GHOST BEES

As always with honeybees, one never knows what to expect so, as a beekeeper, I quickly learned to expect the unexpected! Imagine my surprise then - when I went up to my apiary only to see that one of my hives had mysterious white stripes on their thoraxes.

I stood and watched, in horror, these poor little bees flying in and out of one of my hives and my mind went into ‘disease’ mode. I’d never seen anything like it. I went at looked at the other hives and none of their flying bees appeared to have these markings.

I went back to the hive with the marked honeybees and opened it up and, there inside were hundreds of them milling around. I checked the floor to see if there were any dead ones and looked around the entrance to the hive… nothing. I checked Challises hive entrances and watched her bees flying in and out and, thank goodness, nothing. Huge relief, can you imagine my dismay if my bees had some life threatening disease that they’d spread around the apiary. God forbid.

Abandoning my hive inspection, in case I accidentally transferred the problem to another hive I went home and searched through my books about honeybee’s for what this could possibly be. I couldn’t find anything. So I googled ‘white stripe on honeybees’. The first thing to appear was TROGTROGBLOG and there it was… an article with the heading “Ghost Bees.”

Apparently this mark on the bees is as a result of their foraging on Himalayan Balsam. They love the nectar but not the pollen, so they scrape it off themselves but cannot reach their thoraxes!

This plant must be more common in Herefordshire than Buckinghamshire as I’ve never seen this before. So…. phew… no dreaded disease. Back to the apiary and normal hive inspections resumed!

Honeybees aside, having read up about Himalayan Balsam (Impatiens glandulifera), it’s not popular. According to the RHS Gardening advisory it is: a relative of the busy Lizzie, but reaches well over head height, and is a major weed problem, especially on riverbanks and waste land, but can also invade gardens. It grows rapidly and spreads quickly, smothering other vegetation as it goes. .

No-one seems to have kind word to say about it!

SECOND HONEY EXTRACTION

Having removed the Rapeseed honey from the hives very early on in the year I found myself, once again, with another harvest of honey ready to be taken off early in August. I was happy to do this as I always like to remove all the harvest when the blackberry flowers have been exhausted and the first blackberries begin to appear. This tip was given to me by a wonderful Beekeeper, Deborah Campbell. By doing it at this time, you are leaving the honeybees with plenty more to forage on for themselves before their self imposed lockdown in winter. My girls had delivered once again and the result was totally different to the Rapeseed honey.

I think I said in a previous blog, that we purchased an electric extractor and this was its’ first outing! Oh, and what joy it was too, not to have to do it manually. Each frame contained about 1800g (3.91b) of honey. So taking off the wax and residue left in the comb, I reckon about 3 jars of honey per frame. Times that by 11 - (11 frames per super) - is 33 jars per super. Now times that by 4 - (4 supers/one per hive) -. another 132 jars of honey. Clever girls.

Once I’ve spun the honey from the supers they are returned to the bees to clean out as there’s still some left in the comb and you’d be amazed at how good a job they do. They come back pristine clean and ready to be placed in a freezer for 48 hours to kill any diseases that may be present. I also return the cappings; these are made up of the fine layer of wax that I”ve carefully removed from the frame before spinning. I put them in a large feeder tray, as these too contain quite a bit of honey. If you look at the uncapped frame of honey below, which is now ready to be spun, you can still see little bits of wax cappings dotted around.

PROTECTING THE HONEYBEES

With August come the wasps. Now, I’m not a fan of wasps, probably because, like most people, when I think about a wasp I think of unnecessary aggressive behaviour. However, they do play an important role in our ecosystem. They are now recognised as major pollinators as they do transfer pollen while drinking the nectar from plants and, they eat an enormous amount of insects that eat our plants and crops. They also eat spiders, for those of you who don’t like spiders! Interestingly, wasps don’t eat the insects they kill, they feed them to their young. An adult wasp feeds on nectar and anything with sugar, hence they annoy you when you decide to have a meal outside! So that’s my little plug for the common wasp (Vespula Vulgaris).

Now back to the honeybee (Apis Mellifera). The common wasp is not a friend of the honeybee. And, in August, it’s a beekeepers job to keep them away from our hives. I line up wasp catchers - (sorry gardners) - behind my hives as they will go for the easy option of the jam before trying to enter the hives. The entrances to the hives are greatly reduced and I place a piece of perspex across the front to create a corridor for the honeybees to walk down which puts the wasps off from trying to get in. As you can imagine, once one wasp is in and it tells its mates then they all get in and there’s nothing you can do about it. It all happens very quickly. They kill all the bees, steal their honey and disappear, leaving you with about 50,000 dead bees on the floor of the hive. I know, because, this has happened to me and it really is a very sad and sorry sight.

AMELIE

Congratulations to Amelie, the young girl who I mentored for a year, prior to moving to Herefordshire. I may have mentioned her before, but she’s worth mentioning again! She was given a copy of my book, ‘Betsie Valentine And The Honeybees’, two years ago and as a result said she wanted to become a beekeeper. Her mother, Lorraine, got in touch and asked me if they could come and visit my apiary. Of course, the answer was yes! Suffice to say a beekeeper was born. When I moved to Herefordshire, I placed her in the wonderful hands of Sarah Peterson, who was my mentor. She has now passed her Bee Basics Exam and has her own hive in Amersham. Amelie, incidentally, is nine.

(Edward Townsend is the Chalfonts Beekeepers’ Society President and Steve Troll isChalfonts Beekeepers’ Education Secretary.)

Seriously, I’m as chuffed as mint balls because that’s what my book and my talks are all about. Encouraging people to take an interest in the honeybees.

Co-incidentally, Lorraine and Amelie came to stay for a long weekend during August and among lots of other things, of course, we visited my apiary!

Is there such a thing as double co-incidentally? If not I have just invented it •. Amelie appears at the end of the sequel to ‘Betsie Valentine And The Honeybees,’ which hopefully will be out in the Spring, and will play a major role in the third and final book!

If you haven’t bought a copy of Betsie Valentine, you can click on this link - Shop book - but not before you’ve finished this blog! Christmas is fast approaching and I’m sure you have nephews, nieces, sons, daughters, grandchildren who would love to learn about the honeybees! Failing that, it’s simply a lovely book to treat yourself to!

THE RETURN OF THE QUEEN

If you”re a regular reader of my blogs, you know I always like to end on a high note. What could be higher than Amelie you ask? A returning Queen I say! In my last blog, I told you the sorry tale of the huge swarm that got away. If you haven’t read it, go back have quick read and then come back here. I have plenty of time. I can wait!

So, now you can watch the video below! See you next month…