Tag Archives: robbing

Window of opportunity

I’ve recently discussed problems faced by beekeepers trying to control high Varroa levels in colonies during the ‘body’ of the beekeeping season. Essentially the problems are two-fold:

  • Many miticides need to be used for several weeks to target mites in capped cells.
  • The soft or hard chemicals used for Varroa control are – with the exception of the formic acid in MAQS – incompatible with honey production.

This type of midseason mite management should not be needed if parasite levels are controlled in late summer and midwinter.

If it is needed it suggests that the treatment(s) failed or that mites are being acquired through robbing or drifting from other colonies in the neighbourhood (either your own, a nearby apiary or a feral colony).

Opportunity knocks

However, all is not lost. Most seasons offer at least one opportunity to intervene and control mite levels.

Knowing when and how to exploit it requires an appreciation of the development cycle of the bee.

Honey bee development

Honey bee development

The important numbers are the 21 and 24 day development cycle of workers and drones respectively, the 16 day development cycle of the queen and the time it takes for eggs to hatch, grow as larvae and pupate in capped cells.

Not shown is the maturation period after emergence for the queen (5 to 6 days) before she goes on a mating flight, or the delay after returning before she starts laying (2-3 days) 1.

Swarms

The easiest scenario to discuss is when the colony swarms.

Consider the swarm first. A prime swarm is broodless, contains a mated queen and ~35% of the mites that were present in the issuing colony. All the mites will be phoretic. Assuming there’s drawn comb available the queen will start laying soon after the swarm is hived (or conveniently moves into your bait hive).

Eight days later the first eggs will have hatched, the larvae grown and the brood will be capped.

At which point the majority of the mites will start to become inaccessible again.

However, during those 8 days it’s ‘open season’ for those phoretic mites.

It is sensible to quarantine swarms from an unknown source and treat for mites in the first 8 days if needed.

If the swarm is a cast with an unmated queen you’ve got a bit more time. The virgin queen needs to get out and mate, mature and start laying. This tends to happen in just a few days if the weather is accommodating, so don’t leave things too long.

The swarmed colony

Now consider what’s left in the colony that swarmed 2. There will be sealed and unsealed brood and – notwithstanding the reduced egg laying by the queen as she’s slimmed down in preparation for swarming – there are also likely to be some eggs.

There will also be a sealed queen cell (and, in a strong colony, several sealed and unsealed queen cells).

Queen cells ...

Queen cells …

Without intervention the queen(s) will start emerging about 9 days later. If you intervene, knocking down all the sealed cells and leaving just one good charged open cell 3, it will be a couple more days before the queen emerges.

Weather permitting it will be a further 8 days before the newly mated queen starts laying. In reality, this is the absolute minimum and is rarely achieved in a full hive 4.

Simultaneously, in the requeening hive, the open brood is maturing and being capped and the capped brood is emerging (releasing more mites).

About eight days after the swarm leaves all the worker brood in the hive will be capped.

Twenty one (or 24 in the case of drone brood) days after the last egg was laid by the queen all the brood will have emerged.

Consequently all the mites in the colony will be phoretic.

The window of opportunity

So, if you need to treat 5 the window of opportunity is between the last of the brood from the old queen emerging and the first of the larvae from the new queen being capped.

You can determine when this is likely to be based upon the known activities of the old and new queen during the swarming period.

The window of opportunity

The diagram above makes a number of assumptions. As presented, all minimise the duration of the minimum broodless period:

  • The old queen continues laying until the day she swarms
  • The colony swarms on the day the queen cell is sealed
  • The beekeeper does not intervene to leave an open, charged cell of a known age
  • The new queen takes the minimum amount of time to mature, go on a mating flight and start laying

It should be self-evident that more realistic timings applied to these will only increase the length of the minimum broodless period.

For example, the weather will have a significant impact. Swarming may be delayed due to adverse conditions. During this time the slimmed-down queen will probably lay very few eggs.

Similarly, only 8 days are shown for maturing, mating and starting to lay. Mating flights are very weather-dependent and this period could easily take a week longer (or more).

Splits and artificial swarms

If you practice swarm control using the nucleus method, vertical splits or the classic Pagden artificial swarm the same types of calculations apply.

These three methods all share two features:

  • They involve the physical separation of the box with the old queen and the new developing queen
  • The old queen is isolated with a very small amount of brood – either open brood or emerging brood

The queenright component of the split (whether nuc box or new brood box left on the old site) will follow the right hand part of the diagram above i.e. everything to the right of the vertical red line labelled laying. Here it is expanded a bit:

Queenright splits and the window(s) of opportunity

The queen should start laying almost immediately if drawn comb is provided meaning this new brood will be sealed in a further 8-9 days. The timing and duration of the minimum broodless period depends upon whether you prime the queenright split with a small amount of open or emerging brood.

  • Open brood will be capped within about 6 days of the eggs hatching. If the frame contains nothing older than 3rd instar larvae (about mid-size) you will only have about 3 days before the cells are capped – indicated by bracketed region labelled (A) above, with capped pupae shown by the dark shaded arrow.
  • Emerging brood offers a bit more flexibility. If all the brood emerges in the first 2-3 days after the split (shown with the pale shaded arrow) then the duration of the broodless period, shown in (B) above, lasts about 5 days.

Queenless colonies after splitting

The queenless part of the split will behave like the swarmed colony in the upper line diagram. All capped worker brood will have emerged 21 days after the split (drones after 24 days).

Capped brood arising from eggs laid by the new queen in this colony will depend upon the origin of the queen.

If the colony is left to rear its own queen then the timing will be similar to the upper line diagram plus the additional time required to create a capped queen cell (which rather depends upon the state of the colony when split).

However, if you add a mature queen cell a day off emergence you will reduce the time to the appearance of new capped brood by ~8 days. Consequently the colony will probably never go through a phase with no capped brood present. This is the same, but even more so, if you requeen the colony with a mated queen.

The miticide of choice

Of all the (rather limited range of) miticides available, an oxalic acid-containing treatment is the most appropriate. Oxalic acid (OA) is well-tolerated and, if used on a colony that lacks capped brood, over 90% effective. In addition, and critical for treatment in a narrow window of opportunity, only one treatment is required.

OA can be administered by trickling or sublimation. I’ve covered both methods in detail previously so won’t repeat what’s required, or the recipes, here.

Note that in many cases although the colony will have no capped brood it will not be broodless. For example, larvae from eggs laid by the new queen will be present but uncapped.

This is important because trickled oxalic acid-containing treatments are toxic to open brood. Under these conditions the treatment of choice would be sublimated oxalic acid.

Sublimox vaporiser

Sublimox vaporiser …

Finally, note that if you are going to sublimate Api-Bioxal you’ll either have to spend ages cleaning the pan of the vaporiser, or line it with aluminium foil in advance.

The treatments outlined here are not intended for routine use. They should be used only if needed based upon mite counts or overt signs of DWV-mediated disease.

However, if you do need to treat make sure you do it when the treatment will be most effective.

 

Midseason mite management

The Varroa mite and the potpourri of viruses it transmits are probably the greatest threat to our bees. The number of mites in the colony increases during the spring and summer, feeding and breeding on sealed brood.

Pupa (blue) and mite (red) numbers

In early/mid autumn mite levels reach their peak as the laying rate of the queen decreases. Consequently the number of mites per pupa increases significantly. The bees that are reared at this time of year are the overwintering workers, physiologically-adapted to get the colony through the winter.

The protection of these developing overwintering bees is critical and explains why an early autumn application of a suitable miticide is recommended … or usually essential.

And, although this might appear illogical, if you treat early enough to protect the winter bees you should also treat during a broodless period in midwinter. This is necessary because mite replication goes on into the autumn (while the colony continues to rear brood). If you omit the winter treatment the colony starts with a higher mite load the following season.

And you know what mites mean …

Mites in midseason

Under certain circumstances mite levels can increase to dangerous levels 1 much earlier in the season than shown in the graph above.

What circumstances?

I can think of two major reasons 2. Firstly, if the colony starts the season with higher than desirable mite levels (this is why you treat midwinter). Secondly, if the mites are acquired by the colony from other colonies i.e. by infested bees drifting between colonies or by your bees robbing a mite infested colony.

Don’t underestimate the impact these events can have on mite levels. A strong colony robbing out a weak, heavily infested, collapsing colony can acquire dozens of mites a day.

The robbed colony may not be in your apiary. It could be a mile away across the fields in an apiary owned by a treatment-free 3 aficionado or from a pathogen-rich feral colony in the church tower.

How do you identify midseason mite problems?

You need to monitor mite levels, actively and/or passively. The latter includes periodic counts of mites that fall through an open mesh floor onto a Varroa board. The National Bee Unit has a handy – though not necessarily accurate – calculator to determine the total mite levels in the colony based on the Varroa drop.

Out, damn'd mite ...

Out, damn’d mite …

Don’t rely on the NBU calculator. A host of factors are likely to influence the natural Varroa drop. For example, if the laying rate of the queen is decreasing because there’s no nectar coming in there will be fewer larvae at the right stage to parasitise … consequently the natural drop (which originates from phoretic mites) will increase.

And vice versa.

Active monitoring includes uncapping drone brood or doing a sugar roll or alcohol wash to dislodge phoretic mites.

Overt disease

But in addition to looking for mites you should also keep a close eye on workers during routine inspections. If you see bees showing obvious signs of deformed wing virus (DWV) symptoms then you need to intervene to reduce mite levels.

High levels of DWV

High levels of DWV …

During our studies of DWV we have placed mite-free 4 colonies into a communal apiary. Infested drone cells were identified during routine uncapping within 2 weeks of our colony being introduced. Even more striking, symptomatic workers could be seen in the colony within 11 weeks.

Treatment options

Midseason mite management is more problematic than the late summer/early autumn and midwinter treatments.

Firstly, the colony will (or should) have good levels of sealed brood.

Secondly, there might be a nectar flow on and the colony is hopefully laden with supers.

The combination of these two factors is the issue.

If there is brood in the colony the majority (up to 90%) of mites will be hiding under the protective cappings feasting on sealed pupae.

Of course, exactly the same situation prevails in late summer/early autumn. This is why the majority of approved treatments – Apistan (don’t), Apivar, Apiguard etc. – need to be used for at least 4-6 weeks. This covers multiple brood cycles, so ensuring that the capped Varroa are released and (hopefully) slaughtered.

Which brings us to the second problem. All of those named treatments should not be used when there is a flow on or when there are supers on the hive. This is to avoid tainting (contaminating) the honey.

And, if you think about it, there’s unlikely to be a 4-6 week window between early May and late August during which there is not a nectar flow.

MAQS

The only high-efficacy miticide approved for use when supers are present is MAQS 5.

The active ingredient in MAQS is formic acid which is the only miticide capable of penetrating the cappings to kill Varroa in sealed brood 6. Because MAQS penetrates the cappings the treatment window is only 7 days long.

I have not used MAQS and so cannot comment on its use. The reason I’ve not used it is because of the problems many beekeepers have reported with queen losses or increased bee mortality. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate MAQS Summary of the product characteristics provides advice on how to avoid these problems.

Kill and cure isn’t the option I choose 😉 7

Of course, many beekeepers have used MAQS without problems.

So, what other strategies are available?

Oxalic acid Api-Bioxal

Many beekeepers these days – if you read the online forums – would recommend oxalic acid 8.

I’ve already discussed the oxalic acid-containing treatments extensively.

Importantly, these treatments only target phoretic mites, not those within capped cells.

Trickled oxalic acid is toxic to unsealed brood and so is a poor choice for a brood-rearing colony.

Varroa counts

In contrast, sublimated (vaporised) oxalic acid is tolerated well by the colony and does not harm open brood. Thomas Radetzki demonstrated it continued to be effective for about a week after administration, presumably due to its deposition on all internal surfaces of the hive. My daily mite counts of treated colonies support this conclusion.

Consequently beekeepers have empirically developed methods to treat brooding colonies multiple times with vaporised oxalic acid Api-Bioxal to kill mites released from capped cells.

The first method I’m aware of published for this was by Hivemaker on the Beekeeping Forum. There may well be earlier reports. Hivemaker recommended three or four doses at five day intervals if there is brood present.

This works well 9 but is it compatible with supers on the hive and a honey flow?

What do you mean by compatible?

The VMD Api-Bioxal Summary of product characteristics 10 specifically states “Don’t treat hives with super in position or during honey flow”.

That is about as definitive as possible.

Another one for the extractor ...

Another one for the extractor …

Some vapoholics (correctly) would argue that honey naturally contains oxalic acid. Untreated honey contains variable amounts of oxalic acid; 8-119 mg/kg in one study 11 or up to 400 mg/kg in a large sample of Italian honeys according to Franco Mutinelli 12.

It should be noted that these levels are significantly less than many vegetables.

In addition, Thomas Radetzki demonstrated that oxalic acid levels in spring honey from OA vaporised colonies (the previous autumn) were not different from those in untreated colonies. 

Therefore surely it’s OK to treat when the supers are present?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

There are a few additional studies that have shown no marked rise in OA concentrations in honey post treatment. One of the problems with these studies is that the delay between treatment and honey testing is not clear and is often not stated 13.

Consider what the minimum potential delay between treatment and honey harvesting would be if it were allowed or recommended.

One day 14.

No one has (yet) tested OA concentrations in honey immediately following treatment, or the (presumable) decline in OA levels in the days, weeks and months after treatment. Is it linear over time? Does it flatline and then drop precipitously or does it drop precipitously and then remain at a very low (background) level?

Oxalic acid levels over time post treatment … it’s anyones guess

How does temperature influence this? What about colony strength and activity?

Frankly, without this information we’re just guessing.

Why risk it?

I try and produce the very best quality honey possible for friends, family and customers.

The last thing I would want to risk is inadvertently producing OA-contaminated honey.

Do I know what this tastes like? 15

No, and I’d prefer not to find out.

Formic acid and thymol have been shown to taint honey and my contention is that thorough studies to properly test this have yet to be conducted for oxalic acid.

Until they are – and unless they are statistically compelling – I will not treat colonies with supers present … and I think those that recommend you do are unwise.

What are the options?

Other than MAQS there are no treatments suitable for use when the honey supers are on. If there’s a good nectar flow and a mite-infested colony you have to make a judgement call.

Will the colony be seriously damaged if you delay treatment further?

Quite possibly.

Which is more valuable 16, the honey or the bees?

One option is to treat, hopefully save the colony and feed the honey back to the bees for winter (nothing wrong with this approach … make sure you label the supers clearly!).

Another approach might be to clear then remove the supers to another colony, then treat the original one.

However, if you choose to delay treatment consider the other colonies in your own or neighbouring apiaries. They are at risk as well.

Finally, prevention is better than cure. Timely application of an effective treatment in late summer and midwinter should be sufficient, particularly if all colonies in a geographic area are coordinately treated to minimise the impact of robbing and drifting.

I’ve got two more articles planned on midseason mite management for when the colony is broodless, or can be engineered to be broodless 17.

 

Robbery

Robber

Robber

Another apiculture-flavoured tale of daylight robbery, literally, to follow the post on hive and bee thefts last week.

However, this time it’s not dodgy bee-suited perps with badly inked prison tats offering cheap nucs down the Dog and Duck.

Like other offenders, the robbers this week wear striped apparel, but this time it’s dark brown and tan, or brown and yellow or black and yellow.

I am of course referring to honey bees and wasps (Vespa vulgaris and V. germanica), both of which can cause major problems at this time of year by robbing weak colonies.

Carb loading

The season here – other than for those who have taken colonies to the heather – is drawing to a close. The main nectar sources have more or less dried up in the last fortnight. There’s a bit of rosebay willow herb and bramble in the hedgerows and some himalayan balsam in the river valleys, but that’s about it.

Colonies are strong, or should be. With the dearth of nectar in the fields, the foragers turn their attention to other colonies as a potential source of carbohydrates. Colonies need large amounts of stores to get through the winter and evolution has selected a behavioural strategy – robbing of weaker colonies – to get as much carbohydrate from the easiest possible sources.

Like the nucs you carefully prepared for overwintering 🙁

At the same time, wasps are also wanting to pile in the carbs before winter 1. In the last fortnight the wasp numbers in my apiaries and equipment stores have increased significantly.

Jekyll and Hyde

Within a few days in late summer/early autumn the mood and attitude of colonies in the apiary changes completely.

During a strong nectar flow the bees single-mindedly pile in the stores. They alight, tail-heavy, on the landing board, enter the hive, unload and set out again. There’s a glut and they ignore almost anything other than bingeing on it. Inspections are easy. Most bees are out foraging and they are – or should be – well-tempered and forgiving. 

Laden foragers returning ...

Laden foragers returning …

But then the nectar flow, almost overnight, stops.

Colonies become markedly more defensive. They are packed with bees and they’re tetchy. There’s nothing to distract them, they resent the intrusion and they want to protect their hard-won stores 2.

At the same time, they quickly become more inquisitive, investigating any potential new source of sugar. If you shake the bees off a frame and leave it standing against the leg of the hive stand there will be dozens of foragers – many from nearby colonies – gorging themselves on the nectar.

If you spill unripened nectar from a frame they’re all over it, quickly forming a frenzied mass – probably from several different hives – scrabbling to ‘fill their boots’.

They also closely investigate anything that smells of nectar or honey. Stacks of equipment, empty supers, hive tools, the smoker bellows … anything.

Robbing

And it’s this behaviour that can quickly turn into robbing.

The foragers investigate a small, dark entrance that smells of honey … like a nuc in the corner of the apiary. They enter unchallenged or after a little argy-bargy 3, find the stores, stuff themselves, go back to their colony and then return mob-handed.

Before long, the nuc entrance had a writhing mass of bees trying to get in, any guards present are soon overwhelmed and, in just a few hours, it’s robbed out and probably doomed.

This is the most obvious – and rather distressing – form of robbing. Wasps can do almost exactly the same thing, with similarly devastating consequences.

Prevention is better than cure

Once started (and obvious), robbing is difficult to stop. About the only option is to seal the target hive and remove it to another apiary a good distance away.

Far better to prevent it happening in the first place.

The best way of preventing robbing is to maintain large, strong and healthy colonies. With ample bees there are ample guards and the colony will be able to defend itself from both bees and wasps. Strong colonies are much more likely to be the robbers than the robbed.

For smaller colonies in a full-sized hive, or nucleus colonies or – and these are the most difficult of all to defend – mini-nucs used for queen mating, it’s imperative to make the hive easy to defend and minimise attracting robbers to the apiary in the first place.

The underfloor entrances on kewl floors are much easier to defend than a standard entrance and small entrances are easier to defend than large ones. ‘Small’ might mean as little as one bee-width … i.e. only traversable by a single bee at a time.

Smaller is better ...

Smaller is better …

You can even combine the two; insert a 9mm thick piece of stripwood into the Kewl floor entrance to reduce the space to be defended to a centimetre or two. If – as happened tonight when returning wet supers to the hives – I don’t have a suitable piece of stripwood in the apiary I use a strip of gaffer tape to reduce the entrance 4.

Gaffer tape is also essential to maintain the integrity of the hive if some of the supers are a bit warped. Wasps can squeeze through smaller holes than bees and the quick application of a half metre along the junction between boxes can save the day 5.

The poly nucs I favour have a ridiculously large entrance which I reduce by 90% using foam blocks, dried grass, gaffer tape, wire mesh or Correx.

Correx, the beekeepers friend ...

Correx, the beekeepers friend …

Don’t tempt them

Finally, reduce the inducement robbers – whether bees or wasps – have to investigate everything in the apiary by not leaving open sources of nectar, not spilling honey or syrup, clearing up brace comb and ensuring any stored equipment is ‘bee proof’.

You don’t need to inspect as frequently at this time of the season. The queen will have reduced her laying rate and colonies are no longer expanding. With no nectar coming in they should have sufficient space in the brood nest. There’s little chance they will swarm.

If you don’t need to inspect, then don’t. The ability to judge this comes with experience.

If you do have to inspect (to find, mark and clip a late-season mated queen for example 6 do not leave the colony open for longer than necessary. Any supers that are temporarily removed should be secured so bees and wasps cannot access them.

Wet supers

If you’re returning wet supers after extraction, do it with the minimum disruption late in the evening. These supers absolutely reek of honey and attract robbers from far and wide. Keep the supers covered – top and bottom – gently lift the crownboard, give them a tiny puff of smoke, place the supers on top, replace the roof and leave them be.

Returning wet supers

Returning wet supers …

In my experience wet supers are the most likely thing to trigger a robbing frenzy. I usually reduce the entrance at the same time I put the wet supers back and try to add wet supers to all the colonies in the apiary on the same evening 7.

I generally don’t inspect colonies until the supers are cleaned out and ready for storage.

 

No, not really …

Was it good for you? … No, not really.

I recently posted the weather forecast for the week beginning the 15th of August. I was pleased that the forecast was for near-perfect queen mating conditions – sunny, warm and calm – as I had three colonies which should have contained virgin queens that were due to emerge a few days before.

The forecast was very accurate. Conditions were wonderful. I wasn’t around as I had disappeared to Torridon and Skye for a few days. On checking the colonies at the end of the week after I returned, all three contained queens at least two of which were laying.

Beinn Eighe

Beinn Eighe …

All good then …

Well, not entirely, because mid-afternoon on the previous Wednesday I’d been sent an email from my friend at the apiary that read … “Incredible roaring noise attracted me outside the workshop – a swarm moving west through the garden and into the trees.  All caught on camera”. I didn’t receive the email as I was in the howling wilderness. Not that I could have done much about it.

A very quick inspection of the colony in question on my return confirmed that they’d swarmed. D’oh! I’d obviously missed at least one additional queen cell (mistake #1) on the last inspection and a large cast (the queen must have been a virgin as the original queen had been removed from the colony) had disappeared over the fence … mistake #2. There was a queen present but bee numbers were significantly down. I closed the colony up and disappeared on business for a further three weeks … mistake #3.

The weather had been great the entire week I was away in Torridon. I suspect the colony swarmed on the Monday or Tuesday, that it hung around in a nearby tree until the Wednesday while the scout bees found somewhere more desirable to relocate to†, and that my friend had seen it leaving the neighbourhood that afternoon.

Lessons learned

  1. Don’t let the colony decide how many queens should emerge. Instead leave only one known charged (occupied) queen cell to emerge. I’d left an open queen cell on a marked frame, but had not returned a few days later to check that a) it was safely sealed and b) that they hadn’t raised anymore. They had 🙁  Consequently they swarmed when the first queen emerged, leaving one or more additional queens to emerge, fight it out and then head the now much-depleted colony (see 3, below).
  2. Leave a bait hive in or near the apiary, even if the main period of swarming has passed. I’ve been very successful with bait hives over the years, successfully attracting my own and others’ swarms. In this instance the main swarming period was well-passed and I’d packed away my bait hives until next Spring. Wrong. Had I left one near the apiary I may well have managed to attract the swarm and so a) not lost the bees, and b) not potentially inflicted the  bees on someone else. I view bait hives (and queen clipping) as part of being a good neighbour.
  3. Don’t leave a weakened colony late in season. On returning from my three week absence for work I discovered the colony had been robbed out and destroyed. Clearly it had been unable to defend itself from robber bees or wasps and had perished. I should have instead made an executive decision on discovering the colony had swarmed and probably sacrificed the virgin queen and united the weakened colony with a strong colony nearby. In retrospect this was an obvious thing to do … the colony was weak, wasps were beginning to be a problem, there was little or no nectar coming in and the weather was uncertain. As it turned out the weather was good enough for queen mating while I was away. However, the combination of a dearth of nectar, a weakened colony and strong neighbouring colonies meant that robbing was inevitable and – for the colony in question – catastrophic.
Skye ...

Skye …

Had I thought carefully about things in mid-August I may have been able to prevent the inevitable carnage when the colony was robbed out. In my defence I’ve only been around for a day or two over the last month, with extended periods out of the country on business. Nevertheless, this was clearly a case of a lesson (or three) learned the hard way …

† If you’ve not read Tom Seeley’s outstanding Honeybee democracy about how a swarm decides where to relocate to you should.

What was that?

Zoom. Having moved back to Scotland in mid-2015 this is my first full season keeping bees here. The season has been very short. Some colonies weren’t inspected until the end of April and now, about 14 weeks later, it’s turned distinctly autumnal over the last week or so in Fife. Nectar flows have pretty much dried up, nights are much cooler and thoughts turn to preparing colonies for the winter. However, good winter preparation with strong, disease-free colonies and low Varroa levels means that, should Spring 2017 be early, the bees will be ready to take advantage of it.

The immediate priorities are to:

  • protect colonies from robbing
  • ensure colonies have enough stores
  • remove any honey for extraction before the bees use it

Robbing b’stards

Entrance reducer ...

Entrance reducer …

The very best way to protect colonies from robbing – either by other bees or wasps – is to keep them as strong as possible. Wasps can be very troublesome in the autumn. Smaller colonies and nucs are particularly susceptible to attack and can be devastated in just a day or so if not properly looked after. A block of foam or wood can easily be pushed into place on a full hive, reducing the space the bees need to defend. The underfloor entrance of kewl floors (right) have the added advantage of a narrow L-shaped tunnel that can be defended on the landing board and/or immediately below the frames.

It’s not unusual to have 2-4 frame nucs in mid-August, either being prepared for overwintering or with ‘backup’ queens while re-queening other colonies. If the colonies aren’t really strong enough to defend themselves they need to be given all the help they can. Reducing the entrance space to a single bee width helps a lot, particularly when the entrance is as cavernous as the design on the Thorne’s Everynucs that I use.

Reduced entrance ...

Reduced entrance …

Stores

There’s still sufficient time for strong nucs to be built up to occupy a full hive, but they need to be given sufficient space for the queen to lay and will probably require feeding unless there’s a good late-season nectar flow. This nuc (below) started the first week of July on just a frame of emerging brood, a frame of stores and a new queen and is just about ready for a full hive. Although not obvious from the picture, the feeder on the left contains a large block of fondant which the bees are busy with. This was added as soon as the flow stopped and before the nuc got dangerously light. The bees might have survived but the queen would have slowed or stopped laying eggs and development of the colony would have been retarded. This nuc is fast running out of space and will be moved into a full hive in the next day or two.

5 frame nuc ...

5 frame nuc …

The  integral feeder on these Everynucs has space for about a kilo of fondant. Here’s another nuc started a fortnight ago with a ‘backup’ queen that was also light on stores. The parent colony were showing signs of replacing the queen so I removed her and a couple of frames of emerging brood and left them in the corner of the apiary with the entrance stuffed with grass (to deter the flying bees from returning to the original colony). After a couple of days I removed the dried grass and they’re now ticking along nicely. As they’re a smaller colony and contain predominantly young bees they lack a strong force of foragers and so need regular feeding. If the original colony successfully rears a new queen I’ll have a spare for overwintering. If not I’ll unite them back together at the end of the month.

Nuc with fondant ...

Nuc with fondant …

This is the same nuc as shown in the top image with the reduced width entrance. One of the advantages of feeding fondant is there’s no chance of slopping it about and leaving spills to attract wasps to the apiary.

The image above also shows a ‘crossbar’ I add to the Everynuc feeders; this prevents the frames sliding backwards when the nucs are in transit between apiaries. The integral feeder is useful, but it means there’s no ‘stop’ against which the end of the frame topbar can rest. There is a stop fitted across the bottom of the face of the feeder (shown in a previous post) but my experience is that the inevitable jolting of a car journey means the frames lift above this and then can slide about too much with the risk of crushing bees.

Supers off

I’m resigned to it being a poor summer for honey this season – a combination of a late spring and consequent slow colony development, variable weather during the summer and an extended queenless period for many colonies due (again) to lousy weather for queen mating. Clearers are now on the majority of colonies with filled supers. I’ll retrieve all the filled frames for extraction and make up new supers with the leftovers (incompletely filled or too high water content). The latter will go back onto strong colonies, either in the hope of a late season top-up from the himalayan balsam or for winter stores.

Clearers on ...

Clearers on …

The opening video clip was from the second series of Fawlty Towers first shown in 1979. Immediately before it Basil and Sybil are discussing their early married life …

Basil Fawlty … “Seriously, Sybil, do you remember, when we were first manacled together, we used to laugh quite a lot?”

Sybil Fawlty … “Yes, but not at the same time, Basil.”

Just retrieving the clip from YouTube means I’ll now be spending half the evening chuckling over other bits of this classic series.

Basil Fawlty … “Well… may I ask what you were expecting to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House, perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeeste sweeping majestically…”