lost’ from a swarm that had decided to occupy a different nest site 1.

It’s lucky the days are so long as this is the busiest time of the year for beekeeping … at least for my beekeeping.

West coast apiary

I am, as the saying goes, ”running around like a headless chicken”.

Rather than write an in depth (well researched 2 ) post on an esoteric aspect of the coxa and trochanter of Apis mellifera scutellata or virus replication in drones (though I’d strongly recommend readers check out our latest paper on this topic, published today) I thought I’d write a few notes on three practical beekeeping topics that have been entertaining me recently.

I can’t promise something for everyone, or even anyone, and inevitably the focus will be on the trilogy of queen rearing, swarm control and the honey harvest.

If you’re a beekeeper and haven’t been busy with these three things over the last few weeks then either something has gone awry with your season … or you live in New Zealand.

Continue reading

Picking winners, part 2

Synopsis : Some larvae are nutritionally deprived and may produce sub-optimal queens. Grafting may miss the ‘best’ larvae the colony would select for rearing as emergency queens.

Introduction

A fortnight ago I discussed the preference colonies show for heavy eggs – or more accurately for larvae reared from heavy eggs – when producing queens under the emergency response.

Why might this be interesting?

The longevity of the queen and the absolute dependence the colony has on her quality means that the choice of larvae they rear new queens from is of fundamental importance.

These are the larvae that develop to produce queens with the traits that benefit the colony – in fecundity, disease resistance and a range of other characteristics.

It cannot be random.

If they make the right choice the colony will flourish, swarm and their genes will be perpetuated.

That is a significant evolutionary selective pressure. Its application over the 90 million years or so since the evolution of eusociality has resulted in the honey bees we have today.

Now, these traits favoured by the bees might not all benefit our beekeeping, but some of them should. Longevity, fecundity and disease resistance are likely to be evolutionarily favourable traits, and will also be useful for beekeepers.

Defensiveness and swarminess … er, not so much 😉 .

But the bees have little time to select the best larvae. They have 6 days from the day the egg is laid until a larva is too old 1 to reliably develop into a queen.

In practice they select very young larvae (or even 3 day old eggs) so ensuring the resulting queen is fed for the maximum time with royal jelly, thereby producing a larger queen with more ovarioles.

So what do the bees choose?

Given the choice, which larvae are selected by the bees to rear new queens?

Artificial experiments and nepotism

The ‘heavy eggs’ experiment I discussed a fortnight ago was primarily designed to study kin selection and nepotism in honey bees. The study was conducted over a decade ago 2, but wasn’t published until 2021, though the results were known before then 3.

If you remember, nepotism in honey bees is a nice idea; particular patrilines of workers (fathered by the same drone) should favour larvae of the same patriline. However, there have been no convincing studies that actually support this, and there are compelling theoretical arguments why nepotism could actually be detrimental to the colony.

Parts of the study I’m going to discuss this week were also designed to test for nepotism. I’m going to ignore these 4 and instead focus on some more interesting results that I think have practical relevance for beekeeping.

In addition, the study this week uses methods that are more typical of those used by beekeepers and that avoid the artificiality of rearing larvae in vitro before reintroducing them to a queenless colony.

In this regard I’d argue that they more closely resemble what’s happening in a colony rearing emergency queens. Furthermore, they should be easier for beekeepers to understand, and to repeat … not for experimental purposes, but when rearing queens.

Sagili et al., (2018)

The majority of the studies I’m going to discuss are from Sagili et al., (2018). The title ’Honey bees consider larval nutritional status rather than genetic relatedness when selecting larvae for emergency queen rearing’ neatly summaries their conclusions, but some of the detail is worth discussing in a bit more detail.

It’s always interesting to know what goes on in the hive.

During inspections we see frames of brood – capped and open cells. Other than the larvae getting bigger as they get older they all look much of a muchness … but they’re not.

All larvae are equal, but some are more equal than others 😉 .

Hungry mouths

The queen lays an egg in an empty cell. Other than the egg, the cell remains empty for 3 days when the egg hatches to release the larva. Without prompt and regular feeding the larva will starve or suffer setbacks in development.

Unrealised potential … a frame with eggs and young larvae

For this reason the nurse bees make frequent visits to the occupied cells to determine their content and needs.

Is it an egg or a larva?

Is it hungry?

And these visits continue during the 5 days of larval development.

How many visits do they make, how often is a larva fed, and are all larvae treated equally?

Sagili and colleagues used observation hives and video cameras to record nurse bees visiting cells containing larvae of precise ages 5. They recorded visits over 4 hours to 2 day old larvae, and one hour observations of 5 day old larvae.

In four separate hives, 4-8% of the young (2 day old) larvae did not receive a visit from a nurse bee during the 4 hour period they were filmed.

Of the 5 day old larvae, again ~10% didn’t receive a visit during the observation period and, of those fed, the longest interval between feeds was ~36 minutes. However, over one hour, the older larvae that were being fed were visited very regularly; the median interval between feeds was a little under 4 minutes and they were fed for a total of ~7 minutes over one hour.

Clearly some larvae, for whatever reason, get little or no attention for extended periods, whereas those that are visited, are fed very frequently.

Nutritionally deprived and non-deprived larvae

Larvae that are infrequently visited are likely to be nutritionally deprived … or, using the technical jargon beloved of beekeepers and scientists alike, hungry 6.

Do nurse bees respond differently to nutritionally deprived and non-deprived larvae?

Which are visited first and fed first?

The scientists caged the queen on a frame and allowed her to lay eggs for 24 hours. They then removed the queen (caging her elsewhere in the hive) and waited for the eggs to hatch. 24 hours later the larvae were caged under either 13 mm mesh or 3 mm mesh. Workers can access the larvae through the 13 mm mesh, but cannot get through 3 mm mesh. Cages were left in place for four hours to create two populations of larvae on the same frame; nutritionally deprived and non-deprived.

Small and large mesh cages over day-old larvae

They then again used video recording of randomly selected larvae to record and quantify the attention and feed visits they received.

The purpose of this part of the study was to determine whether the nurse bees could discriminate between larvae that were nutritionally deprived and those that were not.

And they could …

Inspections and feeding visits to nutritionally deprived and non-deprived larvae

Deprived larvae were visited (inspected) sooner, the black bars in the graph above, and fed earlier. You can just about determine this from the graph; the stats are more convincing (but less comprehensible 😉 ).

In addition, deprived larvae received more frequent inspections, more frequent feeds and were fed for longer.

Acceptance of larvae for queen rearing

A colony rendered suddenly queenless will attempt to rear a replacement under what is called the emergency response. Suitable young larvae are selected, fed a diet rich in royal jelly and the cell is reshaped to be orientated vertically.

This vertical orientation is a major inducement for the workers to continue to feed the developing larva with royal jelly (She et al., 2011). This is exploited in queen rearing techniques that involve the grafting of young larvae into wax or plastic cups which are then placed, open end down, in a queenless colony.

Sagili et al., investigated whether nutritionally deprived and non-deprived larvae were favoured when queens were reared under the emergency response.

Interestingly, they did so using larvae in natural comb and following grafting into plastic queen cups.

Which were favoured for queen rearing? Grafted or natural, nutritionally deprived or non-deprived?

In both instances the larvae were presented to a queenless and broodless colony, using 6 recipient colonies in each case.

Larval acceptance for queen rearing using two different methods – grafted and in natural comb

In the case of grafting, 12 of each type of larvae were presented on a cell bar frame. When transferring comb (prepared as described before using caged larvae) the entire frame was introduced.

The recipient colony did not discriminate between the nutritionally deprived and non-deprived larvae when they were grafted, but they showed a marked preference for the non-deprived larvae in natural comb.

In addition, they reared significantly more queens from grafted larvae than they did from larvae in comb.

All larvae are equal, but some are more equal than others …

Since I’m enthusiastic about queen rearing, this last set of experiments was by far the most interesting part of the study.

There are two results that are particularly striking.

Firstly, more queens were reared from grafted larvae than were reared following the transfer of a frame of larvae. The difference was significant, with almost twice as many queens being produced following grafting. It’s also worth noting that the bees only had 24 grafted larvae to choose from, compared to a much larger number of larvae on the transferred natural comb.

More is better … right?

Secondly, the workers showed no preference between nutritionally deprived and non-deprived grafted larvae, but showed a strong preference for the well-fed larvae in natural comb.

So, what do these results mean?

Let’s have a quick recap:

  • developing larvae receive different amounts of ‘attention’ from nurse bees
  • about 10% of developing larvae received no (or only a limited number of) visits during an extended observation period. The presumption is that these larvae are likely to be nutritionally deprived (though this was not demonstrated)
  • nurse bees can readily distinguish between nutritionally deprived and non-deprived larvae; the former receive earlier inspections, are fed sooner and more frequently
  • when rearing emergency queens, workers preferentially select larvae in natural comb that are not nutritionally deprived. In contrast, they make no distinction between nutritionally deprived and non-deprived grafted larvae

We know from numerous studies that high quality queens must be well fed during larval development. The best queens are produced from very young larvae (or even 3 day old eggs) that are then fed for an extended period with copious amounts of royal jelly in a strong hive full of nurse bees.

Queens produced under these conditions are larger and have more ovarioles, so should lay more eggs for longer.

It makes sense that nurse bees can distinguish between ‘hungry’ and replete larvae … the former need feeding or they won’t develop properly. The former may already have been held back developmentally … not an ideal start for a new queen.

Since nurse bees can determine the nutritional status of very young larvae, logic would dictate that they would select those that are not nutritionally deprived to rear new queens from.

After all, the future of the colony, and any resulting swarms will depend on it.

So, why don’t they make a similar distinction when presented with grafted larvae?

Selection vs. maintenance of larvae for queen rearing

The key difference between the grafted larvae and those in natural comb was the orientation of the ‘cells’ in which the larvae were presented to the queenless and broodless colony.

Grafted larvae were presented in a vertically orientated plastic queen cup, whereas the cells in natural comb are horizontal 7.

Cell bar frame with vertically orientated plastic Nicot queen cups

The interpretation is that larvae in vertically orientated cells are not selected by the nurse bees, but are instead just maintained as developing queens.

In contrast, larvae in horizontal(ish) natural comb are selected as the starting material for new queens, and the resulting reshaping of the comb to form the queen cell leads to their maintenance as developing queens.

Significance for beekeeping and queen rearing

The increased number of queens reared from grafted larvae probably reflects this ‘maintenance’ response being triggered in the nurse bees. ’Any’ larva presented in a suitably orientated cell must have been preselected as suitable … so the bees feed them up with royal jelly.

The nurse bees don’t know that these grafted larvae were selected by the beekeeper, not on the basis of them being nutritionally replete, but more likely because they were visible, about the right size, and in an accessible part of the comb.

But … think back to the first experiment. This suggested that ~10% of all larvae are nutritionally deprived because they have received, at best, infrequent visits over the last few hours. If the beekeeper hadn’t picked them during grafting, it’s unlikely the bees would have selected them as being suitable for producing queens.

Are 10% of grafted queens sub-optimal? Remember, the differences may be subtle.

The other point I found interesting is that the bees reared fewer queens in natural comb than from grafted larvae.

Why?

Charged queen cell

One possibility is that the reshaping of the comb is a physical limitation and restricts queen production. Perhaps this is why so many are at the edge of combs? 8 

Another is that the bees only rear ’enough’ queens for their needs, but that they can only determine what ‘enough’ is using larvae in natural comb.

Whilst these are certainly possible I think there’s an intriguing alternative … only a small proportion, even of well fed larvae, are considered suitable by the colony for queen rearing and so selected by the nurse bees.

Yes, the bees favour larvae that are not nutritionally deprived, but perhaps there are additional characteristics that are also desirable (and that vary between larvae).

Quantity and quality

Grafting larvae is a well established method of producing large numbers of queens. If the donor colony is good quality there’s every reason to expect that the resulting queens will be good.

Most, if not all, commercially reared queens come from grafted larvae (where quantity is paramount and quality might be a secondary concern) … probably hundreds of thousands of queens a year are produced like this. It’s the method I’ve used for many years.

Queen cells from grafted larvae …

But this paper raises two or three interesting ideas:

  • about 10% of larvae selected at random for grafting are likely to be nutritionally deprived and so would not have been chosen by the nurse bees. The presumption is that these will produce sub-standard queens.
  • nurse bees might be a lot more selective in the larvae they choose for emergency queens, only favouring a subset of even those not nutritionally deprived.
  • queen rearing methods that present larvae in natural comb might produce fewer queens but those queens may have the desirable characteristics selected by the bees (potentially resulting in better quality but a smaller quantity).

If this last point is correct, it’s worth noting that queen rearing methods – like the Hopkins method – that use larvae in frames placed horizontally over the colony 9, may trigger the queen maintenance response rather than allowing the selection of larvae by the nurse bees.

It would be very interesting to determine whether the bees would discriminate between nutritionally deprived and non-deprived larvae presented on a horizontal frame.

Two final thoughts;

  1. Grafting works well, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to produce top-quality queens.
  2. The desirable characteristics nurse bees favour (for colony survival and reproduction) may not be beneficial for beekeeping.

But I’d be surprised if they weren’t 🙂


Note

I’ve not had a chance to discuss it, but Free et al., (1989) previously demonstrated that nutritionally deprived larvae received more attention from nurse bees. I’ll deal with how the workers detect the nutritional status of larvae in the future.

References

Free, J.B., Ferguson, A.W., and Simpkins, J.R. (1989) The Effect of Different Periods of Brood Isolation on Subsequent Brood-Cell Visits by Worker Honeybees (Apis Mellifera L.). Journal of Apicultural Research 28: 22–25 https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.1989.11100815. Accessed November 22, 2022.
Sagili, R.R., Metz, B.N., Lucas, H.M., Chakrabarti, P., and Breece, C.R. (2018) Honey bees consider larval nutritional status rather than genetic relatedness when selecting larvae for emergency queen rearing. Sci Rep 8: 7679 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-25976-7. Accessed November 21, 2022.
Shi, Y.Y., Huang, Z.Y., Zeng, Z.J., Wang, Z.L., Wu, X.B., and Yan, W.Y. (2011) Diet and Cell Size Both Affect Queen-Worker Differentiation through DNA Methylation in Honey Bees (Apis mellifera, Apidae). PLOS ONE 6: e18808 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0018808. Accessed November 22, 2022.

Winter projects

Synopsis : Now is the time to make plans for the long winter ahead; frame building, winter projects, some light reading or an escape to somewhere warmer and with better wine?

Introduction

The good late summer September weather 1 has been replaced with the first of the equinoctial gales. Actually, more of a 30-40 mph stiff breeze with an inch or two of rain than a real gale. Nevertheless, wet and windy enough to preclude any outdoor jobs, and instead make my thoughts turn to winter projects.

The more northerly (or southerly) the latitude, the longer the winter is. Here in north west Scotland there’s virtually no practical beekeeping to be done between the start of October and early/mid April i.e. over 6 months of the year.

Some beekeepers fill these empty months by taking a busman’s holiday … disappearing to Chile or New Zealand or somewhere equally warm and pleasant, where they can talk beekeeping – or even do some beekeeping – and, coincidentally 2 enjoy some excellent wines.

Santiago bee graffiti

Santiago, Chile, bee graffiti …

Others ignore bees and beekeeping for the entire winter and think (and do) something completely different. They build model railways, or practise their ju-jitsu or – if really desperate – catch up on all the household chores that were abandoned during the bee season.

They then start the following season relatively unprepared. Almost certainly, next season will be similar to last season. They’ll make similar mistakes, run out of frames mid-season and lose more swarms than they’d like.

Rinse and repeat.

Alternatively, with a little thought, some reading, a bit of effort and some pleasant afternoons in the shed/garage/lounge, they can both plan for the season ahead and prepare some of the kit that they might need.

As Benjamin Franklin said ”By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Looking back to look forward

I’ve discussed beekeeping records previously (and should probably revisit the topic). My records in the early years were terse, patchy, illegible and of little real use, perhaps other than in the few days that separated colony inspections.

Better than nothing

Better than nothing … just.

My records now are equally terse, but up-to-date and reasonably informative. I’ve got a numbering system for my colonies and queens that means they can be tracked through the season. The records are dated (rather than ’last Friday’) so I can calculate when important events – like queen emergence or mating – are due.

They’re also legible, which makes a huge difference. I could just about read my old scrawled pencil notes a few days after an inspection, but would have had no chance 5 months later.

By which time I’d have lost the little notebook anyway.

So, at some point over the next few months – sooner rather than later – I’ll look through my records, update the ‘queen pedigree’ table 3 and summarise things for the season ahead.

In the spring I’ll update a new sheet of records with a short note on overwintering strength/success and then we’ll be ready to go.

But, in reviewing the records I’ll remind myself about the things I ran out of, the timing of swarm control (when there’s the maximum pressure on available kit) and ideas I might have noted down on how things could have been done better 4.

Reading and listening

The winter is a great time to catch up on a bit of theory. Some beekeepers do exam after exam, pouring over Yates’s Study Notes until they can recite chapters verbatim.

I’ve done enough exams in my lifetime for … a lifetime, and have no intention of doing any more.

However, I’m always happy to do a bit of reading. I’ve currently got The Native Irish Honey Bee and Joe Conti’s The Hopkins Method … (which I’ll return to shortly) by my desk. I’m also partially successfully at keeping up with some of the relevant scientific literature 5.

A larger and more enthusiastic audience than usually seen at a beekeeping talk

There are also numerous winter talks available. Some are through local associations, others are available more widely. I ‘virtually’ attended one this evening where there were questions from as far apart as Orkney and Tasmania.

Of particular relevance to Scottish beekeepers, it’s worth noting that our association membership fees are usually significantly less than south of the border (probably because your SBA membership is separate), so you can inexpensively belong to a couple of associations and benefit from their talks programmes and – if you’re lucky – Co-Op purchasing schemes 😉

My attendance at these talks is less good than it should be, largely because I give a lot of talks each winter, but I instead benefit from the Q&A sessions which can be both entertaining and informative.

OK … enough theory

Theory is all well and good, but beekeeping is a practical pastime and just because it’s dark, cold, wet and windy, doesn’t mean there isn’t practical stuff you could be doing.

Competitive beekeepers will use the time to prepare the perfect wax block or bottle of mead for their – local or national – annual honey show.

I’m not competitive, and my wax is pretty shonky but I’ve had fun making (and more fun testing) mead 😉

But there are lots of other things to do …

The known knowns

By reading your comprehensive notes you will know that you ended the season with 5 colonies, that swarming started in mid-May but was over by early July, and that you’ve got one really stellar queen you’d like to raise 2-3 nucs from.

All of which means you are going to need a minimum of 60 new frames next season. These need to be ready before swarming starts.

Bamboo foundationless frames

Bamboo foundationless frames

How did I get to 60?

About a third of brood frames should be rotated out and replaced each season (~20). The nucleus method of swarm control uses the fewest frames, but you’re likely to have to use swarm control for all your colonies (~25). Then there’s a further 15 frames for the 3 additional nucs you want to prepare. Of course, if you’ve got lots of stored drawn comb 6 or you use double brood boxes, or Pagden’s artificial swarm method these numbers will be different.

The point is, you will need extra frames next season.

I’m ending this season with about 20 colonies and so expect to need over 200 frames next year, possibly more if queen rearing goes well. Some frames will be recycled foundationless frames but others will contain normal wired foundation.

And what about supers? 2022 was a good year for honey. If you had enough supers and super frames you’ll probably be OK in an average year.

Whether it’s average or not, it’s always easier to build the frames – well-fortified with tea and cake – in the winter, rather than in a rush as you prepare to go to the apiary.

Exactly the same type of arguments apply to any other routine piece of kit – broods, supers, crownboards, roofs, clearers. Buy or assemble and prepare them in the winter.

After Tim Toady try something new

A few weeks ago I introduced the Tim Toady concept. For just about any beekeeping activity, there are numerous ways that it can be completed. There must be dozens of different methods for swarm control or queen rearing, perhaps more.

Of course, however many methods there are, all – at least all the effective ones – are based upon the basic timings of brood development and of the viable fractions of the colony. These things don’t change.

The biology of the honey bee is effectively unvarying.

Queens take 16 days to develop, drones take 32 days (from the egg) to reach sexual maturity. A queen and the flying bees are a viable fraction, as are the nurse bees and young brood etc.

Despite being based around these invariant 7 biological facts, not all swarm control or queen rearing methods are equal. Certainly, the end results might be similar, but some methods are easier, use less equipment, need less apiary visits or whatever i.e. some methods probably suit your beekeeping better than others.

My advice about this plethora of different methods to achieve the same ends remains exactly what it was a month ago … learn one method really, really well. Understand it. Become so familiar with it that you don’t need to worry about its success 8.

And then, after a bit of winter theory, plan to try something different.

And the winter is the ideal time to build any new things you might need to try this alternative method next season.

Here are a couple of my past and current winter projects.

Morris boards

Probably 90% of my queens are produced using the Ben Harden approach. It was the method I first learnt, and remains the method I’m most confident with. I’ve found it a reliable small scale method for rearing queens.

But, as they say, ’familiarity breeds attempt’ (at something new) and I’ve always liked the elegance of the Cloake board. This is a split board with an integral queen excluder and a horizontal slide. You place it between the boxes in a strong double-brood colony. By inserting the slide, opening upper front and lower rear entrances and simultaneously closing the front lower hive entrance you render the top box temporarily queenless and enable it to get stuffed with all the returning foragers 9. The queenless upper box is now in an ideal state for starting new queen cells from added grafts.

Morris board

But most of my west coast bees don’t end up as booming double brooders … the standard Cloake board needs too many bees for my location.

Parallel Cloake boards 

Which is where the Morris board comes in. It’s effectively two parallel Cloake boards. Paired with a ‘twinstock-type’ divided upper brood box (or two cedar nuc boxes) it works in the same way as the Cloake board, but only needs sufficient bees to pack a 5-frame nuc so is better suited to my native bees.

Here’s one I started earlier … a Morris board under construction

You can buy Morris boards … or you can easily build them. This was one of my winter projects in ’20/’21. I’ve used them for the last two years successfully and have been pleased with the results.

I don’t think I understand their use as well as the Ben Harden system … but I will. In particular, I have yet to crack the sequential use of one side, then the other to rear a succession of queens.

Portable queen cell incubator

This was my one big project last winter. Unfortunately, we had a shocker 10 of a summer on the west coast and it was rarely used. I did put a few queen cells through it successfully, but queen rearing generally was hit and miss (mainly miss) so it’s yet to prove its full worth.

Portable queen cell incubator version 2

This is version 2 of the incubator. I’m gradually compiling a list of opponents for version 3 11 that should correct a few things that could be improved – capacity, level of insulation, heat distribution – though the current incarnation is probably more than adequate.

Building – and testing, which actually took a lot more time – the queen cell incubator was a lot of fun. I discovered (and created 🙁 ) a series of problems that needed to be solved and, relatively inexpensively 12, enjoyed sorting them all out. I could work in my warm, well-lit workroom, drink gallons of tea, and dabble with 12V electrickery without endangering my life.

I’ve used it this season powered by a 12V transformer indoors, from an adapter in the car or from a battery with solar backup in the apiary.

However, to use it properly I need to rear more queens … which brings me to … 

Queen rearing without grafting

Both the Ben Harden and Cloake/Morris board methods of rearing queens use a suitably-prepared colony in which young larvae are presented. Typically 13 these larvae are grafted from a suitable donor colony.

Grafting is perceived by some as a ‘dark art’ – though perhaps not exactly malicious – involving a combination of sorcery, spells, fabulous eyesight and rock-steady hands 14.

It isn’t, but this perception certainly dissuades many from attempting queen rearing.

Capped queen cells

Capped queen cells produced using the Ben Harden queenright queen rearing system

I find grafting relatively easy and routinely expect 80-90% ‘take’ of the grafted larvae. My sorcery and spells are clearly OK. However, in the future, my eyesight and manual steadiness/dexterity are likely to decline as I get older 15.

I’ve also been reading some papers on how the colony selects larvae to develop into queens. Their strategy isn’t based upon what they can see and pick up with a 000 sable paintbrush … funny that.

I’m therefore going to try one of the graft-free methods of rearing queen cells, and the approach I intend to use is the Hopkins method. Hence the part-read copy of Joe Conti’s book mentioned earlier.

The Hopkins method of queen rearing

This method involves the presentation of a frame of suitably-aged eggs and larvae horizontally over a brood box packed with young bees. Importantly I mentioned both eggs and larvae as, under the emergency response colonies preferentially rear new queens from 3 day old eggs.

The resulting queen cells are cut from the frame and used to prime nucs or mini-nucs.

Even with my presbyopia and ’hands like feet’ I should be able to manage that 😉

The intention is to couple the Hopkins method with a 12-frame double-brood queenless nuc box which is subsequently split into several nucs for mating the new queens. And, if that wasn’t enough, I’m hoping I can integrate this with some swarm prevention for the donor colonies … time will tell.

All of that means I need some new kit 🙂

Before butchery photo … an eke being adapted for the Hopkins method of queen rearing

I purchased some Maisie’s poly nuc boxes, floors, feeders and ekes in the summer sales. In the winter I’ll spend some time butchering them with my (t)rusty Dremel ‘multi-tool’ to accommodate the horizontal brood or super frames (and a cell bar with grafts for good measure) before painting them a snazzy British racing green or Oxford blue 16.

More poly hive butchering

I’ve already done a little poly hive butchering this winter.

I’ve got about 20 Everynucs from Thorne’s. These are a thick-walled, well made nuc with a couple of glaring design flaws. However, I’m prepared to overlook these as, a) they’re relatively easy to fix, and b) they cost me a chunk of money and I’m loathe to spend at least the same amount again to replace them.

In addition, bees overwinter fantastically well in them.

Here's one I prepared earlier

Here’s one I prepared earlier … an overcrowded overwintered nuc in April

I’ve also got a few compatible feeders which are really designed for feeding syrup. You can add fondant, but the bees then need to follow a rather convoluted path to access it.

Everynuc feeder ...

Everynuc feeder …

I decided to modify the feeders to allow both by fitting a syrup-proof dam about half way along the feeder and drilling some 3-4 cm holes through the resulting ‘dry’ side of the feeder 17 .

Wooden syrup-proof dam and holes in an Everynuc feeder

Fondant, ideally in a transparent/translucent plastic food container 18 is inverted over the holes and the bees have direct access to it, even in the very coldest weather.

Munchity crunchity … direct access to the fondant

The Ashforth-type syrup feeder still works if needed and I no longer need 8 gallons just to top up each nuc 19. Typically my nucs won’t need feeding in midwinter, but if they do I should be able to position the fondant directly over the cluster allowing them the best chance of reaching it.

Winter weight

This is a practical project carried over from last year. I’m interested in the changing weight of the hive as the colony segues from ‘maintenance’ mode to early season brood rearing. I’ve drawn some cartoon graphs where there’s a clearly visible inflection point, with the hive weight dropping much faster once brood rearing starts.

Hive scales

I’m keen to have some real data rather than just my crummy cartoons. I already have the tools for the job, my no expense spared made hive scales. Tests last year showed that these were pretty accurate; I was about 8% shy of the actual weight (which doesn’t matter a jot, it’s the percentage change in weight that’s critical) and, more importantly, produced readings that were reproducible within a percent or two.

However, last year I was thwarted by bad weather, a lack of Gore-tex and an unexpected delay in evolving gills. I’ve now bought a sou’wester and, in the name of science, am preparing to brave the elements every week or so to weigh half a dozen hives.

And in between all that lot I’ll be building frames 🙂 20


Note

The other winter project already part-completed is moving this site to a new server. Frankly this has been a bit of a palaver, but I think it’s now sorted.

If you had problems connecting over the last few evenings, apologies. If things still seem odd, slow, broken or unresponsive drop me a note in the comments or by email. Of course, if you can’t connect at all you’ll never read this postscript 🙁 .

The changes I’ve made will enable some new things to be incorporated over the next few months, once I’ve got a bit of spare time and have built all of those frames 😉