The crazy nectar flow continues

This is the first time since I began beekeeping seven years ago that I have experienced such a huge nectar flow for such a sustained period of time. When I am out and about gardening there is still moisture in the soil and weeding is not difficult. This is unusual for me as a gardener at this time of year and is a clear indication that plants can get hold of moisture and express nectar. Coupled with high temperatures this is leading to a huge nectar flow.

What is the consequence for our bees? On opening up hives yesterday I have discovered that the bees are chucking nectar into the brood nest. For me this is of concern because I know that if this continues that is going to trigger swarming. Why wouldn't a hive want to divide given the perfect ideal conditions that we have got at the moment? I have already lost a swarm from a really good box of bees and I am just kicking myself. They were congested and I should have known that that was the case. I was also silly in that I left them for one week without checking. A mistake given how strong a hive they were.

So what can you do? As usual you need to respect the adage that the brood box is for brood. Remove frames of stores and place foundation into the brood box. On a hive that is not too strong, place the foundation at the edge of the brood nest. On a hive that is very strong, place the foundation into the brood nest. Remember this is a sin but given the current conditions we had all better sin than not. Then you need to check your supers and, of course, give the bees  a super with foundation so that they can be kept busy drawing out wax.

I refer you all to Willy Shaw's article about how to renew comb. This article is in the current BBKA magazine. On a strong hive he is removing four frames of stores and splitting the brood nest four times. In a week, given the current conditions, a strong hive will draw out those four frames of foundation (Lesley and I have done that on her strong hive and they certainly drew out the foundation no problem. In fact they drew out four frames of foundation placed in the brood nest and a whole super of foundation placed just above the brood box). And that should take their minds off swarming for the week. The other thing that you can do is to extract the honey you have on the hive. This, of course, will give the bees more space. However if these conditions continue, the challenge of  (a) how to prevent them swarming and (b) making sure that they are not congested, is going to continue. Good luck and try not to lose a swarm as I did, particularly as she was my best queen.

Malcolm Wilkie 6th July 2017

'The current crazy nectar flow'

Just a word of warning to everybody with a big prosperous colony. Evidently a lot of nectar has been going into large hives and this has been causing a problem. Do make sure that your bees have enough space. You may have to do as Helen has done below and add a frame of foundation into your brood box

Here is Helen's message sent to me this morning.

On checking my brood boxes yesterday, they were all full of nectar, so I removed a frame and gave them all a frame of foundation to draw out. Nectar everywhere!!! Queen cells also in amongst the nectar, brood pattern a mess as they have filled every vacant cell with nectar!!! I did say there was a massive nectar flow on. I think I got it wrong last week when I realised there was a crazy nectar flow I should have given the bees more to do, i.e. Given them frames to draw out.

Remember bees need a lot of space to process nectar and convert it into honey. Being a good beekeeper involves trying to be aware of what is going on in the environment and what the conditions are like and then responding accordingly. These high temperatures have made the clover express nectar(temperatures need to be above 70degrees Fahrenheit) and the bees have been collecting this in quantity. Extremely high temperatures make plants express nectar like crazy as long as there is moisture in the soil ; that is currently the case.

Do remember Margaret Ginman's advice : 'Keep your bees busy and then that will take their minds off swarming'. She says that if you treat your bees like a bunch of adolescent boy teenagers, then you won't go far wrong. A responsible parent would never leave a bunch of young teenage boys with nothing to do, because if they did so there would be trouble. In other words make sure you give your bees something to do because, just like teenage boys, if they have nothing to do then at best you will have a sticky mess, and at worst you will have to cope with swarming.

So that means putting in a frame of foundation into the brood box, and adding supers, preferably with foundation in them. If your bees are busy making wax, they won't want to swarm. And making wax will use up some of the excess nectar they are finding in the environment during this current nectar flow. If today you are one of the people where there is a heavy downpour, watch out as that will make the nectar flow even more.

Malcolm Wilkie 22nd June

'Brood boxes are meant for brood'

Now this statement might appear blindingly obvious but as a beekeeper it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the brood box is meant for brood. And I have just seen so many hives where there is no room for a queen to expand at all and the beekeeper just seems to be unaware of that fact.

We encourage beekeepers to inspect their colonies once a week during May and June which are the prime months for swarming. Each one of you should be asking themselves about whether a queen has enough space to lay eggs every time they go into a colony. Well it is all fine and well to ask yourself the question, but what are you in fact doing to give her enough space? Here are some ideas which might help.

1. Is there some empty drawn comb that could be moved next to the brood nest?

2. Is there a frame of pollen near the brood nest that could either be removed from the hive or moved next to the hive wall? Some beekeepers talk about a pollen barrier. The Queen finds it difficult to cross the pollen barrier and expand her brood nest, and you as a beekeeper can help by moving it out the way or removing it completely.

(If you find a pollen barrier in your hive it is easy to recognise; pollens of different colour covered by honey. The frame on which you find  the pollens looks sticky and is gummed up. This is because  the bees have made bee bread which is their way of storing the pollen and keeping it fresh. However what it is important to bear in mind about such a frame is that it is nigh impossible for a queen to put eggs into it. So do something about it.)

3. Should you add a frame of fresh foundation? This should be placed next to the brood nest or if you have an extremely prosperous colony you can commit the  ultimate sin and split the brood nest with your frame of foundation. Only do this if they are really strong.

4. Perhaps your scenario is very different. Perhaps you have split a colony and they are desperately trying to expand but just don't seem to be getting on very well. Are you using a dummy board, preferably made from cellotex? Just give them one frame of foundation to work on at a time. Put your cellotex dummy board next to that piece of foundation. And then I would also feed such a small colony. However don't make the mistake of feeding continually because they will just fill every frame with sugar syrup and then the Queen will have nowhere to lay. Remember a small colony does not have enough young bees to draw out much wax so this is going to have to be a gradual process. Often with a small unit what you would like them to do in one week is realistically going to take them two. If you can get your head around the fact that bees are programmed to take advantage of a nectar flow and so will collect your sugar syrup and stuff it anywhere they can, even putting the queen off lay, then you will have grasped that too much feeding in one go may be counter productive. It is also jolly stressful for a small unit that has not yet reached the tipping point needed to easily expand, if you are continually pouring sugar syrup all over them. For a colony that needs to expand, feed and then don't feed, and then feed again and then don't feed, and then feed once again. Work put in by you in June will pay dividends in September. The longer you neglect supporting a weak colony, the more difficult it will be for them to grow into the box you have provided for them. Of course if you have drawn comb, by all means use that but beginners don't usually have the luxury of drawn comb.

Space in the brood box is fundamental. Congestion in the brood box can lead to swarming. And as beginners are rapidly finding out once the bees have decided to swarm there is  nothing you can do about it except manage that swarming instinct. Just remember, please, a brood box is for brood.

Malcolm Wilkie 15th June

Queen cells

Queen cells usually only appear in your beehive once a year. So sometimes one forgets what one should be looking for.

If the bees are thinking of dividing then at some point you will find a small C shaped larva in one of the Queen cups. My bees seem to enjoy tormenting me and the presence of queen cups is their way of saying "we may be going or we may not be going, it's up to you to find out ".

So you need to be able to recognise when a queen cup is starting to be used. You should be able to recognise a young larva and a greasy white substance in the bottom of a queen cup, which indicates that a queen cell is being started. The larva may only be a very small C shape. If you wear reading glasses, then you definitely need to be wearing them when you look inside this queen cup. It doesn't matter if you slightly (but I do mean slightly) damage the edge of the queen cup  in order to get a better look. In fact it would not even matter if you slightly damaged the edge of an open queen cell about to be sealed.  Bees will usually repair any damage that you do to the outer edge of a queen cell. So be brave and have a good look.

If the sides of the queen cup have not been drawn down to any extent, then the larva is probably only two days old. If you were to go back in three days’ time, however, the bees would have drawn out that queen cup into a queen cell and it would be sealed. The sides of the cell would be much longer. If the tip of the cell is becoming pointed, then the next day that cell will be sealed The process is an extremely rapid one. If you see a charged Queen cell then you probably need to divide the box today and not tomorrow.

If you  artificially divide your box, then the queen cells will be slightly different in that they will be emergency cells. A box that has been artificially divided will have sealed queen cells in two days. I always recommend that you go in three days after you have artificially divided a box and cut out all sealed Queens cells. At this moment you need to mark a chosen open queen cell with a drawing pin on top of the frame. You will then have to go back in another five days’ time and cut out all but your chosen cell. If your chosen cell is no longer there, then you need to choose what looks like a good sealed queen cell. That is to say a peanut shaped medium sized cell, preferably in the middle of a frame where there is no danger of it being crushed when you put the frames back together again. I would never choose a cell that was on its own on a frame. If there are three or four cells  on a frame, then the chances are that all cells have been regularly fed by young bees. And that is what you want! Remember a queen cell is visited by young bees possibly 100 times an hour. It is this constant feeding of the larva which changes it from being an ordinary worker into being a queen larva.

A word of warning. Beekeepers do not seem to understand about Queen cells. Before capping they are fairly robust. Two or three days before hatching they are also fairly robust. However in the two days after they have been sealed it is very easy to damage them. The reason for this is that initially once the Queen cell has been sealed the larva continues to feed off the royal jelly at the top of the cell. Then at some point during those two days the larva turns round in the cell and spins its cocoon. The slightest jolt will cause a queen larva to detach from the royal jelly at the top of the cell and that causes it's death. If you follow my recommended timings above, the manipulation when you destroy queen cells should be taking place when your chosen larva has already spun its cocoon and is now a pupa. This means it will be more resistant if you do anything to jolt the frame on which it is situated.

Lesley had this happen to her bees. The day chosen for selecting Queen cells was only two days after they had been capped by the bees. The new frames in that box were shiny and slippy and  the frame with her chosen queen cell slipped slightly. Initially I did not think anything of this. However as I always try and calculate when a queen cell is about to hatch we went back and looked on the 16th and then the 17th day (in fact it was more rapid than that because the bees choose a two day old larva so it was only 11 days after we had artificially split them). I was worried because the queen cells looked perfect and there was no discolouring of the tip. The bees of course were interested in them and were clustering over the cell even though the contents were dead.

When a queen cell is about to hatch it turns a darker brown at the tip. This was not happening. So alarm bells started to ring and I decided to cut open the queen cell. There was a dead larva inside.

Annoying and frustrating. What are the choices? We could have combined our old queen, who was in a nucleus box, back into the hive. We knew the bees could not possibly make another queen cell because there were no eggs or larvae young enough to be converted into Queens.

However not much time had passed (we had lost about two weeks) and so this is what we did. With a round pastry cutter we cut out a section of hatching brood from the now queenless box. This we got rid of. We then went into the nucleus box were the old queen was laying and we found a small area of eggs. With the aforementioned pastry cutter we then cut out those eggs. These were then placed into the queenless box in the exact position where we had removed a section of hatching brood. The bees will then make more queen cells and we will have to go back and choose one next weekend.

Beginners please take note. It is so important to have two hives because when a scenario like this occurs you can rectify your error. The earlier you rectify the error the better. If this box of bees were to be left queenless for six weeks or more without brood, then they would refuse to make Queen cells. Always check if a queen cell has hatched, and to do that you need to carefully calculate when a queen is about to emerge.

People lament and tell me that the bees have torn down the Queen cell that they ( the beekeeper) left them. I think it is highly probable that the Queen cell in question was dead and the bees realised and so just removed it. This does not happen for a while. Hence the importance of checking on the 16th and 17th day. Hope the above helps and doesn't cause more confusion.

Malcolm Wilkie 8th June 2017

Queenright or Queenless? (Article sent to the improvers group last year)

A lot of Beekeepers have colonies at present that have been split or have swarmed. A new Queen takes at least three weeks to come into lay and this is a tense time for the beekeeper and for the bees. Many beginners assume they have no Queen and quite often go and purchase one needlessly from a beefarmer.
If you know that your box has swarmed, you will roughly know when this happened and so will know when you can start to look for eggs and young larvae. i.e.three weeks after your Virgin has hatched.
A box that has swarmed or has been split and is raising a virgin, should initially be left well alone. You don't want to confuse a virgin returning from a mating flight. If she gets lost due to your 'fiddling', you will then have a Queenless colony. However once those three weeks have passed you do need to start to look.
If you see eggs and larvae, then all is well and you will then need to assess the brood pattern. However more often than not you will find no eggs or larvae. This does not mean that your colony is Queenless, however.This is the moment when you need to carefully inspect the brood frames. Blow or smoke the bees out of the way.
A Queenright colony will be preparing a brood nest for their new Queen and everything is alright if you see an area of cells on a couple of frames that have been cleaned out and polished in readiness for the new Queen to start laying. There will probably be pollen above these cells and stores in the corner of the fames. In other words the bees are organising themselves and it is order that you will see within your hive. But if you do not see this order after three weeks and and you can still see nectar chucked randomly into cells, then there may well be a problem and you should give them a frame of eggs from your other hive. If they raise Queen cells, then evidently they were Queenless. If they seal the brood without creating Queen cells, then you may have a virgin or you may have cussed bees who have decided they no longer want a Queen.
If you get into this scenario, and still after several weeks you can find nothing, then your only hope is to try and get hold of a failing old Queen from someone and come and ask me how to introduce her. She will have low pheromone levels and could possibly be accepted by your Queenless colony. Once the old lady starts laying it will then be possible to bump her off and introduce a Queen. A scenario to be avoided if at all possible as it is difficult to bring back a colony from the brink.