Harvests, Varroa and Pollen Book Review

Harvesting

Summer is nearly over but the weather is lovely and the bees are still down along the river collecting Himalayan balsam nectar. The heather is almost over too.

I can smell the distinct perfume of heather honey in the apiary and I had to harvest another full super from my best colony last week. Its top brood box is groaning with stores. I might not sound as enthusiastic as you think I should to be, but it will be hard work getting the thixotropic gel-like honey out of the frames and extracted in my tangential extractor without damaging them. I haven’t set up for cut comb this year on account of a nearby phacelia crop making the honey set solid quite quickly last year and scuppering my plans for lots of boxes of beautiful cut comb. Louise will lend me her hand-held heather loosener though and I shall try it out. The needles will agitate the honey making it mobile for around 10 minutes which is long enough to spin the honey out of the cells.

I don’t take my bees to the heather because I don’t want to stress either them or me. It is a lot of work to prepare a colony properly for the best heather harvest, and the conditions are not always good from season to season. Some years are great and others not. It depends upon the weather and getting enough rain around June for the heather to flourish.  It’s a great topic for speculation and conversation among local beekeepers though. Mainly, I don’t want to stress the bees with the move, or put them at risk of picking up varroa from other colonies at the heather. What I have at home to harvest this year has been collected nearby in the woods where heather has been blooming since July in the open areas of managed woodland recently felled for timber.

Towards Treatment-free Beekeeping

To me, treatment-free means letting the bees manage the varroa problem for themselves by whatever hygienic traits and means they use. I’m not trying find one particular trait and rear queens from that stock. I am assessing the daily varroa drop from five colonies while noting hygienic behaviours and colony well-being. I’m only using organic acids when I really have to because even they are not great for a colony– they can kill off good bacteria in the hive environment at the same time. My colony with the lowest varroa drop uncaps brood, and I find cell cappings and chewed pupae on the bottom board. I also find immature mites on that board. Another colony bites the mites. At the end of the year I am going to look at all my collected data and decide which queen I might promote next year and rear new stock from. Then I shall start the process all over again in 2026 because monitoring and assessing is a continuum for me.

The recent launch of Professor Stephen Martin’s new varroa calculator for treatment-fee beekeeping has been good news for my management strategy as I progress towards managing varroa without using any harmful chemicals, and by allowing the bees to manage the problem for themselves and build resistance. https://www.varroaresistant.uk/mite-calculator/

There is an interesting article in September’s BBKA News by Professor Martin highlighting the overuse of Amitraz/ (Apivar) (and resistance of varroa mites) and how this has been the main factor in the recent very high colony losses in the US. He says that our government advisory body, The National Bee Unit, has kept the threshold of harm level (an estimated 1,000 live varroa) too low with the result that many beekeepers in the UK have been overtreating colonies for varroa for years. I’m looking forward to hearing him speak at the SBA (Scottish Beekeepers’ Association) meeting in Fife on October 11^th. I shall be asking him if this calculator is relevant to all beekeepers, or just those on the treatment-free route who have already identified some hygienic behaviours. For beekeepers who currently treat for varroa and keep the threshold levels of live varroa below 1,000 it will probably be challenging for them to hold off till the levels are up over 2,000. I think that a lot more education and awareness raising on this topic is needed.

Book Review

I’m pleased that Northern Bee Books sent me this lovely book to review because it is going to help me a lot when I try to work out what pollens I see under my microscope. Many books on pollens stick to plants that are known to be popular with bees, but this book is wide-ranging and there are so many different pollens clearly identified for me to enjoy looking at.

Title: Pollen Microscopy

Author: Norman Chapman

Publisher: Northern Bee Books, third edition 2015

ISBN: 978-1-912271-98-6

Paperback, 8^3/4 x 10^1/2 inches, 265 pages

Cost: £30

Available: Northern Bee Books

Pollen Microscopy by author, beekeeper and microscopist Norman Chapman is different from other books of its kind in several ways. These include the clarity and concise style of writing, detailed drawings of over a hundred different pollen grains, and the addition of many well-taken and beautiful photographs of the pollen-producing plants represented in this edition. Each example of pollen comes with brief descriptions of key features such as pollen grain surface, shape, size and furrow numbers. The front and back covers are attractive and the simple title is appealing.

Chapman was a highly respected and active member of the dynamic Quekett Microspial Club founded in 1865, and the second oldest club in the world dedicated to microscopy and its advancement. He writes with authority and experience sharing many facets of this absorbing hobby including; essential information on pollen structure, collection of pollen, preparing and preserving pollen slides, using a microscope and the purpose of a condenser, connecting a camera to the microscope, and extracting pollen from honey using a centrifuge.

Chapman doesn’t pretend that identifying pollen is easy but he provides useful tips on identifying the more difficult pollens, and his large drawings provide good references for someone trying to find out the source of a pollen sample. The description of the unique bay tree pollen with its jelly like layer below the exine is so vivid it led me right away to the index at the back to check out the drawing.

This book has been printed on fine quality paper giving it a nice feel to the fingers and a touch of class. The photographs and drawings have been reproduced with clarity and precision and this edition is good value for money.

The author has achieved his aims of writing for a wide readership and sharing his passion for pollen microscopy. Not only will this attractive book be useful to beekeepers and students of beekeeping theory, but; botanists, gardeners, microscopists, naturalists, school students and the general public will learn something interesting and helpful inside its pages. It will also make an appealing coffee table book and an ideal gift.