Adventuresinbeeland's Blog

One of the unexpected consequences of taking up beekeeping – and only being able to visit the bees on a weekend – has been developing an obsession with the weather. During the summer months I jump on the BBC website as soon as Tuesday comes, to inspect the five day forecast. Sometimes on Tuesday sunshine will be predicted for Saturday, but that sunshine turns into clouds or rain as the week progresses. Other times rain will be expected, but as Saturday comes closer a sun will miraculously appear. It keeps me on tenterhooks I can tell you.

This is this week’s forecast: summer is here at last!

Yesterday was certainly full of surprises. I left the house to go and visit the local farmers market at about 12pm, only to find the kind of rain coming down that clears the streets, because people are afraid to leave their homes. I pushed my hair back under my waterproof and listened to the drops pounding down on my hood. By the time I reached the market the rain cleared, but all the plants and vegetables were dripping. I was convinced the day was a write off for beekeeping. Yet later on, by 2pm, the rain had cleared, sun came out and the day turned all lovely.

When I arrived at the apiary, everyone was standing watching a gentleman on a ladder constructing a bigger roof for us to meet under, as more people are visiting each week than ever. How many beekeepers does it take to put up a roof? One to do all the work, plus twenty to drink tea and watch.

After a cup of tea and a chocolate brownie, I watched David Pugh, an experienced Welsh beekeeper, go through his colony. As usual his dark, moody bees were doing well – I’ve never known those little buggers not get through a winter.  “Why is there still fondant on the hive?” someone asked. “Because I haven’t taken it off yet” David replied.

David Pugh inspecting

Things were not so positive in the hive next door inhabited by yellow Italians (imported from New Zealand), which appeared to have a spider problem. Lots of bees had died tangled up in cobwebs, and there was very little brood. Last week we’d seen wasps going in – weak colonies struggle to keep pests out. “Focus on building them up for the winter” David recommended. “You’ll never get any honey out of them this year – unless you’re exceptionally lucky.”

After that, I watched Thomas inspecting Ken’s hive. Ken had already tried earlier that morning, but without gloves on. The bees (headed by a queen raised from eggs from David’s fiesty bees) had beaten him back by stinging his hands repeatedly. So Tom was wise to have thick gloves on for the second attempt! Here you can see him showing the others the queen.

Thomas inspecting

The bees were doing great. “Two for black bees, nil for New Zealanders”, Thomas observed.

Below is Albert inspecting. These bees came from a captured swarm last year. They seem to be doing okay and the queen was spotted, a large beauty.

Albert inspecting

After watching everyone else go through their hives, I was excited to be able to delve inside our two colonies for the first time this year. A small audience was there to watch and help, including a cartoonist from Private Eye, looking for inspiration for his regular comic in there. Our newest hive, which we bought recently from another Ealing beekeeper, was absolutely bursting. The bees had not gone up to start drawing out foundation in their second brood box for the Bailey comb exchange yet, but they had packed every spare centimetre of their hive with comb.

As I eased the sticky frames out, layers of drone comb were falling off the bottom. At one point I had to reach my hand into the bottom of the hive to fish out a particularly large dislodged piece, which would have been hard for the bees to remove on their own. Luckily I got no stings, despite wearing thin surgical gloves which had split at the wrists. Upon inspecting the purple eyed drones, no mites were spotted.

Our other, older hive with our lovely ultra gentle ladies was not so full of bees, but still had enough brood, pollen and honey stores. Our quite orange queen was spotted – she’s on the small side, but seems to be laying fine. I was a bit worried to see some smaller than usual workers – with developed wings but tiny abdomens – could this be due to the workers being weakened by varroa whilst developing?

The Private Eye cartoonist was interested in hearing our views on the two-year EU neonicotinoids ban. He had not heard of varroa mites and was surprised that they are such a problem for beekeepers here. There has been a lot of publicity about bees recently – they even featured in both Have I Got News For You and QI this week – but there are so many issues involved in bee health that I think it’s hard for the general public (or indeed beekeepers) to have a clear idea of all the factors involved.

Drew cycled to the apiary to meet me and we walked part of the way home together. We stopped to watch a game of bowls – another very weather dependent sport. The bowlers were all dressed very smartly in white with cream jumpers, like cricketers. It’s a game of skill rather than physical exertion. The sky above is pretty and the bowlers must have been pleased to have a sunny day to play on.

Bowls

Yesterday I did a session for a few Ealing beginners at the apiary. Clare, the Ealing association Chairman, had asked me to demonstrate lighting smokers and inspecting. But it wasn’t inspecting weather, so we could only really do the smoker bit. I am by no means an expert at lighting a smoker – I can get it going but it always seems to go out quickly – but I tried my best to pass on a few tips. I mentioned getting as big a smoker as possible and some fuels to use – cheap things like newspaper, sawdust and egg boxes. Last year Emma and I tried out lavender, which makes a lovely smell.

My friend Yasmine holding a smoker.

We then popped our heads in the top of a few hives. The first one we looked in had a couple of huge queen wasps sitting on the hive insulation, so we got rid of those. They then tried to get back in, so we found some gaffer tape in the apiary shed and sealed over the holes. They probably wouldn’t have done much harm unless they’d managed to get under the insulation, but no point encouraging wasps in the apiary.

After the session had ended I got talking to Ian, an Ealing beekeeper who has been very kind to me and Emma. He told me about a very simple method of starting a Bailey comb exchange, which is just to place a queen excluder on top of the current brood box and then an additional box full of new brood foundation on top, with some syrup to help them draw out fresh comb. In a week or two we can move the queen up into the top brood box and remove the bottom brood box frames once the brood inside has hatched out. This is a very easy technique for getting the bees to produce new comb, so that the old dirty brood combs can be discarded.

The rain seemed to have stopped and the sun came out, so Llyr, Emma and I went down to start the Bailey exchange on our hives (Llyr has just bought the hive next to our two). At first everything was going well and Llyr had managed to put the queen excluder and new brood box onto his hive without any bother.

Then Emma and I started doing our bees. We soon noticed that they’d managed to make some brace comb. Suddenly Emma cleverly spotted our queen on the underside of the crown board, darting amongst the brace comb. Luckily she had a queen cage clip with her, so we got the queen to walk in the clip and popped her in Llyr’s pocket to keep warm. At this point the skies darkened overhead and a hail shower came along! So we had an open hive, hail pelting down, a queen in a pocket and brace comb still to remove. Emma wisely decided to put the crownboard over the bees to keep them warm until the hail passed.

Eventually the shower cleared, so we could return the queen to the hive, pop the queen excluder on top and put the hive back together. Miraculously the bees stayed calm and didn’t get violently angry during all of this. English beekeeping has to be done in-between the rain drops!

The reason for the queen being up in the brace comb soon became clear; she had been busy laying eggs in it. Can you see what look like small grains of rice in the photos below?

In fact, occasionally she’d got so carried away that she’d laid two eggs in a cell! I’m hoping this was not a laying worker, as the eggs were right at the bottom of the cells and had been laid in a regular pattern.

A double yolker. Photos taken with my iPhone “macro” lens.

Today (Sunday) I went to the annual Perivale Wood open day. Perivale Wood is a very special ancient oak woodland; at this time of year it is absolutely carpeted with bluebells. It’s usually closed to the public, but if you join as a member for £4 a year you can get access. There is a very still, calm, atmosphere beneath the trees, even though cars and sirens can be heard in the distance. Here’s a few photos..

By the way, there have been some political beekeeping events happening this week in London. I was stuck at work on Friday, but some beekeepers took to the streets in what is being called ‘The March of the Beekeepers’. The idea was to pressurise the Environment Minister, Owen Paterson, who will be taking part in an EU vote on Monday on whether to ban neonicotinoid insecticides. For those who are interested, Philip Strange has done a great blog post explaining these events: The March of the Beekeepers.

An apiary on a soggy day is a place of frustration for a beekeeper. You can stand surrounded by hives and not see a single bee. The bees remain in retreat, and there is no beekeeping to be done.

We watch and wait still, continuing our weekly fondant check. Below you can see our three hives, in a row from the left. The tall, enormous hive is full of bees and honey stores …equipment.

I touched the plastic wrapper of one of the fondant packets the bees are nibbling away inside and it was lovely and warm. They manage to keep it almost the temperature of a sauna inside there. I’d want to stay inside too.

The varroa monitoring boards have hardly any mites when I check. Perhaps this is the result of the winter oxalic acid treatment, or perhaps ants are eating them! Wax fragments and dropped pollen on the board confirm that comb building is going on, stores are being uncapped and pollen is being used to feed the brood. Things are going as well as can be hoped in this weather.

Other colonies have not been so lucky. This is one we found today. Only a tiny cluster remained.

It was sad to see the queen on top of the frames, surrounded by a few attendants. They would have protected her until the end.

Thomas took a few away to test for nosema, which he suspects may have been implicated in the death of another colony in the apiary.

Under one of our apiary tables I discovered this little nest. Had it contained chicks? Or, as Emma has suggested, is it an old nest blown down from the trees, or perhaps a new nest just started? It contained no mossy lining. I hope it was empty. Perhaps the resourceful apiary robins will be able to make use of it.

By the way I discovered these pretty embroidered bumble bee brooches today, made by a Scottish lady named Lisa Toppin.

Amazing attention to detail. Looks like a buff-tailed bumblebee? You can see a blog post on how she makes them here: More bumble bees and her Etsy shop, which she sells them from, is called Agnes and Cora.

For weeks it has been painful to leave the house. I have spent many hours standing hunched at bus stops, the wind whipping mercilessly at my hair. My hands have even started cracking under the cold, with little cuts appearing at the joints. This week we had snow blizzards swirling round the city.

And then today. Today the sun came out. And so did the bees.

This is the first time I’ve seen them flying since November. It was VERY exciting. They must have been desperate to feel the sun, to collect food, to poop. A buzz of excitement, of purpose, could be heard outside each hive. Lots to do!

Terrible photos I know, but Emma and Drew were not there. Below you can see some yellow pollen on the legs of the lower bee. Several of the bees were bringing back similarly garish loads. Does anyone know what this yellow pollen is? Ian suggested daffodils. I had a look on the Bristol Beekeepers Association’s interactive pollen guide (access by clicking on ‘Pollen guide’ along their top navigation menu) and broccoli and blue crocus look a similar colour.

Encouraged by the warmth, with the help of some excellent assistants I removed the chicken-wire around our hives, which was protecting them against woodpeckers. Now that the ground is softer and a few more insects about, hopefully woodpeckers will be going for easier targets.

I probably haven’t mentioned yet that recently Emma and I bought a hive from a beekeeper who has given up. So we now have two in place, lined up next to each other. I checked the fondant and the bees still had some left. It was still a little too cold for a proper inspection: we had coats on and inspecting should be done in t-shirt weather.

Beautiful flowers are out around Ealing apiary, including blue, white and pink hyacinths.

We also had some cake. This is a pistacho one, which we had today…

Pistachio cake

And this is a simnel cake, which is a fruit cake made with ground almonds, covered with marzipan and then lightly grilled – quite a bizarre experience for me, grilling a cake. The marzipan balls represent the eleven apostles, as it’s a cake traditionally eaten to celebrate Easter.

Simnel cake

Perhaps spring is here at last and us beekeepers can start doing some actual beekeeping, rather than just talking about it. It has been a hard, long winter and many experienced beekeepers have lost several hives. I feel very grateful that our little bees have come through safely so far.