I am nor sure where the time has gone since my last blog!  I have been so busy I have not had time to write things up which is a shame as there have been a number of interesting activities.

Kenwood Apiary

Just before the end of the season we were looking at the health of each colony and checking that they had enough stores for the winter.  There were two weak colonies and the Apiary Manager asked me to amalgamate them.  Luckily I had just read an article about doing this in BBKA News but even so theory and practice are not the same.  I needed to find both queens and then kill the one I judged to be weakest and then put the brood box from this hive over the top of the brood box with the other queen with newspaper in between so that the bees were introduced to each other slowly as they ate through the paper and adjusted to the new hive pheromones.  Hm, the challenge was to find both queens, not lose one whilst 'dispatching' the other and then join the colonies without upsetting the bees too much.  One queen was easy to find but the other was more difficult and after going through the frames a couple of times we resorted to shaking each frame over a queen excluder so the workers could move down but we would see the queen.  Success and a good technique to have in my armoury for the future.  It all went well although I did not enjoy killing the queen but my team were very supportive.  The next week they were all happy together.

We closed up the hives with supers under the brood boxes and mouseguards on the front.  Another season ended.


Garden Hives

I went through the same 'closing up' process with the home hives although I was anxious that neither of the colonies had taken the stores into the brood box and on advice from more experienced beekeepers I moved the stores frames putting empty ones next to the brood frames to encourage comb building and ensure enough space for the queen to lay.  This may have been a bad idea ..........

I went for one final look to see if the frame moving had resulted in more drawn comb with stores and to my horror in Hive 1 I found 2 supercedure queen cells.  They were embedded into a hole that had been excavated in the comb and I had damaged one by the time I realised it had a queen larva and royal jelly and then in a mild panic I squashed the other queen cell.  As I had not yet found the queen this was not good.  Of course I then failed to find the queen and after three runs through the frames decided to close up and have a think.  There were drones in the hive and the weather was good but really much too late for a new queen to hatch and be mated.  Reading suggested that the bees would not kill the old queen until they had a new one laying so I really did have to find her and a couple of days later my husband and I made a forensic search of the hive.  No new supercedure cells but no queen either so I put all the frames from the brood box into two supers on top of a sheet of polythene.  She was not in the super under the brood box and we then shook each frame over a queen excluder gently smoking the workers down as we went.  We got to the last three frames and I knew that one had stores and the other was un-drawn so I was feeling anxious that there was no queen and I had killed the queen larvae ......... then Tony saw her.   I re-marked her very carefully with green to make finding her easier in future.  I looked carefully and she had all her legs and was walking properly but everything I read said that she must be failing and that the workers knew this - given the amount of healthy new brood I was surprised but decided to trust the bees. 

A week later I decided to do another check.  No queen but queen cells in the same place as last time so I decided to leave them and hope that the bees knew best and would not kill the old queen until a functioning new one emerged.

Last week I made another 'final check' and found a hole in the side of one queen cell that I could see the white larva through.  It was obviously not going to hatch and I pulled out a dead queen.  Turning the frame over I found that the other queen cell was open and a worker was in there ....... when she came out it was evident that the queen had hatched or they had decided to tear down the cell anyway.  Is the old queen failing, is she alive, is there a new queen, did the MAQs strips upset the colony - the literature states it may stimulate supercedure, did moving the frames around upset the colony?  I decided not to amalgamate this colony with the other one and risk upsetting both colonies and losing the other queen so I am 'letting nature take its course' ............ yes, there was freshly capped comb and some white larvae so although I did not see her I am hopeful that the green queen is still OK.

Hive 2 with the blue queen in comparison had very little brood but I saw the queen and hopefully all is well.

I now only lift the roof off the hive to top up sugar syrup.  Bees are still flying and bringing in pollen on both hives.

Other bee related activities

As I said at the start, I have been very busy.  The NLBA Annual Competition and supper was a delight.  I got first prize again for my cake, 1st for my candles and 2nd for my honey in the novice class.  I also gained first prize in a local competition for my chunk honey.  Then there has been: bottling honey and developing exciting new relationships with local businesses.  Making and packaging candles and cleaning up kit ready for next year.

The past few weeks have been very busy at home and at the Association Apiary.  The focus has been on extracting honey and disease control.  However, I have also been keeping a daily diary of the development of my new hive with the 'blue queen'.


Honey Extraction

I jarred 48 pots of honey from 2014 for the North London Beekeepers' Association.  It had been in a bucket for a year and had crystallised so the NLBA Chairman had put it in his warming cupboard to liquefy it again.  It sort of worked but was still very thick.  I sterilised 50 jars and filled each one up and then checked to ensure that all of them was above the minimum weight of 8 oz.  Rather a lot of work but £240 that will be raised from its sale is a useful contribution to Association funds.

I worked with a small team of NLBA regulars to extract the Apiary honey.  As last year, we used a Community Centre Kitchen with a high hygiene rating rather than the shed at the Apiary.  It was very sticky and the local bees found us but we managed the activity with good humour and efficiency.

I helped the husband of a friend to extract her honey as she went into hospital for an operation.  What an interesting man and so the task was a pleasure.  The next day I extracted my own honey.  By this time I was getting a bit 'stir crazy' with uncapping, centrifuging and filtering.  Once I had finished I was not in a big mood to jar the honey.  I separated the spring from summer honey but to date have not sat down to do a 'tasting' but what is noticeable is that the honey from my hives at Kenwood is much darker than my home honey - both batches of which are light in colour.


BBKA Assessment Result
On 6th August my friend Paul texted me to say that he had been telephoned and told that he had passed and asked what had happened to me.  I waited all evening but no 'phone call.  I had bad dreams about failing.  Next day there was still no call so I began to fear the worst.  Eventually when I was shopping in Liberty's I received a congratulatory e-mail saying that I had passed with credit.  So relieved.


Home Hives

The new hive has been of concern as the amount of brood and stores have not been growing.  I have kept a daily diary and maybe a 'watched hive' does not 'boil' to mis-quote the old saying about pots.  I treated both hives for a month with Hive Clean on the recommendation of a fellow beekeeper.  Unfortunately it does not seem to have any impact on varroa infestation judging by the continuing drop of mites and the number of bees with deformed wing virus.

After extracting the honey I returned the frames and wax cappings to the hives for the bees to clean up which they did which leaves me with clean frames and them with honey back in their stores for winter.

I also fed he hives with sugar syrup and 'Bee Strong' prior to applying the MAQs formic acid treatment strips this week which I hope will kill off the wretched varroa before the winter bees are laid.

I have started to clean up the wax cappings for candles.  I have also experimented with making soap and also night-lights and tapered candles to help fellow beekeeper with her social enterprise business.  It really does not make sense for me to take on manufacturing as there is so much work and so little potential income, but it has been interesting and I am keen to support the enterprise.

I have sold some honey direct to local people and my daughter has sold some to friends.  I need to decide if I want to sell again through the local deli.  The owner is very nice and she needs to make a living but doubling the price makes it very expensive and I would hate to think that I am charging so highly when I am sticking to the Association recommended price.

So all in all it has been a very busy bee month with positive outcomes but as ever, some issues to resolve.

The New Garden Hive
I waited to see if Hive 1 produced  queen cells and then finally decided to split the colony and add a new queen as described in my last entry. Now I have more waiting to do.

I am now anxiously waiting to see if the colony has accepted the new queen.  It is agony and I am constantly tempted to open the hive and see what is going on!  I need reassuring all is well.
Day 0 - Nucleus hive bees split away from colony in hive 1
Day 1 - New queen introduced to nucleus 'nuc' hive.
Day 2 - Checked nuc and found two workers drowned in syrup, removed.  Fondant still in place in cage
Day 3 - Bees not going in and out of the nuc but then any 'fliers' would have returned to hive 1.  A single bee on an orientation flight.  Three dead drones in grass at entrance and one being killed by a wasp.  Waited to see if any more wasps.  No sign of guard bees at tiny entrance.  Opened top to find one syrup death and rescued another bee.  A peep at the queen cage showed big hole in fondant.  Resisted looking at frames but only just ! 
Day 4 - British Beekeepers Association Examination so I was distracted.  I checked for further bee deaths outside the nuc but all fine and then (deep sign of paranoia) I went on my hands and knees and checked the mesh floor from underneath to see if there were loads of dead bees and possibly the queen.  All fine.
Day 5 - 1st Inspection day! No dead bees outside the nuc and still no entrances and exits.  I lifted off the crown board in a high state of anxiety and carefully removed a frame of stores so that I could gently check the queen cage.  This had a number of dead bees in it and I hoped that this did not include a rejected queen as my friend Alison warned me that workers can sting a queen to death through the cage.  On closer inspection the bees looked like workers.  I progressed with the inspection and found the azure queen walking around happily with her subjects.  Phew! I nearly cried I was so relieved.  No queen cups had been made in the period before the queen's pheromone had percolated the hive.  Eggs seen but of course no new larvae yet as they have not had time to emerge from the eggs.  The brood from hive 1 has been nurtured and a few workers were hatching out.  The next bit of waiting will be to see if the brood from the new queen is building up well enough to go into a full sized hive.  Also to see if the workers have matured into foraging bees.  I was working in the garden in the afternoon and delighted to see about 30 worker bees on their initial orientation flights around the hive.
Day 6 - No orientation flights but a small number of bees exiting and returning to the hive.  No sign of pollen so assume that they are collecting nectar or water.
Day 7 - Awoke at 6.00 am worrying if there is enough space for the new queen to lay as the nuc had 3 frames of brood and 2 of stores from hive 1.  Very small number of 'fliers' leaving and entering the hive as yesterday.
Day 8 - Again a small number of bees circling the nuc.  Are they 'robbers' ? they do not seem to enter or exit so what are they up to?  2.30 p.m. An active little group of orienteers are flying and moving in and out of the hive. Phew, relief.  However, there are also a few crawling bees with deformed wing virus contracted in hive 1 via the varroa mites.  These bees have been excluded and will sadly die.  Hopefully the MAQs treatment means that newer bees are not affected.
Day 9 - 11 - Minimal activity especially yesterday as it poured with rain continuously.
Day 12 - 2nd Inspection day.  Moved a full sized hive close to the nuc.  Did a complete check of the nuc and saw the queen and eggs.  Bees on 4 seams.   Sadly a few on the mesh floor had deformed wing virus.  I trust the newer hatched ones will be fine.  Moved the frames from the nuc into the new hive with freshly waxed frames either side.  They had eaten all the syrup so I topped it up and closed up the hive leaving a small entrance to make it easier to defend from intruders.   From now on it will be external checks and syrup top up and weekly full inspection with the hope that there is enough time for this hive to build up sufficient numbers and health to see it through the winter.

Basic Assessment Examination
I am not sure why I decided to put myself through this as the Basic Assessment is not especially 'basic'.  Inevitably things I had learnt did not come up and things that were not covered on the course 'emerged in conversation'.  The assessment comprised making a frame which was OK as it was not so hot that the wax was 'soggy'.  Inspecting a hive, which was not too bad as I managed to see eggs even without my magnifying glass and did not let any piece of equipment touch the ground. Thanks Johan, that frame hanger was a Godsend.   even managed to catch a good number of bees from the entrance in a container.  Not bad given that the apiary hives do not have landing boards!  I can never keep the smoker alight and this is one of the assessment criteria so I stoked that old smoker up so it could have powered the flying Scotsman.  Eventually the examiner took it away and filled it with grass to slow it up.  I was highly amused but in a private way.  As I went through the hive I was questioned closely and then had another hour of questioning.  Generally it was OK but I had a couple of total blanks and made a right mess of explaining the Pagden Method of swarm control.  Anyway, it took my mind of the nucleus hive! I now have to wait about a month for the results.  I am not sure why it takes so long but presumably the assessor wants to be well away when they arrive.  Not much fun telling someone they have failed when surrounded by bees.

Waiting, waiting, waiting ....................... agonising

Kenwood has been all about introducing new queens to refresh the gene pool.  My hive 3 now has new queens in hive 3A and 3B and the hives are doing well.  I have removed any queen cells but these were minimal and the next action will be to keep an eye on the health of these colonies and hope that they build up strongly ready to overwinter.

I have my Basic Assessment examination at the Apiary on Friday.   I am doing lots of reading and have invested in a magnifying glass to help me identify eggs.   Knowing the answers and making a coherent and concise response are not the same, so we will have to see how it goes.  Making a frame in hot weather with soggy wax will be very challenging so not looking forward to that bit.  I had considered taking a cool bag with freeze blocks in it but that is probably a bit eccentric even for me!  Collecting 30 bees in a matchbox from the entrance to the hive is also a potential disaster area.  Our experienced tutor only managed to catch 2 after several attempts.  This is because there are no landing boards on the hives at the Apiary and also the colonies are quite small so not many bees entering and exiting.  One of the group suggested a vacuum cleaner! Not sure how that would go down.  It will be embarrassing to fail, but the main thing for me has been the learning, camaraderie with the rest of the group and the acid test really is can I keep healthy and productive bee colonies rather than can I pass an exam.

The bees in the home hive survived the formic acid treatment although it seems to have put the queen off laying at the rate she was before.  Not surprising.

On Monday I prepared everything for the arrival of a new queen by taking 2 frames of stores and three with brood and 'house bees' and putting them into a nucleus 'nuc' hive a few yards away from the original hive.  I also put a rapid feeder full of thin sugar syrup on to keep them happy.  The theory is that when the split away bees notice a lack of 'Queen Substance', the pheromone produced by the queen bee that keeps the colony content, they start to create queen cells from some of the young brood laid by their mother the Green Queen. 

Yesterday the new Blue Queen arrived by post with some attendant bees.  I had warned the postman and asked him to knock rather than squeeze the box through the letter box and have it drop on the floor.  He ignored this.  The bees arrived in a plastic cage in a standard brown envelope and crashed to the ground through the letter box.   They all seemed to be moving about so I put the envelope in a dark cupboard to settle down.  Meanwhile  I smoked and then checked the nuc, removed a couple of early queen cells and made sure the Green Queen had not slipped onto one of the frames before I transported them from the other hive.  I sprayed the frames and bees with a thin sugar solution with a touch of vanilla essence to masque the impact of the new queen's pheromone smell.  I then introduced the Blue Queen into the nuc in her little travelling cage which has fondant at one end.  I remembered to remove the plastic cap to expose the fondant and carefully made a hole in the fondant with a blunted cocktail stick making sure that I did not stab the queen.  The process is that over the next few days the bees in the nuc who originated in hive 1 will get used to the smell of the new queen and will release her by eating away the fondant.  The unthinkable scenario is that they are not impressed by her and kill her. 

The colony need minimal intervention but I did an external check but there were no bees flying.  It is a rather dull day and of course the hive is populated by young 'house bees' as any more mature 'flying bees' would have returned to their original home in hive 1.  I gently lifted the lid and checked on the syrup.  Unfortunately two bees had drowned in it.  I removed them.  I then lifted the crown board and could see that the fondant was not fully eaten away so the queen has not yet bee released.  This is probably a good thing as it gives the colony more time to get used to her smell.  I then gently closed the hive up and will leave until tomorrow to see if the fondant has been eaten and then if it has, try and control myself from lifting out the frames to assure myself that the queen is alive and moving through the colony.  This I should leave for a week but suspect that I will succumb to curiosity by the weekend.  Until then I had better concentrate on 'cramming' for the bee examination on Friday.   I will have to check for and remove any queen cells by next Monday as the last thing I need is to lose this queen.

Hopefully by my next entry I will have scraped through the 'not so' Basic Assessment with a pass and the Blue Queen will be happily laying in the nuc. 

I have also been advising a school on setting up a hive and creating a pollinator friendly garden and re-designing the labels and packaging for my honey and candles so all in all my head is permanently 'full of bees'. 

The past month has been the usual round of weekly inspection of the hive in the garden and at Kenwood.  So far it has been fairly un-eventful and routine ..................


Kenwood Apiary

My hive (No 3) was building up well and one Sunday the decision was taken, in my absence, to add a super to give the bees more space and reduce the risk of the colony swarming because it felt too cramped.  This was a good idea but unfortunately they added a super with metal spacers so that the frames were further apart than the 'bee space' width identified by Rev Langstroth and essential to maintain in the brood area.

When I inspected it the following Thursday I had a fit and then set about replacing the super with a standard brood box but of course the queen had been up in the super and laid eggs among the honey frames.  Also the wrong frame spacing had resulted in wondrous wax creations and frames 'glued' to each other so when I lifted the box off it was a bit of a disaster.  Not to worry, with the help of my able team we carefully re-built the hive in the proper manner leaving the honey super with the larvae above the queen excluder so that the nurse bees could care for the brood until it hatched but her majesty could not lay more eggs in the honey frames.  Once those bees have flown those cells can revert to nectar storage.

However, the colony was now huge and I was forever removing queen cells.  It felt like Russian Roulette because to miss a queen cell would probably result in a swarm.  Also, the brood pattern was a bit lumpy with some cells missed suggesting that the queen who emerged late last year may not have been properly mated and is thus running out of sperm.  I definitely needed to split the colony and probably introduce new queens too.  However, on the day we got the new queen we could not find the existing one.  Over and again we went through those frames in both brood boxes.  None of us could find her so we split the colony by moving the original hive to one side and then putting a new brood box onto the original site and putting back a few frames of brood from which we had removed all bees.  The flying bees would return and care for the brood.  The new queen was in a little queen cage with her attendants and a block of sugar fondant.   We carefully placed the cage between two brood frames and then closed up the hive which was getting a bit lively by then! 

I am delighted to say that when I inspected the hive the next week the new queen had emerged and had been accepted by the 'locals'.  Hopefully this week there will be signs of her laying.  The other half of the colony also looked fine and I saw eggs so the shy queen is definitely there but not obvious.

The Garden Hive

Above are some images of the evolution of my bee garden.  Hackney Council wrote to me and admitted that their contractor had sprayed herbicide down my street and that the product used was 'Round-up' which is listed by the World Health Organisation as carcinogenic.  They also informed me that the key ingredient, glysophate does not kill bees, it only dis-orientates them ......... you can imagine my response to that! 

My husband finally got stung - a bee crawled up his sleeve when he was a distance from the hive.  However, this turned out well as he has now agreed to wear a bee-suit and as a result can help me lift off the heavy supers full of honey.

Having worried for weeks that my colony would produce queen cells and swarm I am now worried that they will not produce a queen cell and so I cannot split them as planned!  A friend told me about a colony for sale for £200 but I know that if I buy this my lot will instantly produce queen cells and then I will end up with more bees than my neighbours would tolerate.  However I am considering buying a new queen who can be put in the new hive along with half the existing bees.  My original queen is now in her second season and the end of her productive life so the colony may decide to 'supercede' her by producing a new queen at the end of the season anyway.  A new queen is about £55 so not too expensive as long as she survives the journey and is accepted by her new family.

I was not too happy with the varroa drop which was in double figures.  I did the horrible 'drone cull' last week cutting out drone cells which attract varroa.  When I dissected 50 cells I found 10 larvae with a mite on them.  Then today I found a bee with deformed wing virus which is spread by varroa so I will have to treat the colony at the next inspection.  Having decided to treat with formic acid I bet I find a queen cell!
Whatever happens at the next inspection I am going to remove and store 2 supers full of honey.  The hive looks like a tower block, moving the supers is heavy work and one of our study circle says that if the colony thinks it has loads of stores it will slack off making more!

Garden Hive

After a cold spring the sunshine came and on Easter Monday it was warm enough to open the hive.  The 'Old Ways' of beekeeping have much to teach us although we need to keep up with modern scientific research if our colonies are to thrive.  Thus the flowering currant in full bloom was the old indicator I used to tell me that it was warm enough to open up the hive and complete a full inspection. Another 'old way' is to observe the hive from the outside and so even when it was too cold to open the hive I watched the bees taking in pollen, collecting water from the birdbath, I looked at the number of dead bees on the ground and for signs of faecal staining indicating Nosema, bee dysentery.

With the help of my husband as 'scribe' I inspected each frame in the brood box checking for honey and pollen stores, brood from eggs to capped larvae.  All was well.  The brood was building up and there were no signs of disease so my previous concerns about nosema were allayed.

I was delighted to find my elusive queen. I was already prepared with the 'crown of thorns' queen catcher and green marking pen in my pocket, so marking was quick and easy although the marking was rather blobby as she moved about.  I did not want to risk squashing her down too much and injuring her.

I removed one of the old frames which had quite a few drone cells as well as worker cells. I then moved the last of the old frames to the outside of the brood box with new empty frames between.  I am not sure that this was a good idea but we will see.  My idea was to allow the capped brood to emerge but to dissuade the queen from laying more eggs in the empty cells.  It may just be that these larvae are chilled and die but as the alternative was to remove the frame and thereby kill these bees anyway it seemed worth trying.

I took the old frame that I had removed into the house and gave it a full examination using a magnifier.  I removed 50 drone larvae from their cells to check for health.  The larvae were white and healthy but four had one varroa mite each.  Not a disaster, but treatment is necessary.  Changing the old wax is part of my integrated pest management plan, the next step will be to apply MAQS formic acid strips.  I have put the varroa board under the hive floor and will see what the drop of mites is over the next week and then if the colony looks strong at the next inspection I will commence the treatment and keep a record of mite deaths.

Out and about in the garden I have seen plenty of bumble and solitary bees.  The hairy-footed flower bees are fond of the japonica and pulmonaria flowers and the bee flies are busy on the forget-me-nots but seem thwarted by the muscari despite their impressively long proboscis.  There have also been some very large queen bumble bees about.  My honeybees have now ceased crowding around the birdbath to collect water.  I wonder if this is because they no longer need to dilute the sugar stores and have fresh nectar coming in?

Bee-related activities

I am keeping up with refreshing my website and have added a folklore section.  I added some more photographs.  I am reading Larkrise to Candleford which has several references to beekeeping in Oxfordshire in the 1880s which is fascinating.  This includes the importance of 'Telling the Bees' about important family events.  My youngest son was seriously ill earlier this month and eccentric as it will sound, I did go and tell the bees.  I doubt that it had any impact on them but it made me feel better at a very stressful time.  I did of course also tell them when he recovered!