Like most beekeepers, I don’t leave home during swarm season. Quite a few years ago now I was on top of a mountain looking out across a coruscating sea to the Western Isles relishing the sunshine and view when I got a message from my son telling me that the bees had swarmed. I was never sure if the, “I heard someone on the road outside the garden swearing” was a wind-up or not but I’ve been very careful ever since to control swarming in the home apiary.
Malta.
This year spring was late coming and both long and cold when it did, so I took a chance and left home. Linton was going to Malta for 3 days training and invited me to join him. I surprised him by taking up the offer because I usually say I’m too busy with the bees to go anywhere.
Malta in mid-April was very pleasant and the journey south relatively short and painless. Malta is a small island off the toe of Sicily and jam- packed with history and tourists. I had three days to spend mostly by myself though Linton and I had 2 half days together to explore.
We walked round the old city of Valetta which is a short ferry ride from Sliema near our hotel in Saint Julian’s. When I heard the brisk clip clop of hooves my heart sank and I wondered if we were about to see skinny horses hauling heavy tourists up the steep hill. A lingering vivid memory from the SS Uganda schools cruise to Spain, Portugal, and North Africa in 1967 is underfed and overworked horses pulling gharries in Malaga. The Maltese might still stand on the cliffs picking off the migrating birds from Africa for fun but they look after their horses well. These animals in Valetta are a joy to watch working. They are alert with ears forward, sleek, well fed, and looked like they enjoy their work. Some were having snacks from nose-bags as they rested between jobs. It is good to see horses actively involved with life and not just hanging round a field eating and waiting for the occasional ride out.
As usual I was looking for honey bees and local honey on this trip. I’d written to the secretary of the beekeeping association in Malta hoping for beekeeping contacts, but no reply spurred me on to explore the green areas and get into conversations with locals for myself. It was too cold and windy to sit round sunning myself for long so I explored The Valley in St Julian’s and came across an oasis in a packed urban area. Food was being grown in every available space and pollinators were busy. Beautiful beetles were visiting mock orange and a few honey bees were about.
On the last afternoon, Linton hired a car and drove us to the San Anton Gardens where we found a wild bee tree, admittedly not completely by ourselves. Linton asked a gardener about beekeeping on the island and we were told that a wild nest had been spotted opposite the public lavatories so it wasn’t too difficult to find. What was fascinating was watching a gecko sitting outside the nest entrance waiting for a meal.
http://Video link https://youtu.be/_e85kJor1tM
Several passers-by asked what we were looking at which led to conversations and finding out that our best chance of getting local honey was in the region of Mgarr to the north where organic farming and beekeeping were practiced. The gardener came along too on his lunch break and admitted that he was a beekeeper himself and kept bees for pollinating the crops on his land. He told us that grapes, oranges, and olives were mostly wind pollinated and we chatted about varroa. He said that he used Bee Gyms but wasn’t sure if they worked http://www.beegym.co.uk/. I confirmed that there is no scientific evidence to confirm claims that they are effective as a treatment against varroa. I was hoodwinked myself into buying some in the days before I researched for evidence before parting with cash.
We drove north west through colourful countryside dominated by yellow daisy-like flowers and small fields of red lupins used for horse fodder. We didn’t find honey bees or local honey but saw some splendid scenery on the journey including the spectacular Dingli cliffs. A ferocious wind whipped up sand around the volcanic rocky cliffs and I could hardly stand up straight. The next stop was Tunisia if not careful so I stayed clear of the edge and sheltered where I could behind rocks looking at all the abandoned gardens/alottments on the cliff edge. All sorts of plants thrived in the dry soil including iris-like blue flowers in profusion and it was a great adventure.
Back to swarm season.
Swarm Preparations.
Despite the cold weather and lack of oil seed rape crops in the area, swarm preparations started the same week as last year with me. Needing space in the home apiary for teaching round hives, I decided to do vertical swarm control and a variation of the Demaree method on one colony using a Horsley board that I’d bought years ago and never used much.
Vertical Swarm Control.
This method involves separating the queen and flying bees from the brood and is very like the Pagden method except it takes place inside one hive on the original hive stand. The old queen is placed on the frame you find her on (without any queen cells) in a clean brood box on the floor with empty comb, preferably drawn. The queen excluder is placed above this bottom brood box with the shallow honey supers on top of it. Then the board is placed over the supers. It can be any board so long as it fits and there is an extrance facing the back to allow the new queen to fly and mate without the risk of coming back in the front entrance and getting killed by the old queen.
The brood box is placed over the board and an open queen cell with a healthy, juicy, white larva on a bed of royal jelly is chosen. The frame is marked in some way so that you know which frame the cell is on and the other queen cells are removed. A week later all the emergency cells, made since removal of queen, are removed and the colony is left alone for at least 3 weeks to allow the new queen to mature, emerge and mate. At this visit (a week from day of swarm control) you can check that the queen in the bottom brood box is laying and that there is enough space in the shallow boxes for storing honey over the next few weeks.
Choices.
When the new queen is laying well and you know that she is fertile and laying worker brood you can make a decision. You can either make increase and create a separate colony, or you can remove one queen (usually the elder one) and unite the colony back for the rest of the season. Or, you could operate a two-queen system with the queens separated by queen excluders but all the workers from both brood boxes having access to the honey supers in the middle.
My Method Using Horsley Board.
The colony was making swarm preparations and I found a charged queen cell with royal jelly and a larva. Since I could find the queen and place her in the clean bottom deep brood box on the frame she was on, I didn’t need to shake any bees into the bottom box as described in a previous blog. I did check that there were no queen cells on this frame though. https://www.beelistener.co.uk/beekeeping/swarm-prevention-demaree-method/. I placed a queen excluder over the bottom brood box and the two shallow supers over it. Then I placed the Horsley board on top with the open entrance facing the back of the hive. The board has a mesh square in the middle which allows colony odours to mingle if you want to unite the colonies easily at the end of swarm control, or keep them working as one unit but with 2 queens separated from each other. There is a small piece of queen excluder material with sliding board attached to the entrance. You can cover or expose the queen excluder depending on how you want to use the board. I wanted to shut the queen excluder off so that when the virgin queen in the top brood box emerges she will use the back entrance only (photograph A) Sometimes virgin queens can get through queen excluders.
For now, I want the bees in the top boxes to use the back entrance as they raise a new queen. Following the Demaree, the flying bees returned to the bottom box with the old queen on new frames with some foundation only and some drawn comb. Any foragers in the top boxes immediately returned to the bottom box too and relieved any congestion in the top 2 brood boxes. Just to be certain though, I looked in a week later to make sure that they had one good unsealed queen cell with a nice fat white healthy larva on a bed of royal jelly. I removed all other queen cells.
As soon as they were separated from their queen, the bees in the top boxes produced some emergency cells which I removed. You can see that they would not have made good queens as these larvae are not sitting in pools of royal jelly but have been created from larvae of around 3 days old, and are lying in dry cells. Feeding on large amounts of royal jelly is key to good queen production and poorly fed queens have fewer ovarioles and are reproductively inferior and would not be good for a colony in the long term.
When I removed the emergency queen cells yesterday I checked on the old queen in the bottom brood box and was pleased that she is laying normally and the foundation is being drawn out. I shall leave them alone for 3-4 weeks to allow the queen in the top to get mated. When she does will depend on the weather. There is plenty space in the supers and the bottom brood box.
My plan is to wait till the new queen on top is laying well and producing worker brood and then I shall rotate the Horsley board so that the entrance is at the side, and push the entrance lever in as in C so that workers have access to the supers below and all workers can mingle but not the queens. After a week, I shall rotate the board so that the entrances align and allow the foragers in the top box to orientate to the front entrance then I will close the entrance as in B so that all the foragers are using the bottom front entrance. They can work together as one unit then I will remove the queen from the bottom brood box and consolidate the brood boxes to remove unused frames, or those full of stores and unite the colony by removing the Horsely board. I will feed back any surplus stores in the autumn.
This method may seem a faff to some people but it is one way to deal with lack of space in an apiary. I’ve used poly brood boxes to reduce weight and reduce risk when lifting. I do need a helper so this method will not work well for some people. Others might not bother rotating the entrance gradually but I want to reduce the stress of orientating from front to back entrances. I have a nagging feeling that this colony has some CPBV (chronic bee paralysis virus) so I will be monitoring the entrance and floor out front carefully.
Shook Swarm Shenanigins.
This photograph shows what happened on a warm, still, muggy day as Linton attempted to mow the lawns. I’d recently carried out two shook swarms; one for varroa control and the other to get rid of chalkbrood spores and change old comb. One colony had a queen excluder on the floor, but the other had a clipped queen so I hadn’t put an excluder on that floor. At the same moment, the two colonies errupted from the hives while Linton stopped mowing and stood back watching in awe as the sky went dark and thousands of bees roared round the garden. They hung about a bit on shrubbery but soon settled back into their respective colonies and I breathed a sigh of relief. I found the clipped queen on the ground near the hive stand and placed her back inside and gave this colony more room with a second deep brood box. When I checked them yesterday both queens were laying normally and all was well. The rest of swarm control will involve using the nucleus method and uniting back with parent colonies when new queens have proved themselves.
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Thank you, Ann 🐝
Wonderful holiday adventure
Another thoroughly absorbing blog, thank you so much Ann.