MAD DOGS AND a mad beekeeper out in the midday sun
“If I had my way I’d remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July.” (Roald Dahl).
FROM OUT OF THE DARKNESS SHE APPEARED!
Well, weather wise I would completely agree with Mr Dahl, January can be miserable and I don’t like the cold. But, this July, bee wise has been so stressful for me. Normally, the swarming season is over and you can sit back and relax a little knowing you have nice strong hives with good laying queens and plenty of summer blooms to keep them happy. You can cut back on the hive inspections as well which is nicer for the bees. Maybe once a fortnight rather than once a week. Every little helps as they say!
My first inspection in July was on the 2nd, and, for this blog, as ever, I’ve just looked at my notes.
H4. Note to self from the last inspection saying ‘Mark queen.’ Ok, marker in pocket I have a thorough look through the hive and no sign of the queen. Can’t see any eggs but there is brood. Hmmm. I decided to take a frame of eggs from H8 after I’d inspected it. Sometimes, if the weather is bad, and it had been raining a lot, the queen can stop laying for a bit, so taking eggs would be a preventative step. Give them eggs, if the queen is in there and hiding from me they wouldn’t do anything with them except raise them as their own. If she wasn’t in there they would raise a queen cell or two. On to the next hive.
H6. Notes said, (as above), ‘Mark queen.’ No Queen, no brood, no eggs. I am now reeling and feeling flummoxed by the apparent disappearance of two good queens and thinking my next book should be called “The bewildered beekeeper.’ So, as there were no eggs at all, and I really checked I took a frame with eggs from one of Challis’s hives, (she has two very strong hives), and popped them in straight away.
H5. Now this is the one with the laying worker(s). (See last months blog). I’d given them eggs from what I thought was one of my stronger hives in the vain hope they might raise a queen. Sadly, they hadn’t. The laying worker(s) was still in production and the hive was diminishing. I’m afraid I had to shake out all the bees, some way away from the hive, (again I refer you to last months blog for the gory details). I removed the hive completely from the apiary, thus the poor little nurse bees, among whom was a laying worker or workers, would not be able to return to the hive as their wings are not properly developed at this stage and the flying bees would have to negotiate their way into one of the other hives. Horrible thing to have to do but it was never going to get any better.
H8. Well I hardly dared to open it. Notes from the previous week were telling me ‘Normal hive check."‘ Judging from the previous two hives, the notes meant very little at this point! I braced myself for what I might find but I’m delighted to say all was well. Well thank the Lord for that! One out of four. Not good.
Now, I’m down to three hives. I can live with that, but I was feeling very disappointed, not just with the bees but myself. What had happened to my queens? I took a frame of eggs from H8 at the end of the inspection and put it in H4. It would take about 18 days for them to produce a queen so I thought if I have a peek in a weeks time I should see a queen cell or two in both hives. Fingers crossed.
The weather was heating up, and the really hot weather warning was on it’s way. Trust me, you don’t want to be in a bee suit when it’s 40º so I went up to have a quick peek in Hives 4 and 6.
H4. Queen, eggs, larvae and brood! Fantastic. Ok, they hadn’t needed the stolen frame of eggs. The queen had been there, she’d just gone on strike for a bit due to the inclement weather! A great sigh of relief.
H6. No queen. Deep sigh. Took another frame of eggs from H8. Don’t like to keep doing this as it decreases the colony. You really only do this if the hive from which you are taking the frame of eggs is strong and H8 is/was/is! Popped a clearer board underneath a couple of the supers as they were very heavy and full so they needed another. That would have meant that H6 would be 4 supers high which is too high for me to manipulate. With the clearer board on the bees would go down into the brood box and wouldn’t be able to get back up in to the supers. The theory being that when you back up to remove the supers, 24 hours later, they should be free of bees.
Play it forward 24 hours. The hot weather has arrived. That’s ok, I thought, I’ll only be a couple of minutes. Bee suit on, take supers off, put in back of car, bee suit off… boom!
Well that didn’t happen. Not a single bee had gone down. Both supers were still full of bees. What to do? Walked away from the hives and had a little think and a drink of water. Remember it’s 40º.
Light bulb moment. Something’s going on. Could the Queen have popped up into the supers during one of my inspections? It can happen. I decided to have a look at the supers. All the bees were very quiet. Well, that in itself was suspicious. They seemed quite happy with me messing about. Were they nurse bees looking after brood? Yes! There in the supers were eggs, larvae and brood. So, I did have a queen but not in the brood box. She couldn’t get back down because of the queen excluder!
Conclusion. I hadn’t lost two queens. One had gone on strike and the other had escaped into the super. Thinking of changing the title of the next book from ‘The Bewildered Beekeeper!’ to “The Stupid Beekeeper!’
Now what? It’s heating up by the second. Another walk away, another think, another drink of water and just a little on my hair as well to keep a cool head.
A normal beekeeper would have put the supers back. Walked away. Taken of their suit. Gone home and sat in the shade. But… I’m not a normal beekeeper. I now wanted to find the queen and put her back down in the brood box. I was on a mission. Well, I’m not going to go through it, it’s so complicated. There’s a video you can watch below, if you have enough hours in your day. It’s very garbled, because I’m hot, excited and a bit gosh-woggled. (Where does that word come from? I’ve just looked it up. It doesn’t exist. I’ve obviously made it up, but I like it so I’ll leave it there). The tale end of this story is. I found the queen., not in the supers, oh no, crawling out from the grass, underneath the shade of a tree. Oh yes believer. I found the queen. Second thoughts, watch the video you may just get the gist, but you will definitely need a cup of tea and a biscuit or two to get you through it or maybe a glass of wine and some peanuts if you’re reading this at night!
To end this section of queens, no queens, queens. On last inspection, (27th July), oh joy of joys, I have three healthy hives, each one has a laying queen, two as yet still to be marked, and all is good up at the apiary. And even more good news. The little swarm that Challis caught in June, which didn’t seem to be doing much at all has suddenly taken off and for want of a better expression in this heat, is on fire. She is laying, there is lots of brood and all is well. Let’s call that book, that’s never going to be written “The Mad Beekeeper!”
Let’s talk wax
Are you aware that a honeybee only produces wax between days 12 and 17 of her development? After that the wax glands, which are underneath her abdomen, start to degenerate. An older bee can, however, reactivate them if need be - for example - after a swam in order to build a new home.
She has 8 wax glands underneath her abdomen and it takes her 12 hours to produce 8 clear, colourless wax scales which are about 3mm wide x 0.1 mm thick. I know, crazy isn’t it? Honeybees fly about 150,000 miles and have to consume eight times as much honey, by mass, to produce 11b of wax. Think about that next time you think you’re paying over the top for a natural beeswax candle!
Although the wax they produce is as clear as glass, the colour of wax - as we know it - varies from a pale yellow to a yellowy/brown. This is because in order to use the wax to build comb they have to chew it, and when mixed with the enzymes in their saliva it becomes soft like clay. While building the comb it gets mixed with pollen oils and propolis from various plants which changes its colour.
The wax you see in the photograph, is a combination of the wax from H5 and wax I’ve accumulated so far during the season. Although it was an awful thing to have to do, (shake out all the bees,) I was left with eleven brood frames full of wax. No-one wants to waste all the honeybees hard work, especially baring in mind what you now know about how the honeybees produce wax. So, R set to and, using our wax extractor, he melted down all the wax we had which we then poured into old milk cartons, as you can see from the shape of the blocks in the picture. Once the wax has set, you can sell it on in any way you like, some people use it for cosmetics, some to make candles, but I swap mine for fresh foundation with a company called Thornes in Windsor. Think like a bee, waste not.
So, having done the horrible deed of shaking out the honeybees, at least I’m left feeling a little happier - in that all their hard work hasn’t been wasted. Their wax is recycled into something useful.
Are you in awe of the honeybees yet? I do hope so, they are after all such wonderful/incredible little creatures.
If I haven’t convinced you yet, I’ll try again next month!
WASP PREVENTION
Other than lovely weather, what else do we expect to see in July? Wasps. Here they come, in droves, just when we want to enjoy the sunshine and sit outside to have a drink and something to eat, to annoy us all. Well, that’s what we think they’re on the planet to do, annoy us. How many times have I been asked “what’s the point of wasps?”
Ok, I’ll tell you, although I have to be honest I’m not a fan as they are a nightmare around a beehive. They attack weak colonies by fighting the guards at the entrance and once inside they will kill all the honeybees, steal the honey and leave. They even bite bees in half and take the abdomen back to their colonies to feed their young. A hive that’s suffered a wasp attack is a sorry sight I can tell you. It has happened to me, only once, but once was enough. I’m not ashamed to admit, I cried when I saw the devastation left behind.
Putting that to one side for the moment here are some things maybe you didn’t know about the wasp. And I’d like to thank Jenny MacCllum from the Berkshire , Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife trust for the following link.
So what do I do now to protect my hives. Let me start by saying, for many years I put wasp traps all around my hives, and yes they were successful, they attracted lots of wasps and killed lots of wasps too. But a few things occurred to me. Was I unintentionally attracting the wasps to the hives? If I hadn’t put the traps up would the wasps have been so interested in the area? But most of all, when I looked at all the dead wasps, I felt sad, because although I wasn’t aware of all the good things wasps do I was aware of some of them. Also, it didn’t just attract wasps, it attracted other insects including moths who also died. So, now you know, having read the link above, more about them, unless you have a huge nest that poses a threat to you and your family during the summer months, perhaps you may be a little more tolerant of the them. Now, thanks to a fellow beekeeper and friend from The Chalfonts Beekeepers’ Society, Gerwyn, I now use a piece of perspex, with little holes drilled all the way along, which I lean up against the entrance at an angle and I secure it in place with good old gaffer tape! Wasps don’t like small corridors and this is exactly what this creates. It’s left open at each end, so the honeybees can come and go freely, but with the amount of comings and goings of the honeybees it makes it more difficult for the wasps to get in. It’s not just the guard bees they have to tackle. It’s also important to be extra careful when inspecting the hives not let any honey dribble outside of the hives which would draw the wasps to your apiary. Although having said that, my hives are in an apple and plum orchard, which during the season keeps the wasps busy on the fallen rotten fruit, but when that runs dry, they’ll be after my girls stores!
Well, I would say that’s it for July. So happy that I go in to August with three/four healthy hives, if I’m to count the swarm hive as mine. I know Challis prefers to work with just two hives and I do like four so that works out well.
Finally, I’m putting the final touches to this blog on Sunday 31st July… I always fly by the seat of my pants! The England Women’s football team play Germany in the final of the Euro’s. I have followed their journey these past few weeks and have felt so much admiration for them and proud of what they are achieving for women and Sport. My Great Aunt Clara was a suffragette and fought for women’s rights. She was arrested on 13 October 1908 outside the House of Commons after Emmeline Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst and Flora Drummond had been arrested for organising "the rush" on parliament. It was the day that parliament was debating the "Women's Enfranchisement Bill". 60,000 people attended the event and she was one of the 37 people arrested. She was sentenced to a month in prison. It has taken 114 years for womens sport to be recognised.
What has this to do with the honeybees? This they know…
“A circle of women may just be the most powerful force known to humanity. If you have one, embrace it. If you need one, seek it. If you find one, for the love of all that is good and holy, dive in. Hold on. Love it up. Get Naked. Let them see you. Let them hold you. Let your reluctant tears fall. Let yourself rise fierce and love gentle. You will be changed. The very fabric of your being will be altered by this, if you allow it. Please, please allow it.”
― Jeanette LeBlanc