Thirsty Bees

A nice sunny day and it's the first time since I made the "bee bar" last year that I have seen the bees stop off to get some water for the colony, must be a bit warm inside the hive.

Wax Moth trap

Ok read up a bit on these moths, the bees will try and control, so fingers crossed, but if they are in there then it means there are more outside waiting to get in!

Found this simple trap on the internet

Take a 2 litre plastic pop bottle and drill a 1 inch hole just below the slope on the neck, then add 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, 1 half cup vinegar and finally 1 banana peel. Wait a few days till it starts to ferment, then tie it into a tree close to the hives. This trap will draw the wax moth, they enter the hole can't get out and drown in the liquid

I have all the ingredients, bottle is drilled, look out Whyteleafe's wax moths Peter's going to get you :-) Hmm only one problem no trees in my garden!:-)

Ok, so now I have wax moth!

Somebody did say when I started that keeping bees isn't straight forward! Well yesterday I thought I would have a quick clean up of my varroa inspection floor and found two caterpillars, wax moths seem to have found my hive!

Lovely little creatures, in flies the moth, lays god knows how many hundred eggs and then the little darling caterpillars set about eating the wax, tunnelling this way and that! And what do the bees do, well absolutely sod all, for an animal that is very protective of their colony they just ignore them and let them destroy the hive.

But it's ok for them to manage to get up my jeans trouser leg yesterday! I have never walked so slowly up the garden and then ever so slowly remove my jeans with the sound of buzzing working it's way higher up my thigh, I can't believe I managed to get the jeans off without being stung!

Anyway back to the wax moth, now I will have to inspect really closely and kill every caterpillar I see, including those burrowing inside the wax honey comb. Next purchase very quickly is some long nosed surgical tweezers to get to those inside the honey comb, pull them out killing them in the process.

I love a challenge, deep joy! :-)

wow and double wow

I was just looking at at piece of honey comb with some honey stores still on it, temptation got the better of me, so ate it, wow and double wow, I never knew honey could taste so good!! This has got to be the way to eat honey:-)

I'm hooked with just one bite:-)

Queen seen, phew :-)

Late afternoon when things had quieted down I dived back into the hive to take out the drone brood on the piece of brace comb that I had put back in the hive.

Life is never simple in since Monday the worker bees had been busy joining all the bits of prace comb to together in one lump, they certainly work hard!

I cut away each piece finding that neither the work brood or drone brood had hatched, the drone brood i put out for the birds, I seems harsh but it's the best way to keep varroa mite levels down by natural methods. The worker brood I put aside to put back in the hive.

Then it was time to find the queen on the lower brood box, I soon spotted her, phew, on the fifth frame I looked on, happily walking about amongst her workers. So decided rather than upset them any more would leave them be and not look at all the frames, can do that next weekend.

Then I realised I'd forgotten to take any photos, so quickly took a photo this morning to help explain what brace comb looks like and also show the frame extensions that I had to remove.

Not much pollen!

Hmm decided if weather was nice today that despite what I said in last blog would have a quick look in hive, well the weather is nice, but as you can see bees are a bit busy.

Think I still do need to check as not much pollen being flown into the hive, you can see one bee with pollen but there really should be lots of bees flying in with it, so rather than a quick look will go for a much more detailed inspection later today. Anyway I need to get that surplus drone brood out of the hive, well that's if it hasn't hatched yet and perhaps swap a brood frame in lower box for a smaller super frame so that I can cull drone brood and in turn varroa mite larvae as part of my varroa integrated management.

Why am I doubting that I saw the queen last time and she isn't in the bottom brood box? Bees, they're worse than having kids for worry, ok perhaps not :-)

My hive rearranged!

Ok today I decided to take the bull by the horns and sort out the mess I had created last year in my hive by mixing brood and brood and half frames in a brood and a half box.

I've thought long and hard and sort advice from fellow bee keepers.

The plan was to open the hive on a nice spring day, remove as many of the extended brood and a half frames, cut away the extension and then put them in a new brood box along with as many of the four standard brood frames which would be full of capped cells, larvae, eggs and stores. Then make make up the full box by fitting new clean brood frames at either end. The new box would then be put on top of the old brood an half and allow the colony to settle down in the top box before switching top for bottom a few weeks later. Confused well I was!

First things first was to get absolutely anything that I thought I would need out in the garden and then anything that I thought I wouldn't need! Then stick rigidly to the plan.

So here goes nothing, I knew the bees would be pissed so had plenty of smoke ready to try and calm them down, I smoked the entrance, took off the lid which I would invert, cracked the crown board and smoked again, then I put the new brood box on the inverted roof.

With the old brood frames exposed another squirt of smoke and lift the first brood an a half out which was almost like new, this was put to one side to use to close down the size of the old brood and a half box once as many frames were removed as possible. Two new clean brood frames were put in the new brood. Time to remove the stores frames, these came out easily and the extensions were cut away with the now standard size brood going into the new brood box. I was soon into the four standard brood frames, these had loads of brace comb hanging from the bottom a mixture of stores and capped drone brood, I carefully cut away the brace comb, the bees didn't like that and then put the brace comb in the bottom of the brood and a half. The second of these had the Queen on so I carefully placed her with frame into the new box, transferred a couple more stores frames and completed the new brood with two more new frames.

At this point I changed my mind, time will tell whether I was right or wrong, knowing that the Queen was in the new brood box, I decided the best place for her was at the bottom of the hive, I lifted the brood an a half off the mesh floor and put it onto a spare inverted roof. Then quickly I put the new standard brood plus Queen onto the old mesh floor and stand, on went a Queen excluder, that was on of the bits I didn't need with plan A! Carefully put the old brood and a half that had about four frames in on top, next I carefully put all the frame extensions and brace comb with stores and brood into the brood and a half, standing them up so that the bees could access both sides, this also included the drone brood, think that might have been a mistake, should have culled them for varroa. With everything back in the hive I replaced the crown board, brushed the bees off the roof put that in place and then tidied up, all in all this took about 20 minutes.

As you can see the hive is now quite a bit taller, I will leave them alone now for a few weeks, hopefully by then the drone brood will have hatched and the bees will have salvaged all the stores from the top brood and a half. The aim is to remove the top brood and a half, salvaging anything of use to the bees, maybe using a super for anything left and then revert to a relatively straight forward summer of bee keeping!

Famous last words.

Sorry if I have lost anybody with this post, it's really just a record so that other fellow beekeepers can say what I did right and wrong!

Spring is here......at last :-)

Well it looks like spring is here a balmy 12.5 degs C outside and the bees are busy. The bees have made it through their first winter. They were out and about and bringing back plenty of bright yellow pollen, which means the queen is busy laying eggs and the colony is building up for the coming summer.

All I have to do now is work out how to correct the mess that I know will be in the hive because I mixed up the frame sizes last summer, I have a cunning plan, but can't really implement until the end of March and after that all I need to do is somehow stop the colony from swarming!

Oxalic Acid treatment for my bees

The temperature was ok today (10degC) and no rain, so being the right time of the year to treat the bees for varroa using oxalic acid it had to be done.

It's the right time of year because there should be no brood (bees in the making) in the hive and so all the varroa mites will be in the colony taking a ride on the backs of the bees where the oxalic acid will have the maximum effect.

It's always a bit unnerving trying something new, so read up on the treatment and got everything all ready and to hand.

Each seam of bees needs 5ml of the acid, so first up needed to count how many full seams of bees there were in the hive, fortunately the bees were near the top of the hive so quickly counted 8 seams, by my maths that's 40ml that I needed to but into the syringe. Just a case of evenly dribbling the acid along the seams.

Actually it was all pretty straight forward and very quickly done, so crown board and roof back on and theory has it that's all I should need to do with the colony until March and the approach of Spring!

An email I received today, not nice reading, wonder how true it all is?

Dear friends,

Bees are dying off worldwide and our entire food chain is in peril. Scientists blame toxic pesticides and four European governments have already banned them. If we get the US and the EU to join the ban, other governments across the world could follow, and save bees from extinction. Sign the petition and forward this urgent appeal:

Silently, billions of bees are dying off and our entire food chain is in danger. Bees don't just make honey, they are a giant, humble workforce, pollinating 90% of the plants we grow.

Multiple scientific studies blame one group of toxic pesticides for their rapid demise, and some bee populations are recovering in countries where these products have been banned. But powerful chemical companies are lobbying hard to keep selling these poisons. Our best chance to save bees now is to push the US and EU to join the ban -- their action is critical and will have a ripple effect on the rest of the world.

We have no time to lose -- the debate is raging about what to do. This is not just about saving bees, this is about survival. Let’s build a giant global buzz calling for the EU and US to outlaw these killer chemicals and save our bees and our food. Sign the emergency petition now, and send it on to everyone and we’ll deliver it to key decision makers:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/save_the_bees/?vl

Bees are vital to life on earth -- every year pollinating plants and crops with an estimated $40bn value, over one third of the food supply in many countries. Without immediate action to save bees many of our favourite fruits, vegetables, and nuts could vanish from our shelves.

Recent years have seen a steep and disturbing global decline in bee populations -- some bee species are already extinct and last week we learned that some US species are at just 4% of their previous numbers.Scientists have been scrambling for answers. Some studies claim the decline may be due to a combination of factors including disease, habitat loss and toxic chemicals. But increasingly independent research has produced strong evidence blaming neonicotinoid pesticides. France, Italy, Slovenia and even Germany, where the main manufacturer Bayer is based, have banned one of these bee killers. But, Bayer continues to export its poison across the world

This issue is now coming to the boil as major new studies have confirmed the scale of this problem. If we can get European and US decision-makers to take action, others will follow. It won’t be easy. A leaked document shows that the US Environmental Protection Agency knew about the pesticide’s dangers, but ignored them. The document says Bayer’s "highly toxic" product is a "major risk concern to non target insects [honey bees]".

We need to make our voices heard to counter Bayer’s very strong influence on policy makers and scientists in both the US and the EU where they fund the studies and sit on policy bodies. The real experts -- the beekeepers and farmers -- want these deadly pesticides prohibited until and unless we have solid, independent studies that show they are safe. Let's support them now. Sign the petition below, then forward this email:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/save_the_bees/?vl

We can no longer leave our delicate food chain in the hands of research run by the chemical companies and the regulators that are in their pockets. Banning this pesticide will move us closer to a world safe for ourselves and the other species we care about and depend on.

With hope,

Alex, Alice, Iain, David and all at Avaaz

MORE INFORMATION

Bee decline could be down to chemical cocktail interfering with brains
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/22/chemicals-bees-decline-major-study?INTCMP=SRCH

Bee briefing
http://www.soilassociation.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=RXLEm9WXrHk%3D&tabid=439

$15 Billion Bee Murder Mystery Deepens
http://www.businessinsider.com/colony-collapse-disorder-still-unsolved-lead-researcher-had-connections-to-bayer-2010-10

“Nicotine Bees" Population Restored With Neonicotinoids Ban
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/nicotine-bees-population-restored-with-neonicotinoids-ban.php

EPA memo reveals concern that pesticide causes bee deaths
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/green/detail?entry_id=79910

Beekeepers want government to pull pesticide
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/beekeepers-want-government-to-pull-pesticide-1107701.html

Bees in freefall as study shows sharp US decline
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/03/bumblebees-study-us-decline?INTCMP=SRCH

Pesticide industry involvement in EU risk assessment puts survival of bees at stake
http://www.corporateeurope.org/agribusiness/news/2010/11/16/pesticide-industry-future-bees

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