Adventuresinbeeland's Blog

Book review – The Urban Beekeeper: A Year of Bees in the City, by Steve Benbow (2012)

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Emily Scott

Steve Benbow is a professional beekeeper who runs the London Honey Company. He runs courses for beginners, sells high-end honey and beeswax products and looks after hives for prestigious companies around the capital, the likes of Fortnum and Mason and Tate Modern.

Successful people are rarely popular with everyone, and Steve does appear to be a contentious figure amongst London beekeepers. I’ve heard him described as a ‘wheeler-dealer’, while some question how much of the honey marketed as ‘Fortnum and Masons’ and sold in the store is really produced on the rooftop – and whether bees should be kept high up on urban rooftops at all. (Edit 12/10: Steve has sent me a tweet to say “Thank you for my book review.. just for the record every jar of Fortnum’s rooftop honey is produced on the roof on their store”).

Others greatly admire Steve’s charisma, charm and entreprenurial spirit. Deborah DeLong at Romancing the Bee has a fab blog post on her tour of Fortnum’s hives this year, ‘Tea With Fortnum’s Beemaster Steve Benbow‘. Check out the comments too for an interesting response by Angela Woods, secretary of the London Beekeeping Association.

I tried to keep an open mind as I read on, and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I was drawn in by Steve’s laid-back, humorous writing. This is not a beekeeping manual, but more of a diary of life as a professional beekeeper on the road, moving hives up and down the country in search of the perfect forage, racing between roof tops trying to prevent bees intent on swarming from doing so onto a nearby lamppost. Plenty of useful tips are passed on along the way; for instance, don’t inspect your bees at night because bees crawl up you rather than fly in the evenings.

It’s clear that he’s not your average beekeeper – at one point he has an actress girlfriend whose name he later sees lit up in lights on a West End theatre. Dates are fitted in-between hours of heavy lifting, so that he often turns up scruffy and stinky – yet still it doesn’t seem like he has a shortage of interested ladies! But he does share with many beekeepers a passionate love for cakes, so much so that he lists his top five… and ‘cakes’ has an entry in the index. So, Steve’s top five cakes are: Battenberg, Jam tarts, Ginger cake (“can be moulded into balls and smuggled in through a tiny gap in the zip of the veil”, Eccles and Welsh cakes.

I disagree with the book’s back cover claim that it “tells you everything you need to know about keeping bees”, but recommend it as a fascinating insight into a way of life that very few of us would have the stamina to lead.

By the way, if you choose to buy this book or indeed any other items from Amazon, please consider going through the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s Fundraising page. Each time you access Amazon.co.uk via their link and make a purchase this brilliant charity receives a donation worth 8% of your total purchase, at no extra cost to you.

More about Steve:

Steve Benbow, Beekeeper at Tate Modern
The Bees of Buckingham Palace – photos of Steve and his bees at Fortnum & Mason
The Urban Beekeeper – book review by Telegraph writer & beekeeper Ian Douglas

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged book-review | 17 Comments

1st Honey bee pests, diseases and poisoning revision post: EFB and AFB

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Emily Scott

This is a 1st revision post for the British Beekeeping Association’s Module 3 Honey bee Pests, Diseases and Poisoning exam, which I plan to take in March. This year I’m doing the correspondence course, so I have a tutor who will set me papers and give me comments on my answers. Here’s my attempt at the first paper set.

Section A

A1. i) list the notifiable bee diseases and pests in the current UK and European legislation

The Bee Diseases and Pests Control Orders 2006 for England and for Wales lists the notifiable diseases and pests:

American foul brood (AFB)
European foul brood (EFB)
Also, the pests Small hive beetle (Aethina tumida) and Tropilaelaps spp. mites, which are not yet in this country and we must be alert for.

A varroa mite on the left, compared with a Tropilaelaps mite on the right. Courtesy The Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera), Crown Copyright.

ii) who do you notify if you suspect one of your colonies has a notifiable disease or pest?

Your local government National Bee Unit inspector. All beekeepers in England, Scotland and Wales should know who their local inspector is. If not, see the Beebase Contacts page to find out.

A2. why are combs with suspected EFB no longer sent to the National Bee Unit laboratories for confirmation?

Hmm; I’m going to guess that this is because inspectors now carry lateral flow test kits with them in the field.

A3. with what other diseases or conditions can EFB be confused

European Foul Brood is an e(arly) bacterial brood disease, so it affects mainly unsealed brood. EFB bacteria mass inside the gut of an infected larvae, which can cause death from starvation. When an uncapped larvae dies it lies in an unnatural attitude suggesting pain – twisted spirally around the walls, across the mouth of the cell or stretched out lengthways.

Infected larvae are discoloured yellow-brown and have a ‘melted appearance’, with loss of their usual segmentation. Some dark sunken cappings may be present, but the cell contents will not form a rope with the matchstick test. The dead larvae form scales that can be easily removed by the bees. The brood pattern will often appear patchy and erratic as dead brood is taken out by the workers.

EFB may be mistaken for:

AFB, some strains of which kill uncapped larvae and form scales – but unlike EFB scales, AFB scales are difficult to remove. Sometimes EFB larvae make it through to the sealed brood stage before dying, when there may be greasy, perforated sunken cappings similar to AFB – however the contents underneath the cappings are usually quite different.
Parasitic mite syndrome caused by varroa infestation – dead larvae/pupae which die at the uncapped brood stage discoloured brown or black, watery or firm, eventually drying to a scale similar to EFB which can easily be removed. Newly emerged bees are often deformed or have deformed wings. As with EFB, there will be a poor brood pattern.
Chilled brood, which causes dead brood usually present in all stages, especially at the edge of the brood nest – unsealed brood turns very dark brown or black in colour before drying up.

Can anyone think of any others?

EFB testing – shaking

Emma and I found out in April just how easy it is to confuse EFB with other diseases. In my post ‘Trouble in bee-land‘ I took some photos of what I thought might be EFB or another brood disease. A lot of other commenters who looked at the photos agreed with me. However, Andy Pedley got a negative result using a EFB testing kit and concluded that the brood had become chilled.

A4 if EFB is present in a colony in Spring why does it appear to disappear in summer?

If larvae are well fed, and can manage to take in enough food to feed both themselves and the EFB Melissococcus plutonius bacteria, they can manage to survive with EFB bacteria in their gut. As the brood nest reaches its peak in size in mid June the nurse bees will be stretched to feed all their charges, so EFB may claim more victims. Once the brood nest reduces in size later in summer, an efficient colony will be better able to feed its larvae well and the disease will ‘appear to disappear’. A good nectar flow is crucial for this.

A5. in the USA antibiotics are routinely used prophylactically as well as to treat colonies with AFB. What are the dangers of such a practice?

I had to look up what ‘prophylactically’ means – the dictionary says “Acting to defend against or prevent something, especially disease; protective.” This is not something I’m familiar with, as the treatment for AFB here is to destroy an infected colony through burning, and I believe using preventative antibiotics against AFB is illegal.

I read online that although antibiotics can be effective at preventing infections from establishing they can also suppress the visible symptoms of AFB, thereby masking an infection. Some antibiotics, including the tetracyclines, do not kill the bacterium causing AFB, they just stop it multiplying – hence the lack of visible signs. Meanwhile the disease could be spread to nearby hives while the beekeeper remains unaware that AFB is present.

There are also reports of AFB bacteria developing resistance to Terramycin (oxytetracycline) antibiotic in honeybee colonies in parts of the world where it is routinely used against diseases. Additionally treating can weaken the hive, because Terramycin may kill a percentage of the brood.

Printer-friendly pdf version

Burning an AFB infected colony, the control method used in the UK. Courtesy The Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera), Crown Copyright.

This is only the first section! Will try to do the second section tomorrow.

References:

Guide to Bees & Honey, Ted Hooper (2010)
Keeping Healthy Honey Bees, David Aston & Sally Bucknall, Northern Bee Books (2010)
National Bee Unit Beebase website
What are the signs of EFB, Di Drinkwater (2016)

Posted in Disease prevention, Exams | Tagged AFB, EFB, Module 3 | 26 Comments

Syrup for the bees, cakes for us

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Emily Scott

It’s dangerous going down to the Ealing apiary. Not because of the bees, but because of the amount of cake on offer. This week I made pecan pie, Claire made a honey show recipe cake, Matwinder brought prunes soaked in raspberry juice and Pat some chocolate fudge squares. Obviously I had to try a piece of each to test it all 🙂

Paul Hollywood’s pecan pie

Above, my attempt at Paul Hollywood’s pecan pie recipe. I made the pastry myself and everything, which is hard for me. The filling is lovely and gooey, full of golden syrup and butter.

Clare’s honey cake

Claire is a doctor and a talented singer too. On top of that she makes a fine honey cake. She was following the National Honey Show’s honey fruit cake recipe; it tasted great but the dip in the middle would have prevented it being a winning entry. The judges are very keen on presentation!

Oh yes, and I did see some bees in-between stuffing myself with goodies. Mouseguards are on now. Here are two of John’s New Zealanders checking theirs out. There was talk of a kind of British shrew which can fit through a mouseguard, but all agreed they are unlikely to turn up in Ealing.

The bees were bringing plenty of golden yellow pollen back; John thought this was likely to be from Michelmas daisies. The Michelmas daisy takes its name because its blooms historically coincided with the Feast of St Michael on 29th September.

Some Autumnal pics:

These thistle balls have sharp arms which stick wonderfully to fluffy jumpers and hair. Drew and me had a great time throwing them at each other.

Below: ivy flowers. The bees are going crazy for these up and down the country right now. Although a very useful late nectar source for over-wintering bees, ivy nectar can crystallize in the flowers or, after storage, in the honeycomb and become unavailable to the bees (Plants and Honey Bees: their relationships by David Aston & Sally Bucknall, 2009). Pollen loads are yellow-orange and the honey white.

Blog posts of the week:

Nature’s Place, ‘Stingless Sugarbag Bees‘
I guarantee these macro bee shots will blow you away. They are the best I’ve come across online yet. Can you see all her eyes? (here’s a clue: bees have five eyes, not two). If you want to know how Mark does it, read his ‘Macro Illustrated‘ post.

Disperser Tracks, ‘The Busy Bees – Summer 2012‘
Emilio J. D’Alise is based in Colorado and takes mainly (spectacular) wildlife and nature photos; he has a dry sense of humour which I appreciate, and this week has turned his talents to the bees in his garden visiting Russian sage.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cake | 17 Comments

Secret passages for bees

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Emily Scott

During the winter whilst bees are clustering, sometimes they can find it hard to move from one frame to another to feed on their stores without getting too cold. On John Chapple’s suggestion, yesterday we gouged a hole in the middle of our brood frames containing honey, a little passage to allow bees through.

Now the queen and her entourage can pass through with ease! These frames are older than we would like. In the spring we will do a shook-swarm or Bailey comb exchange to get the bees on new frames.

We saw Myrtle; she is still laying and we have about two frames full of brood, new bees to take the colony through winter.

Depending on the weather to come, this may have been the last time we can do a proper inspection this year (sob!). Now we are concentrating on feeding the bees sugar syrup before it gets too cold. My next blog post will probably be about the London Honey Show, which is coming up on 8th October! Anyone else going?

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Winter is coming

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Emily Scott

Lots going on down at the apiary this weekend. Mysterious objects to identify, tea to drink, cake to eat, gossip to catch up on…

What, for instance, is this?

John Chapple brought this object back from his travels abroad. He said the old beekeeper who gave it to John was disgusted that he didn’t know what it was (I suspect the old beekeeper didn’t know either!). There is a prize of a jar of marmalade for anyone who can identify it for John. The piece of wood which slots in next to the round hole is removable. Emma has a close-up pic of it here: http://twitpic.com/auwyfw.

Perhaps queen rearing equipment – could a queen cell hang from the hole? Mouse guard? Bee gym? Practical joke? No-one knows!

It was a nice day for inspecting, below is Emma holding a frame. We have finished the Apiguard treatment now, so we removed the trays and checked the monitoring board for fallen mites. I could only see about five, which does seem suspiciously low, but then this colony has had several breaks in brood this year, what with a swarm occurring and queen troubles. A break in egg laying and brood production gives varroa less opportunities to reproduce, so between that, the oxalic acid and Apiguard, we should be okay.

The nights are drawing in more quickly. Soon it will be too cold to inspect, and it will be time to put the bees away for winter. No more holding up brood frames, just peeking in the top occasionally to top up feed and in December to do the oxalic acid treatment. Several months of waiting before the joy of the first spring inspections.

But for now we still have sunshine and warmth. I found this bee in the walled rose garden at Walpole Park, Ealing. I adore the smell of roses and find it very frustrating that as soon as I remove my nose from a rose the scent is lost to me, merely a gorgeous memory. I envy this bee for being able to spend time crawling inside its petals, enveloped by the intoxicating aroma.

In another part of the park I had an encounter with this White-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum). We found her crawling on a concrete path, moving about slowly. One of her legs seemed to be missing. I thought that even if she was literally on her last legs, being stepped on would be an unfitting end for this magnificent creature. I attempted to pick her up with a leaf, but she had other ideas and crawled on my hand.

She felt soft and warm. I have read that bumblebees can inflict quite a nasty sting, but she did not seem at all likely to sting me. I carried her around the park trying to find somewhere suitable to leave her, and eventually chose this bush of blue flowers (kindly identified by Christina in the comments below as Caryopteris), which was being enthusiastically bombarded by common carder bees. To my surprise she perked up at once and crawled off my hand to begin feeding. Even with only five legs she seemed to hang on to the flowers and hopefully regained some energy!

A couple of lovely blog posts I’ve come across this week:

Bees of Slovenia – amazing photos of Slovenian hives, which are elaborately decorated with religious and cultural iconography, I love the naughty devils trying to steal honey from the villagers!

“In the Slovene language there is a verb to signify the death of a human. This word is shared only with bees. For all other creatures there is a separate word. Here in a little country in the Balkans, the life of a bee is respected just as the life of a human.”

What’s going on behind that capped cell? – wonderful and quite eerie photos of a developing larvae, she has perfectly formed antennae and legs but is still a translucent white colour.

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments

Nothing hotter than an otter

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Emily Scott

No bees in this post, sorry. This weekend got madly busy and I didn’t go to see the bees, though I did meet several slow worms, a grass snake, lots of cute ducks and mock wrestling otters to make up for it, all at the London Wetland Centre in Barnes. Laurence Arnold, one of the centre’s staff, took us on a guided reptile walk which I really recommend. All the photos below were taken by Drew Scott.

Above is Laurence, showing us some skin shed by a slow worm. After dipping our shoes in a special solution and stepping over an electric fence, we walked along a high grassy bank usually inaccessible to the public. Up here the staff do weekly surveys of reptile numbers, by lifting up specially placed shelters made from squares of felt or corrugated iron.

It didn’t take long before Laurence caught a wriggling slow worm under one of these shelters. She soon calmed down after he tickled her under the chin for a while. One of the ways to tell the difference between a slow worm and a snake is that the slow worms have eyelids, whereas snakes just have a clear fluid film to protect their eyes. You can see this when the slow worms blink.

The way to distinguish between male and female slow worms is that males are all one colour, whereas females have a darker line along their undersides. They will eat anything they can get into their mouths, for instance slugs are a favourite treat (another reason not to use slug pellets). Mating takes place in spring, after which the females give birth to live young in September. Not all reptiles lay eggs, some give birth!

Just beyond the grassy bank, outside the centre’s boundary, is a row of extremely posh houses. We saw plenty of swimming pools and conservatories. This brings the hazard of cats, who like to play with the slow worms. Birds are also keen on eating them. Luckily slow worms spend most of their time burrowed down close to the ground.

Laurence also found a gorgeous grass snake! She produced lots of musk alarm scent as she writhed in his grip, trying to make herself seem unappetising. Laurence told us that he loves this musky snake scent, as for him it’s the smell of summer. Her tongue forked back and forth as she tried to make sense of all the human smells around her.

I love the greeny blue pattern on her underside. I stroked her a little – she felt dry, not slimy. It felt special to meet a creature like this close up – I wouldn’t dare to pick up a snake I found in the wild! And I suspect I’d be way too slow. Of course, grass snakes can do us no harm beyond a nip.

A spotting by Drew along the footpaths – a common lizard. They like to burrow into the crevices in the wood.

Laurence taught us so much, unfortunately much more than I can possibly try to write down here! After his brilliant walk ended, we ate some lunch and went on to visit the birds. I couldn’t resist Drew’s photo of the pair above.

Perfectly synchronised!

I think these are Little Grebe young. They stayed on the surface while mum dived for food, quacking frantically when she emerged. Occasionally she gave them some, but mostly her dives seemed unsuccessful.

Where did the ducklings go?

Next, the most amazing thing happened. Where did the ducklings (or should I say grebelings?) go?! Look closely at the photo above.

Peekaboo!

They hopped on mum’s back! She lifted up her wings and let them nestle under there. Occasionally a waggling foot or an inquisitive little head popped out. So cute.

EDIT: I have since come across this great blog post by Tricia – ‘Dragons, Very Little Grebes and Otters‘ – Tricia seems to have been there a day before us and has gone one (or should I say two?) better by managing to get photos of three little grebe chicks on mum’s back!

I need help identifying this gorgeous dragonfly, any ideas please? I’m wondering about it being a variety of Migrant Hawker.

I possibly saved the best for last… the otters! A slinky new addition to the Wetlands Centre. The two pups were mock wrestling, rolling over each other, snapping and snorting as they had great fun playing with a rubber toy.

Mum looked on and occasionally pinned a pup down if they got too naughty.

Otters are the best. Well, the best mammals. (They don’t beat bees, obviously). Thanks for a lovely day out, London Wetlands Centre! Bee posting to resume next week.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Hungry New Zealanders hunt for food

Posted on September 1, 2012 by Emily Scott

Today I had a little crowd of watchers round me as I opened up our hive, including a newbee and a professional photographer named Megan who is documenting Ealing’s ‘sub-cultures’. She is hoping to visit some Ealing monks next! I hope she got good photos of beards and tea drinking.

Our bees are doing well. I put their second Apiguard (thymol based varroa treatment) dose on; hopefully in two weeks time they will have cleaned that out and we can start feeding sugar-syrup to help them fill up the brood box with stores before winter. Sadly not all the hives in the apiary are doing so well:

I had visited earlier in the week and assumed that these piles of dead bees in front of John’s hive of yellow New Zealand bees were drones being kicked out. But as Andy Pedley pointed out, none of the other hives have such huge piles of bees in front of them, and not all of these bees are drones. Many were not yet dead but crawling around in front of the hive very lethargically. I asked Andy if they could have been poisoned; however when he inspected the hive the answer was found inside: the bees had hardly any stores – they have been dying of starvation.

Andy showed us a very interesting technique to help bees which need emergency feeding – I will try my best to remember this. Before putting a contact feeder with sugar-syrup on top of the frames, he poured some of the syrup into a couple of empty frames and tilted the frames up and down, so that the syrup ran into the empty cells. This should be done over the hive, so that syrup is not spilled elsewhere, which could encourage robbing.

Rocking the frame back and forth, getting the syrup to fill the cells. The bees started drinking immediately. Hopefully this will save them from starvation – but unfortunately they have already started robbing other colonies for food.

I found this cluster of New Zealand bees patroling a small gap in my hive, trying their best to force their way in through a tiny gap. Their bright yellow colour gives them away compared to our dark British mongrel bees. I stuffed some leaves in to try and put them off.

New Zealand bees trying to find a hole in our hive.

They were also trying their best to get in under the hive, but the open mesh floor should prevent that. Poor hungry ladies, but my ladies need their honey too!

I went to a talk in March on ‘Improving your bees and beekeeping‘ by Roger Patterson, in which he mentioned that he has noticed that the darker British style bees tend to pack more honey stores around the brood in the brood box, whereas the more prolific yellow Italians, such as those bred in New Zealand, tend to fill the brood combs with brood and put all their honey up in the supers. This means beekeepers need to be extra careful with Italian bees when removing supers to ensure that the bees have enough stores left in the brood box.

I’ll leave you with a few photos from a recent visit to the lovely St. Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital near Aylesbury.

Think she’s a common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum)?

And the bumble I see the most, the Buff-tailed bumble bee (Bombus terrestris).

And finally, the rare great black bumble, viewed from a distance. She looks rather like a cute duck struggling to get back up on her feet, but I assure you this is a bee. Hunted almost to extinction by over-enthusiastic collectors, this species now exists in only a few isolated pockets of southern England. Do not let her waggling feet fool you, this young lady is perfectly equipped to forage from flowers using her long neck and large proboscis.

Posted in Colony management | Tagged Andy Pedley | 28 Comments

Bees, flowers and sculpture at Chelsea Physic Garden

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Emily Scott

In 1673 the Society of Apothecaries of London founded a Physic Garden at Chelsea, so that their apprentices could learn to grow medicinal plants and study their uses. Yesterday I visited the garden, for the second time this summer, and found many new delights amongst its paths. It is a place where a sense of calm descends as you walk in, a place to shed all the bustle and cares of London and breathe in deeply from the heavy scent of evening flowers. Follow me in a walk round the garden.

The pink dappling effect of hydrangeas, against the dark of their leaves.

A harvest of vibrant pumpkins and gourds shone out, glowing in the evening light.

Honey bees and bumbles buzzed gently, busy using up their last minutes of light amongst the sunflowers.

Carder bee

A sculpture exhibition was on in the garden. Above is a seed-pod sculpture.

I was fascinated to learn about squirting cucumbers! Have any of my readers ever been squirted by one?

And excited to find a huge bumble, bottom wriggling in the air, on these vibrant blue flowers.

Think she’s a buff-tailed bumble bee.

Another sculpture, this one swaying high amongst the trees.

Summer pudding

Summer pudding, full of juicy berries, was the perfect dessert to eat in the garden’s Tangerine Dream Cafe as dusk fell.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bees on flowers | 16 Comments

What’s flowering now: mid August 2012

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Emily Scott

It’s been a bad year for the bees. They have endured the very worst of British weather: rain, floods and grey skies have been passing for a spring and summer. But just in time for the Olympics, the weather has bounced back and sunshine has been restored! Are there any bees left to enjoy it? I took a look in Elthorne Park, a beautiful strip of grass and meadows bordering the canal near my home.

Yes! They’re still here. Above you can see a honey bee rolling in field bindweed. Rusty at Honey Bee Suite has a nice blog post on bindweed as a pollinator plant – it provides a snow-white pollen which is visible on the happy bee above.

The bee above is a honey bee, but I need help identifying the pretty pink flower, if anyone has any suggestions please. Botany is not my strong point.

EDIT: AFrenchGarden in her comment below has identified this as Musk Mallow (Malva moschata). Brilliant stuff! The Daily Telegraph Musk Mallow gardening page says: “In the centre of each Malva moschata flower there’s a tall stigma surrounded by a raised collar of stamens. This arrangement, slightly similar to hibiscus, leaves the nectar-rich base of the flower wide open to bees.”

They like these pink flowers too. Many of the bees I saw on them were covered with a dusting of their pale pollen. Again, I am stuck on the name of this flower!

EDIT: Helpful commenters AFrenchGarden, Julia @ Boorinakis Harper Ranch and Harvest Home Farm have identifed this as a species of mallow too, probably the Common Mallow (Malva neglecta). Those nice open flowers and tall stigmas again, mallow species seem to be a good bet for a wildlife-friendly garden.

The thistle type plants are coming to the end of their season (in last year’s ‘What’s flowering now‘ August post, commenters variously identified these flowers as thistles, knapweed or burdock). Whatever the correct answer may be, the bees love these purple flowers, while I love running my hands through the soft downy fuzz of seeds left behind afterwards.

Ted Hooper in his ‘Guide to Bees and Honey‘ says of Knapweed: “This is a flower of road verges, rough areas, heathland, etc. It flowers in July and August and looks rather like a soft non-prickly thistle. The bees work it readily for both nectar and pollen. The honey is dark and very strong in flavour – like cough mixture – and is excellent for blending. Pollen loads greyish-white” (p234).

I sat down and spent some happy time watching the bees on the thistles. There were so many bees busy at work it was hard to decide which to focus my camera on. A tip for bee photographers: thistle family flowers are easy to photograph bees on. This is because the bees take their time on the flowers, crawling slowly round them and sticking their proboscis in multiple times.

Not completely sure on the lady above, but she may be Bombus hypnorum, the tree bumblebee, or the neapolitan icecream bee.

No mistaking this lady with her bottom high in the air. She’s a Bombus Lapidarius, a red-tailed bumblebee.

A honey bee with creamy pollen in her baskets.

A cute little spider waits, her web soft with thistle fuzz. I’m not going to attempt to start identifying spiders, so if anyone happens to know…

Blackberry season is here. I saw one man filling a bag up with juicy fruits. Blackberry season means autumn is coming. The bees must start preparing themselves for winter.

What flowers are out near you? Are you seeing plenty of wild bees out and about?

See these great blog posts for more photos of the flowers British bees enjoy in August:

philipstrange, The Flowers and the Bees
apiarylandlord, August forage

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bees on flowers | 35 Comments

Tea, cake, sunshine and two new queens

Posted on July 21, 2012 by Emily Scott

The last time I wrote about our hives at the beginning of July, Queens Neroli and Ginger had mysteriously disappeared and we were left looking at two emergency queen cells. Three weeks later, would our new queens have mated? The weather has not been kind here.

Miraculously, the sun was out today and the apiary was buzzing with both bees and beekeepers. It was nice to see so many people happily chattering away. Emma and I had a small audience as we opened up our hives, including the reassuring company of John Chapple; although John’s presence was not so lucky for our drones, as he was there to capture them! More on that later.

Here’s Emma inspecting. We were delighted to find gorgeous new mated queens in both our hives and a small number of eggs in one. Emma has some ideas for their names, which I’ll let her reveal to you in her fab blog, Miss Apis Mellifera. Hopefully both hives can now get going again. Neither hive has managed to fill out the brood box yet, with both colonies only having managed to draw out about 6-7 frames (so no supers on). This is extremely bad for this time of this year and reflects the problems we’ve had with the rampant rain. It is too late to hope for honey, rather we will now aim to get them through the winter safely.

Bee with propolis on her legs

Wish I’d remembered to take my proper camera and not just my iphone, as Emma spotted an unusual sight – some bees who had collected glossy propolis orbs. Can you see her there sitting on the capped honey? In ‘The Honey Bee Around and About‘ by Celia F Davis (2007) she tells us:

“Collecting the loads is quite difficult and time consuming and bees occupied with this job do not collect anything else. A bee uses its mandibles to pull a small amount of the soft propolis away from the plant… Once back in the hive, the bee is unable to dislodge the loads so they have to be bitten off by other house bees. It is then used immediately and is never stored” (p134).

A colony needs around 100g of propolis each year. Some beekeepers dislike propolis as it sticks together the various hive parts and can make it tricky to inspect, but I like to see our bees using propolis as it has brilliant disinfectant properties, acting against bacteria, fungi and even viruses.

Inspections over, there were a few interesting objects to see in the apiary….

John Chapple’s comb honey, sold for £1 a box – the public are impressed by comb honey. You should see the prices comb honey goes for near my work in central London.

Thomas Bickerdike had a fascinating story to tell us about the above foundationless super frame from one of his hives. It was drawn out by the bees in great haste during a nectar flow. Usually honeycomb is perfectly formed, with evenly sized cells. Not so this comb – the cells varied considerably in size, which was especially noticeable when it was all capped. The cells were also angled upwards more than usual. Thomas believes these unusual variations were the result of his bees being in a hurry, wanting to get the nectar in fast!

Ahh tea and cake on a warm summer’s day. This raspberry and strawberry cake was made by me, using this ‘Fantasy cake’ recipe by Lisa Faulkner: www.womanmagazine.co.uk/food/fantasy-cake. I went over the recommended fruit allowance, which made for a nice flavour but a very moist cake, a bit tricky to cut and eat! Still, the beekeepers polished nearly the whole thing off so it can’t have been too tricky…

Drones for sale!

I said I’d explain why John captured our drones. Well, the reason is a bit bizarre. He sells them to a Japanese restaurant for 10p each and just can’t keep up with the demand. There’s money in drones! He says he’s been invited to eat at the restaurant but his wife refuses to go. I felt a bit sorry for our drones and wondered if I should try hiding them, but John was too quick for me.

Incidentally I had an interesting chat with Thomas about drones. He lets his bees build their own comb and finds they like to make about 20% drones. He doesn’t uncap these for varroa control because he’s working on the logic that the drones mop up the varroa to some extent; if you remove all the drone brood, the mites will hop into worker brood and start damaging the workers instead. Would be interesting for research to be carried out into this, to settle the question of whether drone culling helps varroa control and overall hive health or not.

Finally, some pictures of the sun setting over Greenwich ships and Cutty Sark sails at the Greenwich comedy festival last night. Not bee related but happiness related.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged John Chapple, propolis, Thomas Bickerdike | 31 Comments