Beekeeping update

The picture shows a strange contraption that Dad and I built last year. It is a Langstroth nucleus topped by a piece of wood with a hole in the middle to try and encourage the bees to move into the National 14"x12" brood box we wanted them in. Because it was so top heavy we had to support it with legs. They eventually moved up and once all the brood in the nuc had hatched out, we took the nuc away and the hive started looking a bit more normal.

This hive has always been really strong but at the moment it is without a queen. There are two capped queen cells in there at the moment however, and we will be checking in about a week and a half to see if one of them hatched out and we have a new queen. Hopefully by that time she will have been mated and will be laying. She should also kill the other queen, although if she is a rubbish layer we may give the other queen a helping hand in usurping her.

Both queens are the offspring of the inch-long horror that we had before, but who mysteriously disappeared. She was quite old so could have died, or she may have swarmed very early, which would explain why the hive is still strong; there would have been fewer older bees to go with her as the season had only just started. It is always possible of course that being relatively new to beekeeping we accidentally squashed her. This isn't a problem though becuase she was so horrible that squashing her would have been quite satisfying, accidentally or no. A calm, happy new Hawaiian cross queen will be arriving at the beginning of June.

There was a third capped queen cell in that hive, but we took that out with a couple of other frames of brood and stores and lots of young bees and put them in a new hive. They are still alive but of course are quite a weak colony. We are planning on getting ourselves a swarm and then if the swarm is healthy we may unite the two colonies.

Our first hive is a hive of activity (excuse the bad joke) and is already onto its 2nd super. The weather has been fantastic round here recently so plenty of nectar is being collected! We're really hoping for a good honey crop this year...fingers crossed.

We have also recently built two nucleus hives that we will probably create towards the end of the season. We recently heard about a method of using a nuc to create a huge wax crop. Apparently you feed the bees on sugar, which allows them to make more wax at a faster rate, and when the comb has been drawn you take the frames away and put new ones in. Later in the season you allow them to collect their stores etc. This sounds interesting so maybe we will try it next year.

We are also thinking of building a top bar hive, which is a type of hive that is more like what the bees' natural habitat would be ie hollow logs, etc. This is supposed to take a little bit of stress of their shoulders, which is beneficial, as living with varroa and all the nasty nosemas and small hive beetles that are coming our way mjst be pretty hard work! It also means spending less money on foundation, as the bees do all the work, and apparently you can command a high price for top bar cut comb (see pic) - Dad read somewhere that by leaving the comb in its natural shape with the top bar still attached, people can sell them for £25 a pop. Hmm..........

We visited the apiary (see pic below) at the weekend to show an interested friend what beekeeping involved and the bees were behaving really oddly. It was a boiling hot day and perhaps a bit sticky, but not really thundery, but they were still so ANGRY. There were actually bees patrolling at the entrance to the apiary. As soon as we got out of the car they were buzzing around us. I didn't think anything of it, as I thought they must have been foraging along the hedgerows, but as soon as my sister walked into the field she was attacked. She is scared of bees if she hasn't got a smock on so she went and sat in the car. Meanwhile the rest of us walked up the 100m or so to our hives. Dad and our friend were safe in their smocks but while I was standing a little way away I was attacked. I had to leap over the stream into the woodland on the opposite bank and run around trying to disorientate them. When that didn't work I kept still and held my breath becuase bees don't like CO2. They went away for a bit but for the rest of the afternoon I spent my time leaping from bank to bank. Eventually I got stung and ran back to the car (running becuase I didn't want to get caught trespassing, yeech). When I got to the car Poppy wouldn't let me in becuase she thought I would let the bees that were keeping her under seige in too. Eventually she let me slide in although I wished I hadn't. It was baking and she wouldn't let me open the window. That was the first time that anyone's bees at the apiary had behaved like that...I wonder what caused it.