JUNE GAP

You will often hear a beekeeper refer to the June Gap and on countless occasions I’m asked what this is.

Since April the bees have been feasting on the much needed bountiful supplies of pollen and nectar to get their colonies under way after the winter months. Towards the end of June there’s a gap of about 2 weeks between the disappearance of the spring flowers and blossoms on the trees and hedgerows and the appearance of the summer blooms.

During this time Beekeepers usually take their first harvest of honey from the hives. This isn’t a problem as long as you ensure the bees have enough stores in their brood boxes to keep them going during this brief period. If there’s concern about the amount of stores, then the ‘supers’ can simply be left on.

The ‘supers’ are boxes, half the size of the brood boxes where the bees put the excess nectar/honey. We put a queen excluder between the brood box and ‘supers’ so that the worker bees can easily pass through the wire mesh and the queen and drones can’t. It prevents the queen from laying eggs among the excess stores and the drones from feasting on them - the stores - not the eggs!

However if - like me - you have been surrounded by 1,000 acres of rapeseed, then the chances are, the bees won’t have noticed the abundance of other spring offerings and concentrated solely on the rapeseed. This is no bad thing for the honeybees and beekeepers. It’s a great source of nectar and pollen that gives the bees the required boost and, because there’s so much of it, it guarantees a good harvest for the beekeeper. Double boom!

However, it also has its drawbacks for both beekeeper and honeybees. Unlike other varieties of nectar, rapeseed crystalizes very rapidly in the comb. This is fine for the honeybees - during the flow - as they’re bringing it back to their hives and using it before crystallisation takes place, but left too long in the ‘supers,’ it becomes rock hard and is of no use to the bees whatsoever and impossible for beekeepers to spin.

Given this scenario we beekeepers, with rapeseed honey in our hives, have no choice other than to remove the stores and get spinning quickly. Hence, the concern over the June gap. Having removed their stores we have to ensure they have enough other nectar in the brood boxes to get them through the gap and if we are in doubt we feed them sugar syrup to tide them over.

There are some that think there is no such thing as a June Gap, that it’s a beekeeping folklore to explain away the times when honey yields are low. In most cases I would agree but, as with mine this year, there’s definitely a gap. All hail the summer blooms!

QUEEN CELLS

This is not a great picture, and I’m not talking photographically speaking! It’s what every beekeeper dreads.

I was asked to look after a friends hives while she was away. The weather had been terrible and about two weeks had gone by without my being able to get into the hives to check them. The first sign of sunshine and I was as quick as a honeybee to herb garden full of borage. First hive, and oh what a site greeted me. No sign of a queen, no eggs to be seen just endless queen cells. The bees had lost their queen and I hadn’t been around to spot it. But, thank goodness, I got there in time, that is to say, before a worker bee had started laying. See Laying Worker below.

At this juncture I must explain a little about pheromones as they play such an important role in a beehive and the making of queen cells.

Pheromones • One of the most important ways of communication in a beehive is the use of pheromones, a chemical scent. Each hive has its own unique scent produced by the queen and subsequently spread around the hive by the worker bees. It ensures the worker bees will return only to their hive and no other. When the queen emerges from the hive, for her nuptial flight, she attracts the drones to her. Once she has mated, her scent changes and when she returns to the hive the bees know they no longer have a virgin queen. What does this mean? The presence of a fertile queen keeps the ovaries of the female worker bees from developing, thus making sure no other bee in the colony lays eggs. It also regulates the temperament of the bees and many other things besides. The hive is completely dependent on the queens scent. As soon as it starts to fade/change, the bees know they have a problem either with their queen or they’re about to swarm. The workers select between 10 and 20 eggs and start building queen cells around them.

Queen cells are much bigger than the worker and drone cells and hang from the comb as you can see in the picture above. Any egg could be a queen bee. What differentiates them is what they feed the larva. Each egg laid is fed royal jelly for the first three days, thereafter the larva is fed bee bread. The eggs chosen to be queens are fed nothing but royal jelly, a milky substance produced from glands at the top of the worker bee heads. Royal jelly is richer than the bee bread fed to the worker larvae and it’s what makes the queen larger and turns the larva’s reproductive system into a queen bee. The first queen to be born goes around and finds the other queen cells and she will sting her rivals to death. If one or some should survive they will fight to the bitter end. The last queen remaining will soon go out and mate with some drones. She returns to the hive and a new cycle in the colonies life begins. Clever aye?

So, I’ve got a hive without a queen and lots of queen cells. Either the queen has swarmed or died. I have no idea, I have no notes to go on. This is my friends hive. If a queen had been present I would have had to split the hive, thus preventing a swarm. See Split Hive below.

In this case, it’s a relief to see the queen cells as this means, whatever has happened, you’re in time to prevent a worker bee taking up the mantle of laying eggs - as mentioned above.

What do you do with all those queen cells? Well, some people walk away and leave it to the bees to sort themselves out,. Eventually, as explained above, the first queen out will fight for her position in the hive. I remove as many cells as I can and leave two. I leave one open cell, where I can see a live grub/soon to be queen inside, and one closed one. I do this just in case the queen in the closed cell has died. Controversial? Perhaps. But this way she only has to fight one other bee! Unless of course I miss a queen cell.

You can offer queen cells up to a fellow beekeepers if you know they are looking for a queen for their hive. Otherwise, I’m afraid, the remaining cells are discarded. Cruel? Is it more cruel than the queen stinging them to death? Either way the poor little virgin queens are on a hiding to nowhere.

As you can see from the images above, lots of honeybees but sadly no queen and no eggs. If you look closely at picture 5 you can see the queen cells peeking out among the honeybees. I put a drawing pin on the frame with queen cells so I knew exactly where to look, to see if she’d hatched when I next went into the hive. Having said that I always write it down in my notes as well, but just in case you forget your notes it’s a quick and clear marker!

Well, I’m happy to say that this hive has a happy ending. On next inspection, a new queen was in residence and laying eggs and the brood frames were looking healthy again.

Unlike one of my hives. Oh woe is me. To my horror and surprise one of my hives has a laying worker (or two).

LAYING WORKER

How do you know you have a laying worker? The hive is queenless. Very little or no worker brood, (previously laid by the missing queen), and lots of sporadic drone brood. (Drone brood is slightly bigger than worker brood. It stands proud of the worker brood). Two or three eggs in one cell is another sign. The queen only lays one egg per cell and it’s perfectly placed in the middle. A laying worker will sometimes lay two or three eggs and they are all over the place. What does a laying worker mean? Trouble. It means your queen has gone and the remaining eggs were too old to turn into queen cells. Without the queens’ pheromones, as explained above, to keep the worker bees’ ovaries dormant, a worker bee will start to lay. Of course, she hasn’t mated with any drones so her eggs are unfertilized and therefore she only lays drone eggs. A beehive cannot survive with laying worker bees. What should you do? You can’t simply introduce a new queen, they will kill her. They think, because a worker is laying, they have a queen. Here are a few options that also carry warnings.

Unite with a strong queen right colony. This can be risky. It really does have to be a strong colony. If you unite with a weak colony they will kill the queen and then your left with more bees with a laying worker. There is still a risk that they will kill the existing queen in a strong colony but it is much less. I once took the risk and it worked - phew - but it was a tense few days, I can tell you, before I went to have a look. The relief when I opened up the hive at the next inspection and saw the queen was still there!

Shake them out and introduce a new queen. With this method you take the offending hive as far away as you can from their original site, certainly no less than 100 metres. Shake off ALL the bees, every single one of them and return the hive to its original place. The theory being that laying workers are young bees and their wings haven’t formed properly so they won’t be able to get back to the hive. However the flying bees will go back to the hive and the new queen is introduced in a cage with fondant icing blocking her way out. The flying bees will slowly chew their way through the fondant icing and by the time they get to her they will be used to her pheromone. However, sometimes, especially when there are quite a few laying workers, and let’s face it, not one of them is going to put their antennae up and admit its them, some of them can fly and they return to the hive and start laying again before the new queen gets out. Bye-bye queen.

Shake them out and leave them. Again, as above, take the brood box as far away as you can (and supers if there are any on there) and shake off the bees and leave it at that. The flying bees will make their way back, see that the hive is gone and then after some time of confusion they will make their way into the other hives. They have gifts of nectar and pollen etc and ultimately will be accepted.

Add frames of open brood. This only works if you have quite a few strong hives. You take a frame of open brood from another hive and pop it in with the laying worker hive. You do this every few days until the bees pick up the pheromone from the open brood frames which will start to suppress the laying workers desire to lay. Eventually the laying worker will stop and the bees will start to raise a queen from the stolen eggs. This is all very well, but it weakens your other colonies as your stealing their brood. I think you need a lot of hives to do this method. I haven’t tried it.

Finally, I haven’t done this yet but I read about it from a wonderful website - The Apiarist. https://www.theapiarist.org/ This man is a genius and master of beekeeping. His blogs are brilliant. I have friends who are Master beekeepers, done their Husbandries and age old beekeepers and we all love his website and blogs and refer to them when we can’t find an answer among ourselves. Here’s his alternative to the above suggestions. I haven’t tried it yet but I will when I next go up to my hive if the queen hasn’t made it. Oh… and his ‘disclaimer’ has been noted!

“if you combine shaking the bees out with the addition of a frame of eggs and young larvae there’s a reasonable to good chance they’ll recognise their queenlessness and start drawing out emergency queen cells (QC’s). Once that’s been achieved you’re in a much better position to rescue the colony.” https://www.theapiarist.org/dealing-with-dlws/

I’ll let you know the outcome in July’s blog!

Let’s talk about happier things. Oooo yes please let’s!

SPLIT HIVE

A common occurrence at this time of year.

You’ve gone up to your hives. No sign of a swarm anywhere around the apiary and you’re smiling. You open up the hive and there they are… queen cells! But unlike the aforementioned, the queen is in residence. Hooray! Well sort of, there’s work to be done here but, you’ve avoided a swarm getting away without you noticing. What do you do? You split the hive, tricking the bees into thinking they have swarmed. Pay attention, it sounds complicated but it’s not. I will explain as best I can!

You will need:

1. A floor.

2. Brood box filled with fresh foundation. If you have drawn comb then that makes it easier for the bees.

3. Queen excluder.

4. Crown board.

5. Roof.

What you now must do::

1. Remove lid and supers from the original hive with queen cells in.

2. Move the original hive to a new position, no less than three feet away from its original site.

3. Put new hive on the original site with complete set of new foundation.

4. Remove 3 of the new frames and put to one side.

5. Remove queen excluder from original hive and find frame with queen on.

6. Take frame with the queen on, check for queen cells and remove any you see and put the frame in to the new hive.

7. Take a frame of stores from the original hive and put in the new hive together with a frame of eggs and brood and accompanying bees.

   
   

THE QUEEN IS NOW BACK IN THE ORIGINAL POSITION IN A NEW HIVE .

Next:

1. Carry out inspection of the old hive in its new position.

2. Put the new frames you had put to one side in to the brood box - not in the place of the missing frames but at the front or back of the hive.

3. Remove all queen cells except for a couple. I leave one open and one closed.

4. Put the queen excluder back on followed by the crown board, empty super frame and feed with sugar syrup!

5. Go to new hive with old queen and undrawn foundation and put on the queen excluder, the supers, crown board and lid.

   
   

   THE BEES IN THE OLD HIVE THINK THEY HAVE SWARMED BECAUSE THE QUEEN HAS GONE AND THERE ARE FEWER BEES!

   THE BEES IN THE NEW HIVE HAVE LESS BEES AND NEW FOUNDATION AND THEY THINK THEY HAVE SWARMED!

   THE PURPOSE OF MOVING THE OLD HIVE IS SO THE FLYING BEES WILL GO BACK TO THE NEW HIVE WITH THE OLD QUEEN.

VOILA!

I would like to thank The Chalfonts Beekeepers’ Society, (my old and very much missed club), for the above information which I keep with my notes at all times! If you’re a new beekeeper, you would do well to copy it and keep it with your notes. It’s accurate and makes it so much easier and you can follow it step by step!

Now you wait for the new queen to be born, go on her nuptial flight, return and start laying eggs. This will take about 3 weeks, sometimes a little longer. You have to be patient. It’s a game of cat and mouse. You have to keep an eye on the hive, just in case she’s been killed on her way back from mating. If you leave it too long and something has happened to her… you guessed it, if she’s not returned for one reason or another and you haven’t spotted it… enter the laying worker!

I’ve had to split two of my hives - well what can you expect? It is June after all and May and June is the swarming season. Below are some pictures of one of my newly marked queens and her lovely healthy brood.

Lots of good things going on now in this blog… phew!

Next on the agenda…

DRONES

Drones are fertile male honeybees. They are larger than the worker bees and don’t have stingers. They have a bad reputation for being lazy. They don’t go out foraging for food. They don’t build comb, they don’t clean or look after the other bees. What do they do? Well, they poddle around the hive drinking nectar! Ah, but like every honeybee in a colony they are vital to its survival. They do exactly what nature intended for them. About 10 - 12 days after they are born they become sexually mature. As they reach maturity they leave the hive a few times on orientation flights, i.e., to learn where their hives are located. They then choose a sunny day, normally in the afternoon and leave to mate with the queen. They gather in a congregation of about 100 hopeful drones. They don’t go far, whereas a queen will fly up to 3 miles to mate, this she will do so she doesn’t mate with her brothers. (Think about it… I had to). The drones compete with each other to get near the queen, there is no fighting involved, the ones who can fly closest to her are the ones who successfully mate. Those that do, I’m afraid, die and those that don’t return to their hive or another one, (unlike the workers, they have no loyalty to their queen!). They rest for a while and then go out again in search of another queen. The queen will mate with about 12 drones, in all, from different colonies. That’s really all they do. They sometimes help cool the hive down with their wings when things get a bit hot inside and of course, they are a sure sign to a beekeeper, that when the drones appear it’s the start of the swarming season!

Why do I mention this? See below.

On another inspection of my hives, I saw from my notes, in one of my hives, I had to look for an open queen cell or a new queen and eggs. The colony had swarmed and I’d the caught the swarm, (see last month’s blog). I found an open queen cell. There was no sign of the queen or eggs but the bees were calm, so perhaps she could be out on her nuptial flight. No panic, I’ll be back in a week, weather permitting, and see what’s going on. I closed up the hive, made a note of what to look out for, ie., eggs and a queen, during the next inspection and went over to the hive next door. What do I spy with my little eye? Lots of flying drones. Aha moment! My guess was the queen next door was indeed on her nuptial flight and the drones to-ing and fro-ing in the other hive were in search of her!

The following week I was right; I didn’t see the queen but there were eggs! That was good enough for me, I made a note to mark her the following week.

Always take your notes up to the apiary. With the best will in the world you won’t remember what on earth was going on the week before in your hives and even if you only have one hive you’d struggle to remember!

POLLEN

So much is talked about nectar but what about the pollen? We know what happens to the pollen during the collection process, pollination etc., and how - as a planet - we benefit from this but what do the bees gain from collecting pollen. After all, as I always say, everything the honeybee does is to ensure the survival of the next generation, we are mere beneficiaries of all their hard work.

When a honeybee lands on a flower the pollen is attracted to the hairs on her head and body. Using her antennae and brushes on her front legs, she mixes the pollen with her saliva and some nectar she carries in her honey tummy, (crop). She then packs it tightly on to her back legs and carries it back to the hive where she puts it in to cells nearest to the brood and then leaves the hive to get some more. Meanwhile, a housebee will come along and, using her head, press the pollen firmly down into the base of the cell while adding to it more saliva, (which contains enzymes), and nectar. Throughout the day other bees will come in with their pollen, from various sources, and the same procedure continues. When the cells are full, they cover the pollen with a fine layer of nectar which is why it’s shiny in appearance. The enzymes from their saliva mix with the pollen, starts a fermentation process that breaks it down and makes it digestable. This whole process converts raw pollen, which they can’t digest, into a substance we call bee bread, that they store and use as a future source of food for the bees. Pollen is a powerful source of protein, without which, a hive would not survive.

MEET JOE

Let’s end this very long blog on a real high! Earlier this week I went to the Ludlow & District Beekeepers Association’s AGM. It was to be the first time I’d meet my fellow beekeepers at my new club. All previous ones had been via Zoom. The meeting was short and sweet, for an AGM, and afterwards we were encouraged to mix and mingle with fellow members. Not knowing anyone … I attached myself to a table that looked friendly and indeed it was! At some point during the various conversations, I was asked what I did for a living other than beekeeping. Is there anything else? I told them that I’m a speaker; I give talks about the honeybees to anyone who will listen and that I’d written a couple of children’s books about the honeybees.

The lovely lady sitting next to me, Grace, told me about a wonderful book that her son had been sent by his Aunt, all about honeybees and how much he loves it. I asked what it was called and, yes, you’ve guessed it… “Betsie Valentine And The Honeybees”. How proud was I? She said he’d be ‘made up’ to know she’d met me and would I sign the copy of the book for him! Fame at last! She chatted away about Joe and how much he loves the honeybees so I thought I would share his story. After all, encouraging youngsters to be involved with the honeybees, as well as their parents, is what all of THIS is all about!

Joe is nearly 8 years old. By the time you read this he probably is 8. His birthday is 3rd July! He’s been helping his mother, at her apiary, since 2020. He did a school project called “What Happens In A Hive” and won the Science Fair for Key Stage 2. In April this year he got his own hive and is now waiting for his first honey harvest which he’s going to call “Joe’s Bee Juice”

Here is what Joe thinks about the honeybees and beekeeping in his own words

One of the pictures of Joe with Betsie Valentine And The Honeybees was staged…. can you guess which one? A free signed copy of the book to the first right answer!

How fantastic to know young children are getting involved.

Well, that’s it for June. I’ve enjoyed looking back at the month. I always wonder when I sit down to do this blog, what I’m going to say and then I look at my notes and realise, with the honeybees, there’s always so much to say!

Have a wonderful July and I look forward to reminiscing with you all again in a few weeks time. Meanwhile, to all beekeepers out there, especially new beekeepers, the wasps are around and about and you can bet your bottom dollar it won’t be long before they’ll be around and about your hives so take all the precautions you can!