2013

The year had a very bad start as the winter carried on through most of March and many colonies struggled to hang on long enough for the warm weather to arrive.

Once spring did get underway it was about a month late. However the bees did make both a spring and summer crop of honey.

August was hot and dry and the bees needed feeding if they were new nucs or colonies that had provided a honey crop.

EFB is still around in some of my apiaries and I had to destroy bees in both Ringland and in South Walsham. The apiary in Old Costessy had one case. I am about to move out of that site for good.

The autumn has been mostly good with warm weather giving a late crop of ivy honey.  

We have now passed the middle of November and the weather is still mild and the hard frosts of winter are yet to set in. The bees are still eating and flying.

The 2012 beekeeping season has been frustrating in that the weather has been most odd. Much of March was warm and sunny. In fact it was too warm and too sunny for that time of year. Although it did give me a chance to treat all of my colonies for Varroa.

Then April, May, June and half of July it rained much of the time with only a few days here and there when the bees could make honey. Every time the bees had a few days in which to make honey it was followed by a week of rain when they then ate the honey they had made.  Fortunately there were enough sunny days for the virgin queens to make their mating flights and I don't think queen mating was as badly effected as the honey production.

The only honey that my bees made in any quantity was late in the season from the end of the sweet chestnut flowering. Although the two hives I took to North Norfolk for the sea lavender did do well. Taking hives up to the coast for the sea lavender crop was a first for me this year and I may take a few more more colonies up next year.

The new apiary started in 2011 is going into the winter with twelve colonies. Hives 2,6,7,9, and 10 have bees from a selected 'gentle' queen that I first identified on the Bluebell allotment site in 2009. There are no bees at all on the allotment now. 

It has been a long time since I posted on here. My last post was in May 2010. I suddenly stopped posting because I had been made aware that I had big problems in my apiaries. The bee inspector had indentified EFB in several of my hives.

EFB in my hives changed everything and I spent the remainder of 2010 trying to limit the spread from one hive to another.

2011 started with me still boiling up brood frames. I wanted to finish the brood frames before I started on the super frames. It took me months to clean up the allotment entirely - that meant boiling all of the spare frames in boiling water with soda crystals. And scorching the boxes, floors, and crown boards before moving them and the bees off the site altogether.

The allotment feels quite lonely without the bees now.

The Germans

First of all the German had a box full of queen cells that I found just in time. I made up two other boxes with the brood and queen cells but the queen cells were not on three separate frames to make three boxes easily. To make up three boxes I cut a cell out of a frame that had more than one on put that on a frame and put that in the original box for the flying bees to look after. On inspection the next day I found that they bees has cut a hole in the side it. I wasn't convinced that they had a queen so I put in a frame of brood from the WBC hive. They made several queen cells. Today I thought maybe I could cut a queen out of the frame and split the bees up into two but there in the box was a laying queen. Marked green. The queen cells were still on the introduced frame.

I took that frame and a couple of others out and put them in a nuc box.

P2, Ringland

Box P2, the box I removed the queen from, made all of it's queen cells on one frame. I cut out a section with queen cells from the one frame and attached it to another frame and left that in the brood box. The remaining frame with queens cells I put in a nuc box with a couple of other frames of brood and took it to the allotment apiary.

Gave more Thymol the hives in Ringland.

Tina, Box 6, Bill's bees

Two of Tina's daughters 2009 live in Tony's town garden and are doing really well.

I took a quick peak under the crown board on Tina's box in the allotment to find Tina wandering around on top of the brood frames. So something is not right there. The last time I looked in there she was on the frame of brood I had added leaving the small patch of eggs she had laid un-attended.

I have taken the queen in a nuc from Box 6 (GW's old box) and taken them to Old Costessy. The queen came from Luke's (darker) Essex bees that were united with half of GW's bees and after the colony in WBC hive were the strongest colony on the allotment last week.

I've sited two new hives from Bill's apiary in the countryside on the allotment.

Old Costessy, Honey Stripes

Found and marked three queens at Old Costessy. Both hives facing south and the hive at station one (the old hive on bricks). Made nucs up with two of them - hive facing south and station one leaving the poor bees frantic without their queens. There are a lot of bees in those two hives and if the weather stays good I should find plenty of queen cells in a weeks time.

Honey Stripes is alive in George's but not yet thriving.

Original boxes, P2 bees

I still have both of the two brood boxes that I started beekeeping with -- P1 and P2.

P1 is currently empty in Postwick

P2 is in Old Costessy and has surprised me with the quality of the brood laying at the start of this year. I took the queen out as a nuc on the 21st and put her in a brand new box and moved her to the allotment. I think the original bees were Norman's. They are on the remainder of his old frames that have hand made metal spacers.

In the middle of the day today the bees in the WBC hive on the allotment were so active that at one point I almost thought they were swarming.

The German Queen

I was intending to split up the two brood boxes that the German bees are in and had set up anther hive station and brood box to take thew queen. The top box was stores and empty frames with a feeder bucket on above the crown board. There was no brood in the top box and no sign that the queen had been up there.

There was no queen in the bottom box either - but there were plenty of queen cells and evidence that they were in the process of being torn down. One cell had hatched but there was no sign of any kind of queen.

To cut a long story short there are now three boxes with queen cells in them

Drones, drone brood added, first queen cell,

At last. Today we had a sunny day without a cold without a cold breeze coming from the North East.

Some of the hives now have a few drones in them.

I have put a frame of drone brood into the three strongest hives at Old Costessy.

The Bowthorpe swarm have made themselves a single queen cell.

It seems to be about time to start thinking of breeding some new queens but as we have had a late start to spring I going to leave it for a few more days before moving any queens out of their hives..

Thorpe

I opened up and put thymol in the three hives at Thorpe. All three had laying queens but none of them were large colonies.

What I did 10th April last year 2009

Ringland. Honey Stripes

I opened up and put crystals in three hives at Ringland. That's all four hives there treated now.

I gave treatment to Honey Stripes colony in George's back garden. George's garden is quite small with a third taken up by a patio. The hive is sited to one side of the garden next to the patio. When bees die in George's garden they seem to choose the patio to die on and today there was a fair number of dead and dying bees on it. Some may have been deformed bees. Certainly one bee was being carried out of the hive as I inspected it. Maybe some were old bees from last year.

Honey Stripes was there and still marked red and laying but there must also be quite a high mite population in the hive too. There was also some chalk brood. There was no shortage of stores. Hopefully the crystals will knock out the mites that are there now and give the bees a bit of a chance and we can treat them again in a couple of weeks and knock out the new emerging mites.

Thymol

I put thymol crystals or a tray of Apiguard into every hive at the allotment today including the remaining hive on the student plot.

The hive on the student plot has been upsetting the plot holders who share the water tap. The bees have claimed that water I don't like to share it. I will have to move them soon.

I also treated and finished inspecting the bees at Old Costessy. I put supers on several of the hives there too.

As I put crystals into Tina's hive I took a quick look at the small cluster of bees there. Tina was still there and had started laying. Maybe I can give her little colony a boost by uniting some brood and bees from the student hive.

Postwick

I gave six hives at Postwick a sprinkling of thymol crystals today after buying a new tub. By the time I had finished (4pm) the weather had turned back to winter again. As soon as the sun shines again I will give all of my hives treatment now either as crystals or a tray of Apiguard.

First full inspections

The weather was warm enough (at last!) for me to start open up and inspect the bees.

What a mixed bag. From booming to nearly bust.

The hive on bricks at Old Costessy was booming and had brood on five frames in the brood box and had started laying in the super. It's the only hive so far that i've found to be on brood and a half. It's no longer on bricks as I've moved it a couple of feet sideways to station one where Holly's hive was.

Nearly bust was a hive in the allotment with an area of brood not much bigger than a fifty pence piece. The queen was there and marked green but what a sad little colony. They won't survive.

Tina, was still in her box and still marked yellow - but sadly there was no brood there and the few bees that are still there with her must be old and on on their last legs.

Most of the hives I inspected had old solid bases and most needed a clean up. I plan to replace them with new stainless steel open mesh floors in the next few weeks.

I gave a tray of Apiguard anti Varroa treatment to the hive at station three at Old Costessy and to the double brood box hive at the top of the row in Ringland. I didn't open up the other three hives at Ringland but they all had bees eating fondant.

All of the hives need treating with Apiguard now

Holly was dead in the middle of a cluster of bees in the brood box. I'm not sure why but fear it was the second spell of cold weather that finished them off. There was plenty of frames with stores in the brood box and a super with stores in above it and a block fondant that I did see them eating at one point. There wasn't much food around the cluster and fear that a large cluster had contracted to a smaller one in space where the stores had been eaten and they had to stay there too long. I don't know. There were certainly hives with thriving bees that seemed to have much less to eat than Holly's bees. Maybe she was already an old queen or the strain was just not hardy enough for the cold weather. I don't know.

Whatever, I still feel responsible for here demise as I do for all of the other colonies that didn't make it through the winter. I think I will try to build up bigger colonies and leave them with more of their own honey this year. Although a large colony can soon eat a lot of honey and will still need feeding. Those colonies that are on double brood boxes and were fed buckets of food early in the season seem to have done well. But even those are not as strong as the hive on bricks. It seems that some queens are just better than others.

New floors - box 5, Tina

I replaced the floor on box 5 today and moved the hive back a couple of feet onto a new level paving slab so that it no longer looks like a leaning tower. The floor was a bit of a mess and very wet on one side. No wonder the bees are on the other side.

I did the same with the hive next door (Tina's hive) replacing a solid floor with an open mesh floor.

The weather is gradually improving and I should soon be able to give the hives a full inspection.

Honey stripes moved

This is what Neville found when he went to sort out honey stripes.

I inspected the one brood he had left set up today. Honey stripes was still there.

George's bees didn't survive the winter so I have moved Honey Stripes to the safety of his back garden.

Honey Stripes hive attack

After two weeks away (last chance for a holiday until August) I had plenty of email to sort out that had accumulated whilst I was away. I was distressed to find one from three days ago informing me that honey stripes three brood box hive had been knocked over and that I was impossible to find in order to go and rescue the distressed bees.

On my immediate emergency visit I found that there was one box in place and a crown board with fondant on it and a roof in place. So Alex had found someone to help. There were bees in the brood box, although they were using a gap between crown board and brood box for an entrance. I'm now keen to inspect and see if Honey stripes is OK. If she is I will have to move her to somewhere safer ASAP.

The Germans came out

This is what the German Carniolian bees have been waiting for - a day that was warm enough for them to fly and find the snowdrops open to welcome them in. We even had some sun!

I spent most of the afternoon in Old Costessy taking to bits the hives where the bees had died and beginning to sort them out. I have lost bees at station 1, 2, 4 and 5 so far. Not a pleasant task

Old Costessy

It was just warm enough, although not sunny, for the bees from the strongest hives to be flying today. I can often check the hives without flying bees and see live bees by removing the roof where I can see the bees actively eating fondant.

The one hive left on the student's allotment had flying bees and a virtually untouched block of fondant.

There were three swarm queens at Old Costessy last year before the winter arrived. I've lost two of them so far. All losses hurt but the hardest loss today was to find no flying bees in Holly's hive. I have lost both Holly and Cherry in Old Costessy. There were live bees in Holly's hive the last time I visited and they had eaton three quarters of a block of fondant. I was expecting them to pull through. The last few weeks of cold weather have as bad if not worse than earlier in the winter.

Only one hive had live bees but was out of fondant - but there's no shortage of fondant at Old Costessy at the moment.