APRIL SHOWERS WASH OUT A MONTHS BLOG!

April and May have become one because April this year was pretty uneventful. The rain was relentless and the honeybees stayed in their hives. It rained, then it rained more and just when you though it might stop… boom… it rained again! So, not much was going on up at the apiary. However, for one day the sun came out and on that day, it just so happened, I had agreed to be interviewed for the morning show with Herefordshire and Worcester Radio as they were spending the week exploring and celebrating all things related to nature. As I said, the sun did come out, and the lovely guy who came along, in his mobile radio van, was a great sport, donned a bee suit and came up to the apiary to do the interview there. One could say “it was meant to bee.!” Sorry about that It was supposed to be aired on the morning show, but they aired it quite a bit throughout the day which was nice. My husband said he heard it mid morning and It took me by surprise when I was driving back later that afternoon and I heard my dulcet tones ringing out in the sunshine!

Onward and upward to the month of May.

RAPESEED HONEY

In the area of Herefordshire where live, I have had to get used to Rapeseed being the first port of call for my honeybees. It’s not a bad thing at all, as long as you know what you’re doing. The queen is in full swing and the brood needs feeding and it’s a brilliant source of nectar and pollen for the hive to get underway after the harsh winter months. However, when the rapeseed flowers start to die at the end of May, we beekeepers have to whip off the supers, where the bees store their honey, asap before it goes hard, so hard it’s impossible to spin. Now, as we all know nature is a wonderful thing. Somehow the honeybees know that it will go hard so they use the nectar as they go and make the most of the vast quantities of pollen, often storing, unusually for honeybees, more than they need. Perhaps they know that at the end of May comes “The June Gap.” This being the time in between the spring flowers and fruit blossom and summer flowers coming into full bloom. So, although taking off the rapeseed honey is essential we also have to check that they have enough stores to get them through said gap. If they don’t, we feed them sugar syrup for a short period of time. Any beekeeper, who thinks they’ll wait until the end of summer and do their honey harvest all in one go will be disappointed because all the rape stores will be solid as a rock and all the honeybees hard work will have been wasted. So don’t assume, if your a new beekeeper that leaving them the rapeseed will get them through the June Gap. It won’t. Obviously if your bees aren’t near any rapeseed fields, by all means carry on to the end of summer and harvest the honey all in one go!

The timing of harvesting the rapeseed honey is critical. Too early and it will be too runny, too late and it will be too hard. Stressful moments BUT worth it. Rapeseed honey, if timed correctly is like whipped double cream, smooth and delicate with a very slight peppery after taste. Yum!

So, the sun came to visit and I have to say, it has stayed. Hoorah! Into the hives I delved and yes, queen cells, of course there are. May and June are the swarm season.

“A swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June - a silver spoon but a swarm in July is not worth a fly.” An old bee-keepers’ saying from the mid 17th century - meaning that the later in the year the honeybees swarm, the less time there will be for bees to collect pollen from the flowers in blossom.

So here we are in May and the queens are busy laying, the hives are getting crowded and the bees take this, their one chance in a year, to reproduce. And, they do this by swarming. Once you see a queen cell there’s no stopping them. You can’t just detach them and throw them away. They’ll build new ones. They’re going to go like it or not. No beekeeper wants to lose half their hive, for this is what a primary swarm is; it’s the first swarm to leave the hive in the spring. Where they first land is not their resting place. It’s just the bees getting the queen out before the new queen emerges and kills her! Nature can be so cruel! They’re very vulnerable, usually hanging from a tree or just inside a bush. They choose the most random places to go. I’ve seen pictures of them on bicylcles, car bumpers, and as I type, I’ve just been told of a swarm that’s gone up under the eves of someones house. When all the flying bees have joined their queen, the scout bees go out looking for their final resting place. This can take anything from an hour or so to four days. They have to get it right. They won’t be doing this again until next year!

If you ever see a swarm, do contact the BBKA, they have a list of beekeepers in your area who will be only too willing to collect a swarm from you. If they don’t need/want it they probably know someone who does. The pictures below are from a lady, Michelle, who put up a plea on the Leominster Group Chat. I wasn’t a member of the group but someone who knew me was and, hey presto, Michelle got in touch and I went and collected the swarm and what a lovely lot of honeybees they are too!

ARTIFICIAL SWARM

So what happens when a beekeeper sees a queen cells, you know they’re going to swarm and you don’t want to lose half of your hive - about 25,000 honeybees? - Why you perform an artificial swarm. You trick the honeybees into thinking they’ve swarmed. I know… clever aye? Read on if you want to know more!

It sounds more complicated than it is but below is how we perform an artificial swarm.

1. Remove roof and supers, put to one side and cover.

2. Place the brood box about three feet away from it’s original site.

3. Put a new brood box with fresh frames in the place of the old one.

4. Remove a couple of frames.

5. Find the queen and check the frame she is on for queen cells. You can pop her in your pocket while you do this. Make sure you remove any queen cells on that frame.

6. Put the frame together with the queen into the new hive that’s in the old position.

7. Find a frame of fresh brood and eggs, making sure it doesn’t have any queen cells on it, and put that in with the queen.

8. Put queen excluder on top of brood box.

9. Return the supers and lid.

   The flying bees will come back to the new hive, that’s in the old position, half of the bees have disappeared, but their queen is in there and there’s lots more space. Boom… they think they’ve swarmed.

10. Now go over to the old hive that’s in it’s new position. Do a proper hive inspection. You will probably have many queen cells in there so find the queen cell that the honeybees are fussing over and take off all the rest. Some beekeepers, me included, leave two queen cells. An open and a shut one. The open one shows a live grub. They’ll fight it out when the first one is born! It’s a ‘better safe than sorry’ thing for me.

11. Pop a crown board on top, an empty super, i.e., no frames in it and pop a feeder in with sugar syrup. A crown board on top of that and the roof.

    You are now left with the nurse bees and a new queen as yet unborn. They will look after her and a new colony begins. Voilà/

COLLECTING A SWARM

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote the above and I’ve collected three swarms and seen one fly right past me! What a season it’s been. But now the bees seem to have settled down. I have three hives that have swarmed. One I managed to do an artificial swarm. One I collected from 20 feet up in a tree; see the images below, one I didn’t spot at all, but when I went in the hive half the bees were missing and there was an open queen cell and the last one actually flew past me, while I was up in said tree brushing the bees off a huge branch into a box!

AND NOW THE REWARD

The rapeseed flowers died and so the honey harvest began. For all we beekeepers moan during the swarming season, they are only doing what comes naturally to them and aren’t we honoured to be a part of that. It’s our love of the honeybees, attention to their needs and general caring for them that keeps themgoing here in the UK. As I have said many a time before, there are very few wild honeybees in the UK. 98% of the honeybees you see in your garden, in the park, in the hedgerows, at the seafront belong to beekeepers. Why be a beekeeper? Oh my goodness, where shall I start? I’ll keep it simple. It’s a wonderful hobby, that truly connects you to nature and at the same time makes a contribution to the survival of our planet. Oh, and lets not forget our reward for all our hard work, which is nothing compared to that of the honeybees. It is, of course the honey! My first harvest, from just two hives produced 50 glorious jars of almost pure rapeseed honey. Below are some images of the harvesting and a photograph of one of my jars of said wonderful nectar. The last two pictures, I took just now while writing this blog, and the bees were busy on the Thyme! I thought one might come and pose on top of the jar but that would have been a step too far, and anyway they were far to busy for that nonsense!

AND BEFORE I GO…