Category: Beekeeping Tips

The tragic loss of my first colony of bees.

Earlier this year, as soon as it was warm enough to open the hive, I was shocked to find on my first inspection of the season all the bees were DEAD.  They stood there as if frozen by time.  The emergency feed, fondant placed on top of the brood box, clearly didn’t work.  It was sad losing my first colony which I have been sharing with my followers since I first started this blog.

Why do colonies fail?

A good examination of the failed colony is important to try to identify this.  There are several reasons why a colony may fail including:

• Lack of food stores may be indicated by bees being found trying to feed.
• Weak colony with too few bees to support the colony.
• Bee disease eg if the front of the hive and frames have bee faeces that could indicate the bees were suffering from dysentry.  Dysentry can occur as a result of fermentation of stores over the winter.
• Mice may have become resident in the hive if there was no mouseguard in place.  You can see signs of this with gnawed hive parts and the smell of mouse urine.

Action plan for managing a dead colony

1. Close off the hive entrance until you have time to inspect it properly.
2. Inspect the frames carefully, ideally with an experienced beekeeper, to try to identify why the colony didn’t survive.
3. Ideally discard any used frames.   It is safer to start with fresh frames as you can be sure these are disease free.  It is possible to salvage and re-use old frames which saves money but takes considerable time:
   • Cut out the beam which holds down the foundation by removing the nails.
     

     When I attempted salvaging some of the old frames I found evidence of disease.  These frames were discarded.

   • Discard the drawn out foundation using a knife to cut this away from the sides and bottom of the frame.
   • Remove any excess wax with a hive tool.
   • Scorch the wood with a blow torch being careful not to burn the wood (it will go slightly darker brown in colour).
   • Then reassemble the frame with some new foundation.
4. Sterilise all the hive parts using a blow torch.  This can be purchased from any good DIY store.  It is essential to sterilise all the equipment to help prevent spread of any potential infection to your new colony.
5. Call your local beekeeping division to find out if any bees are available in the area or buy bees online.

Getting started with a new colony…
I called my local bee division and explained what had happened.  They were extremely helpful as they put me in contact with a beekeeper who had a colony to sell which I bought for just £60.  I brought the brood box full of bees home to make a new hive.

A delivery of new bees!

The only problem was that the brood box I bought was a commercial box and I needed to convert it to my national brood box (as all my hives are nationals).

Transferring bees from a commercial brood box into a new national brood box

1. Start with the commerical brood box at the bottom of the hive, and place on top of this your new empty national brood box (containing frames with foundation).
   

   The hive should now look like this with the commercial brood box at the bottom and the new national brood box sitting on top.

2. Leave the bees for a week to allow them to start occupying the new national brood box.
3. Make a new hive entrance using an adapted eke by cutting a small notch in the middle of one side.
   

   First trace a small hive entrance on the eke with pencil… …then use a saw to cut out the new entrance on the adapted eke.

4. Inspect the colony, find the queen and place her in the new national brood box (which is sitting above the old commercial brood box).
5. Between the two brood boxes place a queen excluder and the adapted eke above this.
6. The final hive from bottom to top will be: old commerical brood box (no longer has queen in it); queen excluder, specially adapted eke with entrance, new national brood box (containing the queen); crown board; roof.
7. Reinspect a week later and check that the queen is laying eggs in the new national brood box.
8. Then remove the adapted eke from the hive and place the new national brood box at the base of the hive so that it uses the normal hive entrance.  On top of this, place the queen excluder and then the old commericial brood box. At this point the hive from bottom to top will be: new national brood box; queen excluder; commercial brood box; crownboard; roof.
9. You have now successfully transferred the brood bees from a commercial box to a national box.  The commercial box will now act as a super and any honey can be harvested.  Alternatively the commercial box can be sold to a beekeeper using commercial boxes.

I started the process of transferring bees from the commercial brood box to a new national brood box.  When I got to step 4 however, I couldn’t locate the queen.  In fact there was no brood or eggs to be found!  I did however, see 2 queen cells which appeared to have hatched.

Two queen cells appeard to have hatched providing hope that there was at least one virgin queen in the hive.

So I closed the hive and reinspected after 10 days in the hope that a virgin queen had mated and would be laying eggs.

When I reinspected 10 days later, again there was no sign of eggs.  I then called my division about the situation and fortunately there was a swarm that had been collected into a nucleus hive.   I brought this home and left it for a few days.  When I inspected the nucleus hive I was relieved to find lots of eggs!

Eggs found in the nucleus hive.

Eggs found in the national frames of the new hive.

I then went back to my original hive and was surprised to find lots of eggs (so the virgin queen must have mated).  And that’s the story of how I lost my first colony and ended up with 2 new colonies!

An effective strategy against robbing bees

In early autumn, as I observed the hive entrance, I noticed something was wrong as there appeared to be large bees at the hive entrance literally attacking my bees trying to gain access to the hive.  I quickly established that these were robbing bees who were stealing honey from my hive.

Home made hive entrance reducer

To deal with this problem, I started by reducing the hive entrance size using my home made entrance reducer produced simply from a piece of cardboard and some tape.  This definitely helped, but it didn’t completely stop the robbing bees.

So I did some research into robbing bees and came across the most bizarre idea – using a wet towel!

Here’s how it worked… I simply soaked a small towel in water and rested one end on the hive roof so that it draped down the entrance leaving a small space between the towel and the hive front.

At this time, with the abundance of fruit around the garden, I noticed there were wasps hovering around the hive.  However, to my surprise, not a single wasp attempted to gain access to the hive via the new open sides (between the towel and hive front).  I think this simple idea might be an effective strategy not only for robbing bees but also another tool in the battle against wasps.

There’s lots of ways of harvesting and using the products from the hive so here we’ll explore what preparation you need to make for harvesting, how to harvest the honey itself and the process of jarring, labelling and distributing the honey so you can make the most of it…

1. Getting ready for honey extraction

What you need:

• Jars – you can estimate 30lb of honey for each full super to work out how many you need.
• Porter bee escapes – 2 for each hive
• Honey bucket – to collect the honey
• Knife – to uncap the capped honey cells
• Honey extractor (although you can harvest without an extractor)
• Bee brush – helpful but not essential (the horse hair one is gentler on the bees than the plastic version)

Harvesting without a honey extractor

Honey extractors are very expensive and it may not always be possible to get access to one from your local association.  Fortunately, even without a honey extractor, harvesting couldn’t be easier.

Option 1: you simply take off a frame of sealed honey and serve directly from the frame! This is great if you’re sharing with others.

Option 2: You can also take a frame and cut the comb into squares which can be put into plastic containers.

The advantage of both of these methods is that you retain the wax which has it’s own taste and health benefits.

Option 3: Use a muslin sheet and placed the honey comb in the sheet.  Then squeeze the honey out into jars.  This allows you to separate the honey from the wax.

Harvesting with a honey extractor

1. Start by removing the supers which area ready i.e. are full of honey cells which are capped.
2. Over a bucket and using a bread knife slice off the top layer wax capping (this is called uncapping) so that you reveal hundreds of open honey cells.
   
3. Place the uncapped supers into the extractor ensuring that they are placed opposite each other to balance the weight.
   
4. Start the extractor machine, which spins the supers like a centrifuge releasing the honey from the uncapped cells into the storage bucket.
   
5. Once a good volume of honey has been extracted, open the tap at the front of the hive and release the honey into a honey sieve (2 sieves placed on top of each other with the coarse sieve above the finer one) placed above a honey bucket.
   

   Its worth putting a cling film cover over the sieve at this stage to stop stray bees or wasps feeding on your honey
6. Allow the honey to settle for a couple of days.
7. The honey is now ready to be placed in jars.

Buy honey jars through your local association to benefit from bulk buying and save on postage costs.  It’s best to rinse the jars in warm water or place in a dishwasher to make sure they are completely clean.  The washed jars are then placed in a tray and heated at 100C for 5-10 minutes to ensure that every last drop of water has evaporated.  While they are being heated clean the inside of the lids with a damp cloth.  Remove the heated jars from the oven and allow to cool before pouring the honey into each jar using a measuring jug.  Ensure you close the lids tightly.

4. Labelling honey jars

You can buy professionally made labels, but these are very expensive so if you can it’s worth making your own.  The best thing it to buy some labels of the required size which you can put through your printer (ideally laser printer so the ink is waterproof).  There are certain legal requirements for honey labels if you plan to sell – you need to include these details:

1. Include the word ‘honey’ which can be prefixed with the type of honey or it’s origin.  eg. Essex Honey.
2. Weight in metric with figures at least 4mm high for 454g and 227g weights.  Imperial weights can also be shown in close proximity to the metric but must be less prominent.
3. Your name and address.
4. The country of origin eg. Produce of UK.  This must be in addition to your address.
5. Best before date (usually 2-5 years).  If the full date (day, month, year) given a lot number is not needed.  Otherwise this must be added.

5. Distributing and Selling your honey

Essex Honey Show 2013

• Give to family and friends.
• Sell it in local shops (eg farm shops or country parks) and at honey shows.
• Enjoy the taste yourself!

 

DrBeekeeper’s two pronged strategy for protecting a bee colony from wasp attack

A few weeks ago I noticed a few wasps roaming around my new hive and thought nothing of it until I soon found the wasps were actually entering my hive through the entrance.  The colony was small so the guard bees at the entrance were not strong enough to resist the wasps attacking bees.  I ignored this for a while, hoping it would sort itself out, only to find a few days later a major battle occurring between the bees and wasps at the hive entrance.

Observing the hive entrance at this time was like looking at a warfield.  The wasps were ferocious, literally flying at bees near the hive entrance, lifting them into the air and depositing them in the ground in front of hive.  At times, they would simply walk into the hive with no resistance from the bees whatsoever.  During this time, I had read about how wasps can actually dismember bees and destroy colonies.  I had worked hard to make this new colony – I couldn’t bear to allow the wasps to kill my bees!

So I developed a two pronged strategy using trial and error to tackle these two key problems:

1. The hive entrance is too wide for bees to defend
2. There are too many wasps roaming around the hive

PROBLEM 1: The hive entrance is too wide for bees to defend

SOLUTION 1:

Restrict the entrance size with any sort of barrier.  For cost saving, I simply used some strong duck tape and applied this on both sides of the entrance leaving a 1cm width gap in the centre to allow bees in an out (Experiment 1).

Experiment 1

However, although less wasps were entering, there were still significant numbers gaining entry to the hive.  So I then tried completely occluding the hive entrance with duck tape leaving a 6mm diameter hole (Experiment 2).  Although this allowed bees in and out, I noticed that the single bee entry actually made it hard for the guard bees to defend the hive when a wasp chose to enter.

Experiment 2

During this time I read that wasps don’t like to enter tubes so I filled the 6mm hole with a short cutting of a straw (Experiment 3).  This was hugely successful at ensuring no wasps entered the hive, but also had the undesired effect of stopping bees entering and leaving too!

Experiment 3

Finally, I came up with the final solution which really works.  As before, the hive entrance was occluded with duck tape, leaving a 6mm diameter hole in the centre.  Immediately in front of this hole, the metal cylindrical part of a garden hose tap connecter was placed and attached with duck tape.  This worked because it allows bees into and out of the hive whilst also allowing sufficient space within the metal cylinder to allow the bees to defend themselves against attack.

Garden hose tap connector

The final solution

PROBLEM 2: Too many wasps roaming around the hive

SOLUTION 2: 

I decided to create a wasp trap to help reduce the numbers of wasps and therefore reduce the risk of them attacking the colony.  The shop bought ones were expensive and I had read didn’t work very well.  So I made my own which only takes 5 minutes and here’s how…

Things got chaotic when I discovered lots of queen cells in the hive

After returning from holiday, I inspected the hive and couldn’t believe how many queen cells there were.  Something was clearly wrong, so I called me bee mentor who explained this could be a sign that the bees were preparing to swarm.

Sealed queen cell

Open queen cell from hatched queen

I was advised to split the hive so this is what I did…

Splitting an existing hive with no queen into two hives with queens

1. I inspected every frame on the existing hive and located the best looking queen cells.
2. I set up a new empty nucleus hive a few metres next to the existing hive.
3. From the existing hive, I transferred one brood frame with a good queen cell (you could see the larva inside as it hadn’t been sealed yet) into the nucleus hive.  On the frame that I transferred I destroyed all the other queen cells.
4. So the nucleus hive now contained one frame with the queen cell.  From the existing hive I also transferred a frame of stores and a frame of brood which I placed either side of the queen frame.  A dummy board was inserted.
5. Then I shook bees from a single frame from the existing hive into the nucleus hive to increase the population of the new colony (before returning the shook frame to the existing hive).
6. The nucleus hive was then closed and the front entrance stuffed with some grass.

Some grass stuffed into the entrance of the new nucleus hive

1. In the existing hive, I destroyed all the queen cells except 2 which were sealed (if I could see the larva at the unsealed stage I would have just kept one).

2-3 days later…

A branch was deliberately placed in front of the hive to force the bees to take an orientation flight

1. I placed a branch in front of the nucleus hive entrance so that when the entrance grass was removed, the bees saw a new environment which forced them to take an orientation flight (preventing them from returning to the existing hive).
2. I inspected both hives and could see that in the existing hive the 2 queen cells had both hatched (so the colony would have to select 1 queen which would subsequently go on a mating flight).  In the nucleus hive, the previously unsealed queen cell was now sealed so was developing as expected.