Adventuresinbeeland's Blog

As the days shorten, the bees are still managing to find yellow pollen – probably from ivy? On the warmer days, they zip frantically in and out, bringing home as much as they can. As increasingly darker, rainy days come, they hunker down in the hive; perhaps similar to the way we curl up at home and listen to the comforting sound of the rain on our windows. 

Over the years I have got into a bit of a routine with my bees when it comes to over wintering. I’ve found methods that work for me and I don’t tend to adapt them too much. I started out in 2008 and have been lucky to not lose a colony over winter yet (but it helps that I’ve only been keeping between 1-4 hives each of those years). 

I like to feed fondant, and this year the bees are already devouring it fast. Below you can see the dent one of the colonies made in a 2.5kg pack of Fondabee within a week. I put it over the hole in the crown board and then pack insulation over the top. 

My winter checklist:

• Late summer varroa treatment – usually I do a thymol based treatment in late August-early September (with supers off)
• Feed syrup in September if stores are low
• Switch to feeding fondant after October
• Colonies are overwintered either in a single brood box or brood box with super on top (with queen excluder removed)
• I put sheets of silver foil style insulation over the crown board, above the brood box
• Mouseguard put on in early November, after the ivy pollen has finished (as the mouse guard can knock pollen off foragers’ legs)
• Oxalic acid treatment (Api-Bioxal nowadays) done around the winter solstice 

I’m enjoying our autumn colours and textures – the reds of hawthorn, holly and cotoneaster, the crunch of acorns under foot, the dewy wet grass of the field I walk over to take Holly to nursery in the mornings. This year has been a strange one, but at least in bee-world life continues as before. No social distancing in the bee hive! 

Holly and Ivy

Cotoneaster berries

Holly berries

I’ve suddenly realised that summer has come to an end. The vibrant wildflowers below in my local park are now dying back. Berries have taken over in the hedgerows – shiny blackberries, dusky blue sloes, the red of hawthorn. Green acorns hang from the oak trees.

Wildflowers and baby

Wildflowers

A few last treats for the bees and butterflies – sedum (ice plant). Bumble bees, honey bees, small tortoisehells and red admiral butterflies can all be found enjoying its sweet smelling scent.

Sedum (ice plant)

And last weekend I found my first flowering ivy of the year, by the sea at Flushing. An important last big feed of the year for honey bees. There is even a bee called the ‘Ivy mining bee’, which emerges in the autumn in time for the ivy flowers. The male Ivy bees emerge first, in late August, with females arriving around a month later. Incidentally Ivy has become a popular name for baby girls recently (though I prefer Holly ;))

Ivy at flushing

You may be wondering why all my images now have jazzy coloured borders. Well, a blogger friend of mine reminded me that this can be done. Thank you, Emilio!

My bees are currently doing well, zooming back and forth with bright loads of pollen. I step off the inspections in August, as the threat of swarming has mostly passed. Also, if I did accidentally squash my queen, my colonies might struggle to get a new one mated before drones disappear. Last week I observed my ladies kicking their brothers out of the hive entrance, shoving them away before they could get back in. Unfortunately their free ride of getting fed by their sisters has come to an end. The days are shortening and the focus of the bees and beekeeper is very much on winter preparation. More on that later.

A trip to Chapel Porth on the north Cornish coast, where the wind batters anyone who meets it. Drew enjoyed the wild effect it had on his lockdown hair. I enjoyed the views but not the earache I got from the ‘sea breeze’.

I took a photo of a couple of little solitary bees hunkered down in what I thought were dandelions. The wind was shaking the flowers about violently but the bees stayed put, nestled firmly in.

Large shaggy bee

At home one of the experts on the Bees, Wasps and Ants (BWARS) Facebook group told me this was the wonderfully named ‘Large shaggy bee’ (Panurgus banksianus). A long-term monitoring project called The UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme looked at numbers of bees and hoverflies between 1980-2013 and found that the range of this species had declined by around 54%. So I was lucky to spot these beauties. The males are said to shelter in the flowers in dull weather.

They were not on dandelions as I thought but a plant called Catsear. Moira O’Donnell, the @nervousbotanist, wrote the helpful tweet below to help with ID’ing Catsear.

From a distance I’m still not sure if these yellow flowers are dandelions or more Catsear.

Foxgloves at Chapel Porth

The foot paths past the old mine house and along the coast take you past bright swathes of purple heather, mingled with the wizened thorns of gorse bushes. A few brave little wild flowers survive at the edges. A few bramble stems trail among the heather, but they don’t manage to take over.

Chapel Porth cliff top

It’s mad that this is only the second time I can remember seeing ladybirds this year. Tommy has learnt what ladybirds are from pictures in books. They used to be everywhere. One surreal summer when I was visiting family in Wales, a ladybird cloud was blown in on the beach and covered everything in ladybirds.

Tommy had a good time looking at bees and insects. He had an even better time later when he got an ice cream down on the beach!

A little further inland on the way back to the car park was this thistle. Another successful spiky plant managing to survive the eternal wind.

For weeks now both my hives have had no eggs or brood. So I’ve been reading about queenlessness and asking the advice of other beekeepers recently.

People said things like ‘Be patient. Bees won’t deliberately make themselves queenless’. So, rather than ordering a new queen in the post I managed to get a frame of eggs from a kind local beekeeper. A frame of eggs is a test of whether a hive is queenless – if it is, they should make queen cells. The bees did nothing with it. Did they have a queen, or were the eggs somehow damaged by being away from their colony and transported in the car without workers to care for them?

Still, I waited and hoped. And then finally last weekend one of the hives had the long looked-for eggs. One per cell, at the bottom of the cell. The sign of a queen! The bees seemed in a better mood. There were about three frames with eggs so I took one to the other colony which miraculously has no laying workers yet no eggs or brood either. It will be interesting to see what they do.

While I was waiting for eggs, some bees came to me. Unfortunately, they came to my chimney. Just as the old colony up there had started to dwindle and die out, a new swarm dramatically moved in, filling the air with bees. A procession of thoughtful neighbours knocked on the door to inform us… one said:  “If you go to the British Beekeepers’ website, you can find a local beekeeper”. When they discovered that I happen to be a beekeeper, I loved their confidence that I could sort it out… if only.

At the moment I am reading ‘Interviews with Beekeepers‘ by Steve Donohoe. There’s a lot to it and I am slowly moving through in the small bits and pieces of free time I get, taking in the advice and humour. It arrived quickly soon after ordering.

Below are a few photos of flowers out in Cornwall at the moment and cake that I’ve been eating.

Mexican fleabane – this grows everywhere along the Cornish walls

Hawthorn – the queen of May

Foxglove – good for bumble bees

Victoria sponge cake and a cookie I won as part of my runner-up prize in our street’s VE day art contest

I inspected my two hives for the first time this year recently. The weather in Cornwall has been gorgeous since lockdown began, so I was expecting to find some brood and honey, maybe even brood boxes bursting with bees. Sadly, though both colonies are still alive, neither seems to have a queen.

I inspected Demelza without needing my smoker; her bees remain as gentle as ever. They had stores, and plenty of foragers returning, but no sign of any eggs or brood. No chaotic cells containing the multiple eggs of laying workers yet either. Just lots of empty cells in the middle of the brood nest where brood should be. It’s unusual for queenless hives to be good tempered, but something isn’t right.

Kensa’s bees were a very different and more nerve wracking matter, needing heavy smoking. I would have been stung from head to toe if they could have reached me! I couldn’t blame them for being mardy though, as they were low on stores and only had a couple of frames of capped brood. I spotted no eggs. I didn’t see the queen in either hive, though I was deliberately focusing on trying to find eggs rather than the queen. Kensa’s queen is presumably quite flighty as I’ve always found her hard to hunt down.

I don’t think I can do much to help either colony. They’re not in a state to start a Bailey comb change as I had hoped. Ideally I would get another queen from somewhere but it’s probably too early in the season for that, especially with everything going on at the moment. I’ve set up a bait hive in case I can catch an early swarm. For now I will just use dummy boards to reduce the amount of space in the hives and feed Kensa’s hive syrup. They were battered by a winter of rain and storms, which perhaps was too much for them. With baby Holly around I haven’t had as much time to focus on them as I’d like. Guess what though… the chimney bees are still alive!

I’ve been enjoying seeing the spring flowers come out in my garden and in the couple of local parks I can reach on foot. Below are some pics.

Below is Lithodora – a favourite with the little black local female Hairy footed flower bees. I think they nest in my neighbour’s wall, as I have seen them coming and going around there.

These cheery yellow flowers are lesser celandine, which grows at the edges of fields, hedgerows and in woodland.

Cherry tree in my garden. The petals fall constantly, producing beautiful confetti. Our mini apple trees have come through the winter well and are attracting pollinators with their freshly scented white blossom.

Spring is showing her face; the rain has relented and some eager flowers have opened up their petals for the warmth of the sun. Around us pink and yellow primroses are sprinkled, their shapes like the classic flowers children draw. A few fruit trees have started to blossom. Bright yellow dandelions and blue forget-me-nots decorate my overgrown garden.

Pink primroses

And just as all this is going on, just as the beekeeper is getting excited, we are locked in our homes by a deadly virus. There will be no friendly meet ups with tea and cake this season.

My preparations continue regardless; I must hammer together some brood frames ready to do a Bailey comb change sometime in April so that the bees can draw out fresh comb. When to do this, between looking after two small children, I’m not sure – maybe 2am?! I am not particularly looking forward trying to find the queen, as both hives have been quite aggressive this winter. I’m just hoping it was the rain and wind that made them grumpy. Last week I ended up running for it, as I made the mistake of removing the mouse guards in a bee suit but with regular shoes which exposed my socks. Their woodpecker protection (a wire cage) is off now too.

These are strange and unexpected times which have made me appreciate how easy my life was before (and still is in many ways). There was so much I took for granted. Stay safe everyone.