Synopsis : Moving hives in winter, the reduced (or not) longevity of honey bees and the benefits of sunflowers. Surely there’s something that interests you here?
Introduction
Don’t sigh disappointedly and look elsewhere for the definitive post on ”Sexy beesuits for a sizzling summer” or “The 10 best hives tools of 2023”1. Despite record breaking February weather and my report of early frogspawn, the temperatures have subsequently plummeted, it’s snowed again and the beekeeping season feels as far away as ever.
Sun and snow
I’ve therefore got no practical beekeeping to discuss 🙁 .
All I’ve done since last week is blend and jar honey, stare balefully out of the window at the hives (obscured by falling snow) and build frames.
And who wants to read about that?
What’s more, the cold snap isn’t restricted to my isolated corner of Scotland. Whilst I could write about first inspections, or preparing for the OSR, it all feels a bit premature. A decade of observing the page stats here shows that articles are read most when they’re timely. Lots of page views boosts my advertising revenue 2 so I want to write timely articles that are extensively read.
I’m therefore going to write about some science(y) stuff instead. You may have seen the headlines associated with one of these studies, but you’re unlikely to have read the article. I had been intending to start a monthly newsletter to cover some of these beekeeping-related topics that were unsuitable for a full post.
‘Unsuitable’ for a variety of reasons; not very interesting but really important, sounds important but probablyisn’t, interesting but inconclusive, interesting but wrongetc.
However, I’m too busy to write more than I already do, so instead I’ll periodically have a ’Science snippets’ post and lump a few topics together, prefixed this week with some musings from observations on moving hives.
Something for everyone? … or Nothing for anyone? … time will tell 😉 .
I’m moving house in a couple of weeks and so stacked unused ‘bee equipment’ in a pile on the patio for packing. Some of the supers contained drawn comb from previous years, some of the broods were empty and some contained prepared foundationless frames. I thought I’d taken care to align everything reasonably well to ensure they were ‘beetight‘ when I finished up late on Thursday evening. However, I’d misaligned a chest high stack in the middle and unknowingly left a finger-width crack which allowed some scouts to decide it was a desirable site. Sometime mid-morning on Friday – when I was in the office – a good sized swarm arrived. I hadn’t noticed any scouts checking out the location. I originally thought it was robbers cleaning out honey from the supers, but a quick peek under the roof (there was no crownboard on the stack) showed they were busy drawing comb. Going by the numbers of bees present it looked like a prime swarm, but you can’t be sure unless you find the laying queen.
They couldn’t have chosen a much less suitable (for me … it obviously suited them 😉 ) stack to set up home in. The bottom three boxes were empty broods, topped with three supers, two of which were part filled with drawn drone foundation. Inevitably the spacing of the frames in the supers was all over the place. Removing the roof gently showed they were already building brace comb, attached to the roof and/or the frames. The bees were accessing the stack somewhere in the middle, on the face against the wall. What a mess.
Rearranging the hive …
I fired up the smoker and got kitted up. It was relatively easy to split the stack and put a temporary floor below the supers (with the entrance facing the wall) and put a crownboard in place. The colony were agitated but not aggressive. There were far too many bees to try and find the queen. It was a hot day and there was a whirling maelstrom of bees. I was concerned that the queen – if she was mated – would start laying up the drawn drone foundation in the supers. By evening the stack was quietly humming away, with all the bees inside, so I moved them a few feet away to a purpose-built stand (the ubiquitous milk crate) … swarms can be relocated within 24-48 hours of arrival during which time the “3 foot, 3 mile rule” can be safely ignored.
Blackberry …
Early on Saturday morning I put a new floor and brood box filled with frames on the stand, then added a clearer board and put the two supers full of bees on top. The hope was that many of the foragers would move down into the brood box, leaving the queen and attendants above the clearer. I peeked through the perspex crownboard on Sunday morning and the number of bees in the supers was much reduced. A quick inspection located a very dark unmarked laying queen in the supers. One wing was pretty tatty so she might be quite old. To my surprise the bees had re-engineered a big patch of the drawn drone comb in the super frame to make worker-sized cells and that was the area she’d laid up. In addition, they’d also piled in a surprisingly large amount of nectar – presumably from blackberry which is just developing well at the moment. I rearranged the brood box, moving the queen on the laid-up super frame into the bottom box, then shook the remaining bees off the super frames and closed the colony up.
Ready for OA treatment …
Finally, late on Sunday evening I treated the colony by oxalic acid vaporisation. With no sealed brood in the hive it’s a perfect time to reduce the phoretic mite numbers by at least 95%. Since I have no idea about the provenance of the swarm – other than being sure its not from one of my colonies, all of which have marked and/or clipped queens – this gives at least some peace of mind that a range of unpleasant diseases aren’t being introduced to the apiary with the bees, or the mites they’re carrying. I’ll check the Varroa drop over the next few days and monitor the quality of sealed brood before deciding what to do with them. However, I suspect they’ll either be requeened or given away to an association member still wanting bees, or quite possibly both as I unite other colonies in preparation for moving.
The faint sniffing is my hay fever … I’m not testing the OA vapour. The latter is a significant lung irritant and I’m wearing safety goggles and a mask for personal protection. I’ll post something separately on the Sublimox vaporiser later in the season.
Note Unlike an earlier swarm only about ten mites dropped after OA vaporisation within the first 24 hours which is very reassuring. Some claim that only healthy colonies swarm and, although there is some truth in this (i.e. only strong healthy colonies build up sufficiently to swarm), it doesn’t mean the swarm won’t have a high phoretic mite load. Since, by definition, swarms are brood-free it’s an ideal time to treat them.
There’s something magical about being in the apiary late on a calm summer evening. I’ve been busy moving nucs from mating sites to local apiaries prior to moving them North. It’s been so warm that the bees have been flying late into the evening – until at least 9.30pm – so it’s not possible to close up the colonies until the majority of the stragglers return from the fields. By then the sun is down and a full moon is rising over the woods. The honey production colonies are busy humming away with the bees frantically fanning to evaporate excess water off the nectar prior to capping the cells. Near the hives the air is thick with the smell of blackberry or clover, and the syrupy smell of honeysuckle wafts from the hedgerows. Without a breath of wind it’s possible to hear every rustle in the undergrowth … if you wait long enough to stop breathing heavily from the physical exertion of hefting boxes around.
Late evening in the apiary
These moves are short distances so require no preparation of the colony other than a foam plug in the entrance and a secure strap. Long distance moves, where there’s a possibility of the colonies overheating, requires more preparation – with travel screens, good ventilation and, if the weather is particularly hot, making the trip overnight.
Usually by this time of the year I’ve got a reasonable idea of how the season will unroll. I’ll know how many colonies are looking strong coming out of the winter. I’ll be planning to boost the colonies (usually about now) that are closest to the oil seed rape with thin syrup and pollen to maximise the colony build up and honey yield. Finally, I’ll have an idea of how many colonies I’ll be selling off (usually as nucs) and so need to replace during the course of the coming season. The vagaries of the weather will slow things down or speed things up, but broadly things can be expected to proceed much as they’ve done over the last few years.
Go West North young man
Room for a couple more
But 2015 is going to be very different as I’m moving to Fife in Scotland. In addition to the usual house selling, house buying, new job, removals etc. I’ll be moving all of my beekeeping activities in about the middle of the season to a small village about 20 miles from St. Andrews. This has necessitated a major rethink of the beekeeping year, with the emphasis on having the majority of my colonies ready to move in late July.
I’m still at the planning stage but am currently intending to do some or all of the following:
accept that the year is likely to be a write-off as far as the main season honey crop is concerned … the last thing I want to do is to be moving colonies piled high with half filled supers.
review colony behaviour and performance early in the season – health, temper, strength etc. with the intention of only keeping the best. With no need to generate honey I should be able to concentrate on stock improvement.
start queen rearing from the best colonies as soon as possible, culling the really unsuitable queens, giving away those that are passable and splitting the colonies hard to make up nucs.
if bees are in short supply for queen rearing try and capture a few swarms in bait hives, replacing the swarmy (by definition) queens with home reared ones. Actually, I’ll be doing this anyway … there’s something wonderful about bees just arriving and setting up home in an empty box you’ve set out for them 🙂
aim to generate sufficient 5-8 frame nucs (the latter in butchered Paynes boxes), the rest in a motley collection of cedar, plywood and poly nuc boxes. I’m not really sure yet what ‘sufficient’ is …
get nucs well established by mid/late June so they can be checked over by the regional bee inspector before moving them to Scotland.
fill a Transit van with nucs and drive up the M6.
The intention is to move nucs in time for them to be well established, putting the very strong ones into full hives before the season ends, with the rest being overwintered for 2016.
How many is sufficient?
Overwintering Everynuc …
I usually have 8-12 production colonies, depending upon the time of the season, the amount of queen rearing I’ve done and the number of swarms that have generously been contributed by neighbouring beekeepers. However, I also need bees for my day job and need to significantly expand my work apiary. So ‘sufficient’ is probably somewhere between 12 and 24 nucs, the upper number possibly defined by the amount I can readily (and safely) accommodate in a van to move north.
Moving bees
I’ve transported nucs from Scottish islands to the Midlands before now, so the move back north shouldn’t be a problem. With a suitable travel screen (most of which I’ll have to build this spring), a van and a cool night it’s a straightforward procedure. It’s certainly a lot less backbreaking than moving full colonies, particularly when they’re piled high with supers. I wouldn’t make the journey in really hot weather or when there might be heavy traffic – although you can spray colonies with water through the travel screen, the high temperatures that occur due to lack of airflow need to be avoided to prevent over-stressing the bees.
It’s always a reassuring sight to manhandle the nucs into the new apiary in the early dawn of a summers day and seeing the first few bees exploring their new environment.
Alternative approaches
An alternative to all this would be to leave full colonies here until the end of the season, then return to collect them. By July the swarming season is pretty-much over so they are reasonably self-contained. With clipped queens and sufficient supers it should be possible to leave the bees to get on with things while I move, returning to collect them in early/mid September. However, the workload in doing this is considerable … 12+ full colonies, 36-48 (hopefully) full supers and a large number of robust hive stands. The prospect of securing a dozen or more colonies for transport together with supers containing perhaps hundreds of pounds of honey is a bit worrying. I realise this is second nature to many who practice migratory beekeeping, but they’re presumably set up with the necessary trailers, straps and experience … most of which I lack.
5 frame nuc colony …
There may yet be other options … whatever, it promises to be a very different beekeeping season.
Thorne’s have introduced two new poly nuc hives recently – one called the Polynuc (~£27) and the other the Everynuc (~£47). Both are available in British National dimensions. I’ve not seen the Polynuc but consider the walls, at 22mm, to be a little on the thin side for overwintering colonies (perhaps about the same as the Paynes poly nucs). However, I have recently taken delivery of half a dozen Everynuc poly nucs with the intention of expanding my stock, by splitting production colonies (after the honey harvest) and using mid/late season-reared queens to take them through the winter. Here are my first impressions.
Everynuc floor
The Everynuc is an interesting design. It’s available in a range of different sizes; Langstroth, National, Smith, Commercial, 14×12, Dadant etc. All have a rectangular, preformed (i.e. no assembly required) brood box with 40mm thick walls and neat metal runners at each end for frames. I suspect this box is the same size for all frame sizes. To accommodate smaller frames e.g. National in the Langstroth-sized box, they supply a slot-in feeder that takes 2.2 pints. The deeper frames e.g. 14×12 and Commercials also include a 40mm or 60mm eke that presumably goes between the brood box and the removable floor. The latter is sloping, with open mesh and has a removable tray for Varroa monitoring. There is a clear plastic crownboard and a thick roof. The exterior of the box is commendably smooth, so much easier to paint than the Modern Beekeeping/Paradise Honey boxes).
Bee space
Thorne’s claim the Everynuc is top bee space. Well, it is and it isn’t. In the National size, the top edge of the feeder sits 2-3 mm above the frame runner, meaning that the top bar slopes. To rectify this I’ve cut a couple of millimetres off the bottom of the feeder lugs, effectively lowering the feeder sufficiently to restore top bee space. While we’re on the subject of bee space, it’s definitely wrong at the end of the box without the feeder where I measure the gap at 1.5cm. This is poor and may reflect some sort of compromise to accommodate the different length lugs on National and other types of frames. For the moment I’ve not done anything about this, but if brace comb becomes an issue I intend to skin the inside end panel with some 8mm ply to restore the correct bee space.
Er, no …
The Everynuc is designed for 5 frames and a dummy board. With brand new frames you can just about cram 6 frames in, but as soon as the Hoffman spacers get a bit of propolis on them it’ll definitely be a 5 frame box. With good thick walls and a solid roof this is a good size to overwinter.
FIve frame poly nuc …
Everynuc feeder …
In addition to lowering the feeder I’m looking at ways to add a metal or plastic runner to the inside edge of the feeder, fitted just proud of the cut ply, to make frame manipulations easier. I’ve also added a thin piece of stripwood across the top of the feeder to stop the frames sliding backwards and forwards when the boxes are being moved. There is a small wooden spacer on the bottom edge of the feeder, but this additional cross brace should add a bit more security and prevent bees getting crushed. On the subject of moving colonies, I routinely make up 2-3 frame nucs for queen mating and then transport them from one apiary to another. Rather than letting the frames slide about side to side I’ve cut small blocks of dense foam to wedge them tightly in place for travel. An additional block of foam will be required for the entrance, which is wide and, with the short ‘landing board’, an awkward shape to block with mesh held in place with drawing pins (my favoured solution to transporting nucs).
Open wide …
First impressions of these nucs are reasonably positive. The beespace might be a problem, the frame feeder really shouldn’t need lowering and the entrance is likely to require some sort of reducing block to prevent robbing. However, the poly is dense and well moulded, with no real nooks and crannies to harbour pathogens. Cleaning should be straightforward. The boxes will stack if it is necessary to unite colonies.
Finally, I wonder how many beekeepers noticed the name of the manufacturer of the clear plastic crown board …
