“In the spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours." - Mark Twain

Well that quote just about sums up this April! It’s been hard for the bees but, rest assured, when the sun has managed to outwit the chill in the air the bees have appeared on the flowers in the blink of an eye and I too can be seen in our local village stalking the bees - with my camera - for that ever elusive perfect picture of a honeybee.

Where I live in Herefordshire - we have field after field of rapeseed which is, it has to be said, a beautiful sight and brilliant for the bees but not so good for those who suffer from hayfever and trust me… I hear plenty of complaints about that. But the bees are loving it and I’ve just had to add super no. 3 to three of my hives and we’re just coming into May. Now this all sounds great. Lots of honey. But there is a catch. Isn’t there always? Where there’s pleasure there’s pain… as they say.

Let’s talk about Rapeseed

It’s a tricky one for the bees and beekeepers. On the one hand it’s great for the bees as it provides them with a rich source of pollen and nectar - just when they need it - in the early spring. On the other hand some farmers are still using bee-harming pesticides, (Neonicotinoids), on their oilseed rape crop. The farmers use it to control a variety of pests especially sap-feeding insects, such as aphids and root-feeding grubs, which damage their crops. However, this pesticide affects the bees ability to forage, navigate and reproduce. It had been banned but the ban was lifted even though the evidence is clear that Neonics is killing bees and changing their behaviour. Farmers need their crops to succeed so they kill off the insects that damage their crops and in return that kills off the insects that pollinate their crops year after year. The battle between science and nature continues. Let’s hope nature wins out in the end.

‘Non-chemical alternatives exist that could support farmers to cost-effectively move away from their near total reliance on pesticides. But you cannot patent a parasitic wasp. So their development is stalled and apart from some small exceptions, research ignores biological pest management. This means the agriculture industry is mostly one vast train trapped on a chemical track.’ (EXTRACT TAKEN FROM THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER).

As for the beekeepers, apart from the obvious distress of the effect it can have on our bees, the honey the bees produce can very quickly crystalise and make it nye on impossible to spin. You have to keep a close eye on the hives. With any other yield you can spin the honey as and when it’s convenient to you as, once it’s capped, it’s ready for consumption and will remain thus. With rapeseed honey it crystalizes very quickly and not only is it a “should I - shouldn’t I spin?’ time… it’s no use to the bees either once crystalized. (In the brood box it’s being used as soon as it’s stored).

Rapeseed honey is very distinctive in that it’s not runny honey. If you are quick, of course what you extract is runny hunny but it soon thickens up once in the jars and appears as a thick pale, creamy honey that has a lovely light nutty flavour. You can heat it very gently to turn it back into runny honey. If I want a runny honey, and some people who buy my honey prefer it runny, I place it on top of my aga so the temperature is but a tiny bit warm, it takes a few days, but this way it retains all the goodness.

handy tip

If you buy honey and it crystalizes in the jar it could be because it’s rapeseed honey or it could be that the beekeeper has taken it away from the bees before they’ve finished reducing the water content in the nectar, or maybe it’s being stored somewhere a little too cold. Crystalized honey has not gone off so don’t throw it away! If you don’t have an Aga place it in a warm oven no more than 54 degrees for 45 minutes or you can place the honey in its jar in a bowl and then pour a kettle of boiling water around it and it will soon loosen up! If you don’t want to bother to do the above and you can get it out of the jar it’s it will quickly dissolve on your hot toast or in your mint tea and is just as tasty!

Talking of adding supers, below are some images I took of me putting the first supers on the hives at the beginning of April. Very early I know, but even that seems a distant memory now I have three on each one.

1. Stored Super frames ready for putting in the supers.

2. Loading the stored super frames into the empty super boxes.

3. Super fully loaded and ready to go on top of the brood box.

4. Cleaning the queen excluder.

5. Bees in brood box.

6. Queen excluder in place to prevent queen laying eggs in the super and the drones eating the honey!

7. Replace the crown board and roof.

8. Hive with one super.

9. Wash sticky kit in stream if you have one!

SWARMS

For some the swarms have already started. The swarming season is, after all, from mid April through to July. It’s a tense time for beekeepers because we don’t like to lose our bees. So, again, as with the rapeseed, it’s a time when we have to keep a very close watch on the hives. Come to think of it, when don’t we have to keep a close eye on our hives? I’ve explained it before but I’ll briefly refresh your memories! I’m sure I’ll be talking/nay complaining about it a lot more in the coming months. It can be a bit of a nightmare if you have lots of hives.

Bees swarm because, either the queen is old and needs replacing or, the hive is overcrowded and they need more space. Perhaps the queen has died, that’s another reason. Whatever their reason, it’s the honeybees way of reproducing. Half the colony takes off with the old queen and looks for somewhere new to set up home and the other half stay and raise a new queen. If you see a swarm, let your local beekeeping association know, they will send someone to get it, that way the honeybees have a better chance of survival. Remember, though still wild at heart, the vast majority of honeybees are farmed.

I’ve just had a WhatsApp message from young Amelie’s mum… “The bees are hectic. We’ve had swarm cells coming out of our ears, we’ve just had to do an artificial swarm which has taken us 2.5 hours as we couldn’t find the queen!”

When you are a new beekeeper, swarms and artificial swarms are possibly the worst dread you have, apart from your bees dying of course… and that’s rare! So, thank you to Beespoke Info for this diagram “ARTIFICIAL SWARMS IN A NUTSHELL” It’s a very difficult thing to explain! http://beespoke.info/2014/05/20/artificial-swarm/artificalswarmnutshell/.

And, so it is, here we are again, another month gone and onward and upward we go into May. A busy time for the bees and beekeepers. I’ll leave you with this gratifying image of a frame of honeybees full of brood and stores and a lovely quote passed on to me yesterday by a gentleman called Malcolm Mullen. I’ll see you in a months time. Have a wonderful May.

“Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light...”

(Jonathan Swift... The Battle of the Books)