Tag Archives: queen rearing

Brexit and beekeeping

The ‘oven ready’ deal the government struck with the EU in the dying hours of 2020 was a bit less à la carte and a bit more table d’hôte.

The worst of the predictions of empty supermarket shelves and the conversion of Essex into a 3500 km2 lorry park have not materialised 1.

But there are other things that haven’t or won’t appear.

And one of those things is bees.

Bee imports

There is a long history of bee imports into the UK, dating back at least a century. In recent years the number of imports has markedly increased, at least partially reflecting the increasing popularity of beekeeping. 

Going up! Imports of queens, nucs and packages to the UK, 2007-2020 (National Bee Unit data)

Queens are imported in cages, usually with a few attendant workers to keep them company. Nucs are small sized colonies, containing a queen, bees and brood on frames. 

Packages are the ‘new kid on the block’ (in the UK) with up to 2500 per year being imported after 2013. Packages are queenless boxes of bees, containing no frames or brood.

Empty boxes after installing packages of bees

They are usually supplied in a mesh-sided box together with a queen. The bees are placed into a hive with frames of foundation and the queen is added in an introduction cage. They are fed with a gallon to two of syrup to encourage them to draw comb.

Installing a package of bees

It’s a very convenient way to purchase bees and avoids at least some of the risk of importing diseases 2. It’s also less expensive. This presumably reflects both the absence of frame/foundation and the need for a box to contain the frames.

But, post-Brexit, importation of packages or nucs from EU countries is no longer allowed. You are also not allowed to import full colonies (small numbers of these were imported each year, but insufficient to justify adding them to the graph above).

Queen imports are still allowed.

Why are were so many bees imported?

The simple answer is ‘demand’.

Bees can be reared inexpensively in warmer climates, such as southern Italy or Greece. The earlier start to the season in these regions means that queens, nucs or packages can be ready in March to meet the early season demand by UK beekeepers.

If you want a nuc with a laying queen in March or April in the UK you have two choices; a) buy imported bees, or b) prepare or purchase an overwintered nuc.

I don’t have data for the month by month breakdown of queen imports. I suspect many of these are also to meet the early season demand, either by adding them to an imported package (see above) or for adding to workers/brood reared and overwintered in a UK hive that’s split early in the season to create nucleus colonies.

Some importers would sell the latter on as ‘locally reared bees’. They are … sort of. Except for the queen who of course determines the properties of all the bees in the subsequent brood 🙁

An example of being “economical with the truth” perhaps?

Imported queens were also available throughout the season to replace those lost for any number of reasons (swarming, poor mating, failed supersedure, DLQ’s, or – my speciality – ham-fisted beekeeping) or to make increase.

And to put these imports into numerical context … there are about 45,000 ‘hobby’ beekeepers in the UK and perhaps 200+ bee farmers. Of the ~250,000 hives in the UK, about 40,000 are managed by bee farmers.

What are the likely consequences of the import ban?

I think there are likely to be at least four consequences from the ban on the importation of nucs and packages to the UK from the EU:

  1. Early season nucs (whatever the source) will be more expensive than in previous years. At the very least there will be a shortfall of ~2000 nucs or packages. Assuming demand remains the same – and there seems no reason that it won’t, and a realistic chance that it will actually increase – then this will push up the price of overwintered nucs, and the price of nucs assembled from an imported queen and some ‘local’ bees. I’ve seen lots of nucs offered in the £250-300 range already this year.
  2. An increase in imports from New Zealand. KBS (and perhaps others) have imported New Zealand queens for several years. If economically viable this trade could increase 3.
  3. Some importers may try and bypass the ban by importing to Northern Ireland, ‘staging’ the bees there and then importing them onwards to the UK. The legality of this appears dubious, though the fact it was being considered reflects that this part of the ‘oven ready’ Brexit deal was not even table d’hôte and more like good old-fashioned fudge.
  4. Potentially, a post-Covid increase in bee smuggling. This has probably always gone on in a limited way. Presumably, with contacts in France or Italy, it would be easy enough to smuggle across a couple of nucs in the boot of the car. However, with increased border checks and potential delays, I (thankfully) don’t see a way that this could be economically viable on a large scale.

Is that all?

There may be other consequences, but those are the ones that first came to mind.

Of the four, I expect #1 is a nailed-on certainty, #2 is a possibility, #3 is an outside possibility but is already banned under the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol which specifically prohibits using Northern Ireland as a backdoor from Europe, and #4 happens and will continue, but is small-scale.

Of course, some, all or none of this ban may be revised as the EU and UK continue to wrangle over the details of the post-Withdrawal Agreement. Even as I write this the UK has extended the grace period for Irish sea border checks (or ‘broken international law’ according to the EU). 

This website is supposed to be a politics-free zone 4 … so let’s get back to safer territory.

Why is early season demand so high?

It seems likely that there are three reasons for this early season demand:

  1. Commercial beekeepers needing to increase colony numbers to provide pollination services or for honey production. Despite commercials comprising only ~0.4% of UK beekeepers, they manage ~16% of UK hives. On average a commercial operation runs 200 hives in comparison to less than 5 for hobby beekeepers. For some, their business model may have relied upon the (relatively) inexpensive supply of early-season bees.
  2. Replacing winter losses by either commercial or amateur beekeepers. The three hives you had in the autumn have been slashed to one, through poor Varroa management, lousy queen mating or a flood of biblical proportions. With just one remaining hive you need lots of things to go right to repopulate your apiary. Or you could just buy them in.
  3. New beekeepers, desperate to start beekeeping after attending training courses through the long, dark, cold, wet winter. And who can blame them? 

For the rest of the post I’m going to focus on amateur or hobby beekeeping. I don’t know enough about how commercial operations work. Whilst I have considerable sympathy if this change in the law prevents bee farmers fulfilling pollination or honey production contracts, I also question how sensible it is to depend upon imports as the UK extricates itself from the European Union.

Whatever arrangement we finally reached it was always going to be somewhere in between the Armageddon predicted by ‘Project Fear’ and the ‘Unicorns and sunlit uplands’ promised by the Brexiteers.

Where are those sunlit uplands?

And that had been obvious for years.

I have less sympathy for those who sell on imported bees to meet demand from existing or new beekeepers. This is because I think beekeeping (at least at the hobbyist level) can, and should, be sustainable.

Sustainable beekeeping

I would define sustainable beekeeping as the self-sufficiency that is achieved by:

  • Managing your stocks in a way to minimise winter losses
  • Rearing queens during the season to requeen your own colonies when needed (because colonies with young queens produce brood later into the autumn, so maximising winter bee production) and to …
  • Overwinter nucleus colonies to make up for any winter losses, or for sale in the following spring

All of these things make sound economic sense. 

More importantly, I think achieving this level of self-sufficiency involves learning a few basic skills as a beekeeper that not only improve your beekeeping but are also interesting and enjoyable.

I’ve previously discussed the Goldilocks Principle and beekeeping, the optimum number of colonies to keep considering your interest and enthusiasm for bees and the time you have available for your beekeeping.

It’s somewhere between 2 and a very large number. 

For me, it’s a dozen or so, though for years I’ve run up to double that number for our research, and for spares, and because I’ve reached the point where it’s easy to generate more colonies (and because I’m a lousy judge of the limited time I have available 🙁 ).

Two is better than one, because one colony can dwindle, can misbehave or can go awry, and without a colony to compare it with you might be none the wiser that nothing is wrong. Two colonies also means you can always use larvae from one to rescue the other if it goes queenless.

And with just two colonies you can easily practise sustainable beekeeping. You are no longer dependent on an importer having a £30 mass-produced queen spare.

What’s wrong with imported bees?

The usual reason given by beekeepers opposed to imports is the risk of also importing pathogens.

Varroa is cited as an example of what has happened. 

Tropilaelaps or small hive beetle are given as reasons for what might happen.

And then there are usually some vague statements about ‘viruses’. 

There’s good scientific evidence that the current global distribution of DWV is a result of beekeepers moving colonies about.

More recently, we have collaborated on a study that has demonstrated an association between honey bee queen imports and outbreaks of chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV). An important point to emphasise here is that the direction of CBPV transmission is not yet clear from our studies. The imported queens might be bringing CBPV in with them. Alternatively, the ‘clean’ imported queens (and their progeny) may be very susceptible to CBPV circulating in ‘dirty’ UK bees. Time will tell.

However, whilst the international trade in plants and animals has regularly, albeit inadvertently, introduced devastating diseases e.g. Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (ash dieback), I think there are two even more compelling reasons why importation of bees is detrimental.

  1. Local bees are better adapted to the environment in which they were reared and consequently have increased overwintering success rates.
  2. I believe that inexpensive imported bees are detrimental to the quality of UK beekeeping.

I’ve discussed both these topics previously. However, I intend to return to them again this year. This is partly because in this brave new post-Brexit world we now inhabit the landscape has changed.

At least some imports are no longer allowed. The price of nucs will increase. Some/many of these available early in the season will be thrown together from overwintered UK colonies and an imported queen.

These are not local bees and they will not provide the benefits that local bees should bring.

Bad beekeeping and bee imports

If imported queens cost £500 each 5 there would be hundreds of reasons to learn how to rear your own queens. 

But most beekeepers don’t …

Although many beekeepers practise ‘passive’ queen rearing e.g. during swarm control, it offers little flexibility or opportunity to rear queens outside the normal swarming season, or to improve your stocks.

In contrast, ‘active’ queen rearing i.e. selection of the best colonies to rear several queens from, is probably practised by less than 20% of beekeepers.

This does not need to involve grafting, instrumental insemination or rows of brightly coloured mini-nucs. It does not need any large financial outlay, or huge numbers of colonies to start with.

But it does need attention to detail, an understanding of – or a willingness to learn – the development cycle of queens, and an ability to judge the qualities of your bees.

Essentially what it involves is slightly better beekeeping.

But, the availability of Italian, Greek or Maltese queens for £20 each acts as a disincentive.

Why learn all that difficult ‘stuff’ if you can simply enter your credit card details and wait for the postie?

Overwintering 5 frame poly nuc

Overwintering 5 frame poly nuc

And similar arguments apply to overwintering nucleus colonies. This requires careful judgement of colony strength through late summer, and the weight of the nuc over the winter.

It’s not rocket science or brain surgery or Fermat’s Last Theorem … but it does require a little application and attention.

But, why bother if you can simply wield your “flexible friend” 6 in March and replace any lost colonies with imported packages for £125 each?

Rant over

Actually, it wasn’t really a rant. 

My own beekeeping has been sustainable for a decade. I’ve bought in queens or nucs of dark native or near-native bees from specialist UK breeders a few times. I have used these to improve my stocks and sold or gifted spare/excess nucs to beginners.

I’ve caught a lot of swarms in bait hives and used the best to improve my bees, and the remainder to strengthen other colonies.

The photographs of packages (above) are of colonies we have used for relatively short-term scientific research. 

I’m going to be doing a lot of queen rearing this season. Assuming that goes well, I then expect to overwinter more nucs than usual next winter. 

I then hope that the bee import ban remains in place for long enough until I can sell all these nucs for an obscene profit which I will use to purchase a queen rearing operation in Malta. 😉

And I’m going to write about it here.

Notes

BBKA statement made a day or two after this post appeared. The BBKA and other national associations are concerned about the potential import of Small Hive Beetle (SHB) into the UK via Northern Ireland. Whilst I still think this breaches the Northern Ireland Protocol, it doesn’t mean it won’t be attempted (and there’s at least one importer offering bees via this route). It’s not clear that the NI authorities have the manpower to inspect thousands of packages.

It’s worth noting that SHB was introduced to southern Italy in 2014 and remains established there. The most recent epidemiological report shows that it was detected as late as October 2020 in sentinel apiaries and is also established in natural colonies.

With a single exception – see below – every country into which SHB has been imported has failed to eradicate it. As I wrote in November 2014:

“Once here it is unlikely that we will be able to eradicate SHB. The USA failed, Hawaii failed, Australia failed, Canada failed and it looks almost certain that Italy has failed.”

And Italy has failed.

The one exception was a single import to a single apiary in the Portugal. Notably, the illegal import was of queens, not nucs or packages. Eradication involved the destruction of the colonies, the ploughing up of the apiary and the entire area being drenched in insecticide.

The Beekeepers Quarterly

This post also appeared in the summer 2021 edition of The Beekeepers Quarterly published by Northern Bee Books.

Splits and stock improvement

Beekeeping is always more enjoyable if the bees you are handling are good quality. I’ve briefly discussed judging the quality and temperament of your bees when writing about record keeping. With experience, and in particular with comparisons between colonies, it’s possible to identify traits which make working with your bees more enjoyable.

Bad behaviour

Although I keep general records on colony build up, disease resistance and the like, the three behavioural traits I try and accurately score my bees on all relate to how pleasant they are to handle. These are temper, running on the comb and following. I score these on a scale of 1 to 5 (low to high) and any colony consistently at 3 or less will eventually require attention. Bees with poor temper or that run on the comb are unpleasant to inspect, making what should be an interesting activity a chore. Bees that ‘follow’ – dive bombing you dozens of metres away from the hives after an inspection – are a real pain. Aside from making your own post-inspection de-suiting risky they are a potential menace to others going near your apiary and so should not be tolerated.

It’s all in the genes … nearly

If you’re really unfortunate you can find bees showing all three traits simultaneously – stroppy, running, followers – but they’re more usually found individually. With all of these characteristics, assuming they’re not environmental (poor weather, no flow, queenless colonies etc.), requeening is the usual solution. Genetics and environment determine behaviour, and if the environment is OK, then the genetics need changing. You can do this by purchasing a new queen, by rearing your own by grafting, or – as described below – by splitting the colony and providing suitable young larvae for the queenless portion to rear the new queen from. I usually graft and rear queens from my best stock but resources – time largely, due to overseas work commitments – mean that all my queen rearing and replacement is being done by splits this season.

The mechanics of a split

I’ve described the mechanics of a conventional vertical split for swarm control and making increase previously. The colony is divided using a split or division board into two. The queenright ‘half’ gets the flying bees, the queenless ‘half’ starts to make new queen cells from very young larvae. ‘Half’ because this is an imprecise science in terms of bee numbers … top and bottom half of the colony might be a better description, though colony orientation is not proscribed. After one week the colony is manipulated to bleed off flying bees from the queenless half, both strengthening the queenright half and reducing the likelihood of swarming. Three weeks later there should be a new, mated laying queen present.

Like mother, like daughter

Like father, like son is more conventional, but clearly inappropriate for a colony of bees 😉 . As outlined above, the queenless half of the split rears a new queen from larvae already present in the colony. If this is a colony with undesirable characteristics then there’s a distinct possibility you’ll be getting ‘more of the same’. These larvae came from eggs laid by the queen that headed the colony with the very-same undesirable characteristics you’re trying to replace. With open mated queens it’s a lottery, but the deck is already stacked against you – if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphors. So … stack the deck in your favour by providing eggs and young larvae from a colony with desirable characteristics.

Splits and stock improvement

Split the colony as previously described. In this case I’d argue that the queenless half should be on the top of the stack of boxes as you’ll be inspecting it a couple of times. Make sure the queenright half has sufficient stores should conditions deteriorate as they’ll be short of foragers for the next week or so. Make sure that the queenless half has the majority of brood – sealed and unsealed – as you’ll need young bees over an extended period to rear new queens.

Upstairs, downstairs?

Upstairs, downstairs?

At the end of this initial manipulation the queenright half will use an entrance at the bottom of the stack, orientated in the opposite direction to the original hive entrance. The split board will have an entrance open at the original front of the hive. This is illustrated in the ‘reversed’ orientation on the right hand side of diagram (right). For a more comprehensive discussion of the orientation of the queenright and queenless portions see the recent post entitled Upstairs, downstairs?

Seek and destroy

One week later you need to carefully inspect the upper (queenless) box. Any and all queen cells must be found and destroyed. You will need to shake the bees off every frame to do this. These potential new queens were all reared from eggs and larvae laid by the original queen. Since 7 days have elapsed there will no longer be any suitable young larvae for the colony to rear a new queen. The maths are straightforward; a newly laid egg hatches after 3 days and larvae must be less than 3 days old to rear queens from.

Queen cells ...

Queen cells …

When returning the frames to the brood box leave a gap in the middle. Into this gap add a frame containing eggs and young larvae from a colony with desirable genetics i.e. good tempered, steady on the comb and none of those dreadful followers. Mark the frame so you can identify it again if needed. If you have a choice of frames to transfer use one with fresh new comb as the bees find this easier to manipulate when drawing out queen cells.

Eggs in new comb ...

Eggs in new comb …

Normal service is resumed

With the new frame of eggs/larvae added you’re now back on track to complete the vertical split. I’d suggest reversing the hive at the same time as you add the frame of ‘desirable’ larvae. There should be plenty of young bees in the upper half of the split and it’s these that will rear the new queen. The flying bees will strengthen the queenright half of the hive, helping gather nectar if there is a flow on. Make sure the queenright half of the hive has sufficient supers – you don’t want to be disturbing the colony too much, particularly in about 2-3 weeks which is when the new virgin queen will be going on her mating flight(s).

One week after adding the frame of new eggs and larvae there should be queen cells clearly present on the marked frame. If there aren’t it’s likely you missed a queen cell when shaking through the colony and there might be a newly emerged virgin running about in the hive.

Queen cells ...

Queen cells …

In which case, let’s hope she doesn’t rear bees that behave like those from her mother 😉

Split boards

Since moving to Scotland my DIY activities have been restricted – by lack of time, by lack of space and by lack of any major shortages in the equipment I use. However, a couple of spare sheets of Correx became available after some non-bee projects and I decided to use them to knock up a few split boards for swarm control and requeening this season.

As an aside … I love Correx. It makes great roofs, temporary floors and landing boards.

Split boards are simple square boards with beespace both sides and – usually – a single entrance. With an entrance door (rather than a simple gap) closed they can double up as crownboards or can be used to stack supers late in the season.

They can also be built with mesh panels to allow the warmth and smell of the lower colony to spread through the hive. However, in this instance these were to be about as simple as possible so I omitted the mesh.

Opposing entrances

For additional flexibility you can provide two opposing entrances with doors. With these the split board is starting to look dangerously like a cut down Snelgrove board. The vertical split method I use involves turning the hive 180° on the seventh day. With opposing entrances on the split board (and a corresponding double-entrance floor) it’s possible to avoid any heavy lifting – simply close the front door and open the rear door on the split board and vice versa on the floor.

Split board ...

Split board …

Assembly instructions

Really? How simple could it be?

I don’t have a table saw (or space to hide store it) so asked the nice people at Haldane’s in Glenrothes to generate some 20mm x 9mm strip wood. They did this from oak (!) offcuts for about a tenth the price one of the DIY chain stores would charge for equivalent softwood. The latter would have been preferable, not least because I got some wicked splinters from the oak, but it was what they had to hand and would have otherwise gone to the wood burner.

The Correx I had was 4mm thick. I’d have preferred 6mm, but as this was ‘spare’ from another project, I had to make do. I was originally going to use two sheets arranged at 90° to each other to provide rigidity. However, the first single-sheet prototype I built was plenty rigid enough so I stuck with that design.

Corner detail ...

Corner detail …

I cut the oak strips to 44cm in length, arranged them around the periphery of the 46 x 46cm Correx sheet and nailed all but two – on opposing sides of the top face – in place. ‘Overlap’ the corners (see image right) to provide additional strength. It’s worth noting here that my nail gun was only just strong enough to penetrate ~20mm of oak. The few nails that protruded were driven home with a hammer, brute force and a lot of ignorance. With care, frame nails (gimp pins) can easily be used instead.

Doors

In preparing the wood for the last two sides I made two slanting cuts to create the ‘doors’, nailed everything down and added a simple hinge from a gimp pin. It’s worth noting that it’s much easier to place the door ‘hinge’ (pivot?) centrally, rather than at one end of the door. Firstly, there’s less chance the end of the door will foul the adjacent wood. Secondly, to open the door you just need to push one end inwards with the hive tool; there’s no need to add a handle (a screw or nail that protrudes) to open the door outwards. This means there’s nothing to protrude and catch on clothing, on adjacent stacked boxes or on the lower lip of the roof when you’re using it as a crownboard. Finally, the bees won’t care.

Doors closed ...

Doors closed …

I gave the wood a couple of coats of (ironically) One Coat Ronseal Fence Life which should protect it from the elements.

Cheapy, cheapy

The Correx was about a tenner a sheet – delivered 5+ sheets at a time – from which I could cut sufficient for 10 split boards, with useful offcuts to build nuc crownboards or landing boards from. The hardwood strip wood was about £2 per board. Therefore, aside from a few nails, the finished boards cost about £3 each. This compares very favourably with the £28-36 charged by most suppliers for a Snelgrove board. Of course, I appreciate that the latter are more complicated and offer additional confusion functionality, but these are perfectly serviceable for a vertical split and there’s a lot of pleasure to be gained by using something you’ve bodged lovingly crafted yourself 😉

By the time this appears these boards might even be in use …

—
There’s a good explanation of split board construction in a post by Calluna4u on the SBAi discussion forum (“the thinking beekeepers web forum”). Calluna4u has a wealth of experience as a commercial beekeeper and prepares these boards in industrial quantities. His design differs slightly as it’s for use with hives arranged four to a palette. His post contains links to suppliers for 6mm pre-cut Correx in Dundee which might be useful to Scottish-based beekeepers.

2016 in retrospect

The end of another year and another season’s beekeeping. Now is a good time to review what went well and what went badly.

The bee shed in autumn ...

The bee shed in autumn …

In terms of my beekeeping year in Scotland, the end of December isn’t even half way through the winter. Although I didn’t open many hives after mid-September (three and a half months ago), unless we get a warm, early Spring I don’t expect to do any inspections until mid-April. That’s another four and a half months to ruminate on the year passed and plan for the season ahead.

The high points

The great escape ...

The great escape …

This was the first full season using the bee shed and I’m already convinced of the advantages it offers. Colonies built up well in the late Spring, appreciably faster than colonies in the same apiary that didn’t benefit from the protection the shed offers. I was able to inspect whatever the weather. Only really warm days were a problem, and that was because it gets uncomfortably hot. The Up-and-Out™ windows (the bees crawl up and fly out) clear the shed very quickly, making it a good environment for grafting larvae when queen rearing without getting buzzed with bees all the time. It would benefit from power, better lighting, a kettle and an armchair … perhaps something to plan for 2017? It’s never going to resemble the palatial setups in some of those German bee houses, but in terms of secure, weatherproof and sheltered accommodation, it’s hard to beat.

Varroa control has worked well this year. A combination of timely applications of treatment and a significant brood break in the middle of the season, meant that colonies went into the winter with low to very low Varroa levels. Some broodless colonies dropped less than 20 mites after midwinter treatment which is very encouraging.

OSR ... can you believe it?!

OSR … can you believe it?!

I’ve also been pleased with the honey flavour this year. By missing the OSR – too cold (the photo above was taken at the end of April) – the early season honey was a heady mix of goodness knows what, and all the better for it. Great flavour and it has sold well. The switch to square jars with distinctive black lids looks good and, coupled with a very simple DIY label, it’s been popular with repeat customers. My honey is currently available – assuming they haven’t sold out over Christmas – from Mellis Cheese in St. Andrews and Edinburgh, and Luvians in Cupar.

The low points

The most significant problems were all related to queens. Firstly, queens from 2015 were poorly mated (as predicted way back in June 2015) and several gave up (stopped laying) or simply disappeared in May/June. Secondly, my own queen rearing coincided with shortfall and an extended period of very poor weather for queen mating. As a consequence, several hives developed laying workers and needed some significant interventions to rescue them.

Drone laying workers ...

Drone laying workers …

All of these problems – some of my own making, but some unavoidable – meant that production colonies weren’t really strong enough to exploit the summer nectar flow. Honey yields from the summer were the worst I’ve had for half a decade, though the flavour was outstanding. I’ve a couple of 30lb buckets left that I’m hoping to eke out over the next few weeks in the smallest possible portions. To add insult to injury … it was apparently one of the best years for heather honey and, because of the problems detailed above, I was singularly unprepared to take advantage of it. In all honesty, I’m not wildly disappointed about this as I’m not a great fan of heather honey. However, since I’m in Scotland and heather honey is considered by many as the crème de la crème, I feel I’ve missed a golden opportunity.

The new season

With the winter solstice now passed it’s time to make plans for the coming season. I’ll deal with these in the Spring as this article is already longer than intended.

www.theapiarist.org

It’s been a busy year with posts almost every Friday. This was more than I’d intended at the beginning of the year, but seems to have happened without too much contrivance. Although posted on a Friday, they’re written in the days and weeks preceding (hence explaining the butchered tenses often used).

Keeping it regular

Keeping it regular

I’ve always tried to avoid the diary-like cataloguing of what goes on in the apiary (as there are others who do this much better), instead focusing on a balance between topical items and more expansive posts – often written as separate linked articles (like on Varroa control or queen rearing) – that both reflect my interests and might help others improve their beekeeping … if only by avoiding my mistakes 😉

Page views and visitors

Page views and visitors

Other than a slightly odd dip in July – a belated “June gap”? – visitor numbers and page views showed the expected pattern of increasing interest in mid/late Spring, tailing off again as the season draws to a close. The peak figures in October reflect the interest in feeding fondant and mite treatments. Clearly there’s still some work to do … treating for mites in October is likely to be too late to protect the winter bees from the ravages of deformed wing virus. Over the entire year the original 2014 posting about honey warming cabinets remained the most popular, with articles on feeding fondant, vertical splits, steam wax extractors and foundationless frames getting lots of attention as well.

Search and ye shall find …

Google and most other search engines ‘hide’ the search terms used by viewers to reach a website. This is nominally valuable information, though looking at the terms that do get through the filters makes you wonder … each of the terms below led the viewer to this site (the typos are original) :

circular large 200 frame honey extractor plans … as opposed to a small 200 frame extractor?

wellies with honey bee pucturers on … puctures?

using laser printer in unheated wooden shed … electric heater needed I think

square drones frame homemaking striping images … random word generator?

foundationless sheds … understandable considering foundationless frames and bee sheds

poly queen beekeeping pdf … article on poly queen beekeeping in preparation for 2017

plastic nuc boxes for sale in manitoba … perhaps a little too geographically specialised

simple label design for honey sales in nigeria … see Manitoba

do i feed bees with apiguard … not exactly

is dettol effective against varroa mites … rigorous testing needed and possibly tainted honey?

how to treat a double brood hive with api bioxal … article on beekeeping bankruptcy to follow

houney bees kb shed bnati h or kb kha jays h … yes, that really was a search term

save humanity … a topic covered in detail earlier this year

humanity save … there’s a theme emerging here

how do bees save humanity … by pretending to be wasps

Unsocial media

It’s clear that there are whole communities of beekeepers out there with very different online activities – some interchangeably use old-fashioned websites (like this site) and various types of social media, others restrict themselves to Twitter and Facebook. Posts to this site are now also ‘announced’ on Twitter (@The_Apiarist) and Facebook. I still have to get the hang of Facebook as I’ve not previously used it … I don’t even know how to properly link to it 🙁

Anyway … enough for the year. As I write this the winter solstice has now passed, the days will be getting longer and lighter, queens will – particularly now with the warmer winter weather – be starting to lay and mites will be starting to reproduce. There’s very little to do in the apiary, but the new season is definitely on its way …

For 2017 I hope your bees are gentle, your queens are prolific, your supers are heavy and your swarms end up in my bait hives 😉

Happy New Year

Frosty apiary

Frosty apiary

 

Everynuc elbow room

Of the polystyrene nucleus hives (polynucs) I’ve seen, owned or butchered, the Everynuc sold by Thorne’s is the one I prefer. They have a separate OMF floor and Varroa tray, are easy to paint and are made from dense, robust and thick (i.e. well-insulating) polystyrene. The entrance is a gaping maw, but that is easily fixed with some wire mesh pinned in place. The beespace is also an issue due to the compromises made to accommodate both long-lugged National and short-lugged Langstroth frames, but again this can be fixed easily and cheaply (though it’s a bit irritating having to ‘fix’ a box that costs almost £50  🙁 ).

Entrance reducer

Entrance reducer …

Polynucs for overwintering

Colonies overwintered in these boxes did very well and were generally at least as good, and often better, than my colonies in cedar hives†. Although I’ve also purchased a few of the Miller-type feeders it’s actually easier to prise up one end of the crownboard and simply drop fondant – or pour syrup – into the integral feeder in the brood box. Checking the remaining fondant/syrup levels takes seconds through the clear flexible crownboard and barely disturbs the colony at all.

Everynuc

Everynuc …

Polynucs for queen mating

Due to work commitments I haven’t had time this season to deal with high-maintenance mini-nucs for queen mating, so have been exclusively using these Everynucs. With the vagaries of the weather in my part of the world it’s good not to have to keep checking them for stores during cold, wet periods. It’s also great to work with full-sized brood frames that allow the laying pattern of the queen to be determined easily. I usually raise a couple of batches of queens in a season and this means I’m going in and out of a dozen or so of these boxes regularly, making them up, priming them with a sealed queen cell, inspecting them for a mated queen etc. I usually start them off as 3 frame nucs, dummied down, to save resources, allowing them to expand with successive batches of queens.

Space for five and a bit frames

Not 6 frames

Er, no …

One of the nice features of these boxes is their internal width which is almost but not quite sufficient for 6 Hoffmann frames. You therefore need to use five frames together with a dummy board to avoid strong colonies building brace comb in the gaps on one or both sides of the outside frames. One advantage of this additional ‘elbow room’ is that these boxes can accommodate slightly fatter brood frames, for example when the bees build up the corners with stores rather than drawing out foundation of the adjacent frame. There’s also ample space to introduce a queen cell or caged queen, check for emergence – or release – in a day or two and then gently push the frames back together again.

Dummy board needed ...

Dummy board needed …

Even better, by removing the dummy board there’s enough space to work from one side of the box to the other without first removing, and leaving aside, a frame to make space. The frames do need to be removed gently and slowly to avoid rolling bees (but you do this anyway of course). However, since I’m generally looking for the recently mated and laying queen ‘slow and steady’ is a definite advantage. In the image below you can see the space available, even when four of the frames are reasonably heavily propilised.

Just enough space ...

Just enough space …

To make frame manipulation easier it’s worth adding a frame runner on the inside of the feed compartment (it’s the white strip just visible in the photo above) as described previously. Without this the bees tend to stick the frames to the coarse wooden lip of the feeder with propolis, thereby making it more difficult to gently slide the frames together (or apart).

The brood boxes of these Everynuc’s stack, meaning you can easily unite two nucs into a vertical 10-frame unit using newspaper. The vertical beespace is wrong (the boxes are appreciably deeper than a National frame) so the resulting colony should be moved to a standard 10-12 frame brood box before they build extensive brace comb. As the season draws to an end it’s therefore possible to take pairs of boxes, remove the queen from one to requeen another hive, unite the colonies and then – a week or so later – have a good 10-frame colony to prepare for overwintering … or, of course, overwinter them directly in these nucleus hives.

† The only exception were those in the bee shed which were probably 2-3 weeks even further ahead in their development by late March/early April this year.