Beekeeping in May

At last, some really warm weather and today it is expected to reach 23°C which means that hawthorn should be able to secrete enough nectar to make it worthwhile for a honey bee to visit. It’s a bit fickle when it comes to releasing nectar but its flowers smell like decaying flesh so it always has plenty of takers when it comes to pollination, and loads of flies and other insects can be seen around the trees at this time of year.

Harvest

The oil seed rape along the road only has a few more days bloom left and I see it fading daily. I’ve harvested a bucket of honey so far but there are several shallow boxes nearly full and capped to go. Because of its high glucose content, the honey crystalises very quickly so I shall have those supers off and extracted as soon as the field looks green again.
The colonies are settling down after swarm season, which I hope is over for me, and it’s great mating weather for new queens. I haven’t noticed any drops in brood nest temperatures, as indicated by the BroodMinder sensor system, so maybe there will be a seamless transition from queenless to queenright without a long enough gap for the temperatures to fall below 33°C?

Nucleus Colonies

I’ve taken advantage of some lovely queen cells and made up a couple of nucleus colonies. The plan is to share the queens with local beekeepers who want locally adapted queens that are good at keeping varroa levels low. I’ve been really pleased with the playing card trick to help keep the flying bees in the new hive and also to orientate to their new site, so I’ve used this method again. This time the bees have Mr Pill the chemist, and Mrs Turnip the greengrocer to direct them home.

Beekeeper’s Small Assistant

I’ve had my new assistant Leo staying here for three sleepovers this week with four full on days, so no time to read or research. Leo is 28 months old and very keen to help with any job that’s going on. We collect varroa boards every morning and he ‘counts’ varroa for me.

A swarm appeared on one of our days together so Leo had to put the hood up on his bee suit for the first time. He was so excited and we had a lot of fun. You can see the nuc and swarm in the background. If you look closely, you can also see my withered bivouac lure which has not attracted any bees this season so I may not put it up again. I have another one in this apiary with a vial of swarm attractant attached but that was ignored too.

Nursery Visit

A neighbour along the road asked if I would come in this week and speak to some 3-4 -year-old children about where food comes from at the nursery where she works in town. All Charlene’s children have come along here to do beekeeping with me and I think she probably named me ‘the Bee Lady’ in our village. I agreed to go although it was really pushing the boat out for me this week, but we had a blast and it was worth every moment. Louise came to help me which was great and our goal was to raise awareness about the importance of all insects. We brought lots of small props like model bees, insect pictures on wooden blocks, picture books, Leo’s bee suit, food that needs insect pollination services, and food that doesn’t such as oats, bread, butter, milk and cheese. They were all excited about seeing the fruit and vegetables and told me their favourites. We covered the very basics of pollination using a yellow Welsh poppy to clearly show what pollen looks like. The big treat was eating honey straight from the comb that I had just taken off a hive. One of the nursery teachers commented that it tasted much better than any she had tasted from a jar. A small boy asked if I lived on a farm and if I would come and collect him after nursery and take him home with me. That still makes me smile. We think it went really and we hope that even a little bit of what we talked about has stuck with them.

Swarm Control

Today has been busy too with swarm control and making up nuclei with Cynthia and Isobel down at Cynthia’s apiary at the nearby distillery. Then on up to Isobel’s delightful apiary at the bottom of her large and very beautiful garden not far from the River Nairn. The bluebells are just going over but still lovely and they provide nectar for her honey bees. Isobel was checking that only one queen cell was left after swarm control on both her colonies. She has collected a swarm and been given a swarm for her Flow Hive which she is trying out again though not convinced it will work well for her given the local forage such as heather. It seems a Flow Hive needs fairly runny honey to work well. Not ideal when you have OSR anywhere near your apiary either.

Bait Hive

I arrived home to find a swarm has taken up residence in my bait hive. You can see pollen on the legs of some bees which tells me that they have just swarmed and are probably from somewhere in my area. I’d seen excited scouts coming in and out for the last few days. I’ve got a home for it, and if they are still there tomorrow it will be out of the apiary as I don’t want to have bees from unknown sources in to mess up with my move towards varroa resistant bees.

New Website

Lastly, but not least, I have an announcement. Regular guest blogger and beekeeping teacher, David Hennessey has just launched a really useful website www.beeinterested.co.uk aimed primarily at Scottish beekeepers but I think that lots of people will be interested in it. Well done, David, and thank you for sharing it with us.