This has to be one of the most exciting weeks of the year so far. It started last Sunday with a visit from the Slotwinskcy family who are close friends whom I hadn’t seen since long before lockdown. We walked to the wild bee tree and home through Cawdor Woods. Maciek noticed a beetle on the forest floor that I would never have spotted without glasses. Adam (12) instantly recognised it as a dung beetle and he was absolutely correct. It is a common dor beetle and a dung feeder though I have never seen one before. There must have been a convention on for the forest floor was full of these amazingly colourful beetles. Later, I returned to watch them and discovered that they put on quite a display of lying on their backs showing bright iridescent turquoise colouring when disturbed. Apparently, scientists have recently discovered that this iridescence is actually camouflage rather than for scaring off predators.
Brace Comb
I must be one of the luckiest beekeepers in Nairnshire for I get invited to help out in lots of different apiaries in beautiful locations. This week’s challenge was carefully handling wild comb built in partially empty supers and securing it in frames.
The Wee Bee Apprentice Returns and Queen Betty Arrives.
There was big excitement on Tuesday. A new queen arrived in the post from Dundee to add a bit of genetic diversity to the apiary. She was carefully raised by Fred Mollison who grafted a female larva into a cell and got a strong colony of bees to raise her as a queen.
With the easing of lockdown restrictions, Connie returned to beekeeping. She is a natural and slotted back in with ease. We discussed the new queen and how she would probably only live for around 2 years but we would still name her and it would carry on down the colonies in her hive. So, she is Betty The First. She arrived with 5 attendants and the first thing Connie did was smear some water along the side of the cage on a very hot day. The bees were glad of a wee drink.
New Bee Suit.
Connie loves her new bee suit from http://hudsonvalleybeesupply.com/ and has just about grown into it. It was way too big on her birthday at the beginning of the year.
Placing the Cage in the Nucleus Box.
I’d made up a nucleus of bees a couple of days previously using 2 frames of brood and bees from another colony. I’d shaken nurse bees from another frame and added a frame of stores and 2 empty drawn combs. The bees were closed in and positioned in the shade till the queen arrived. This was because I didn’t want the flying bees to return to their original hive and deplete this new little colony . I sprayed a little water through the ventilation holes in the closed front entrance every day.
Controlled Introduction.
As soon as Connie placed the cage in the nucleus box she remarked on the change of the noise in the hive and thought that they sounded calmer. Even though the nucleus contains only a small number of bees, I wanted the queen introduction to be gradual and to be sure that the bees would accept her. So, the door on the cage remained closed for a couple of days. The cage was placed on its side because if an attendant worker had died it couldn’t fall down blocking the exit. We looked in yesterday to check that no emergency queen cells had been built–they hadn’t. Connie broke open the little door at the side of the cage and right away the bees started eating the remains of the candy that was still blocking the exit. The attendant bees will smell like the queen now and should also be accepted into this wee colony. We will know in a week or so how it has all gone.
My wife collected a cast swarm for a neighbour keen to start beekeeping and popped it in a box with used brood frames with no foundation. When we put them in their permanent box yesterday they had neatly built 5 frames of comb within the frames. There are advocates for foundation free beekeeping like Michael Bush and wonder what you think.
I think that in this situation brood frames with no foundation are ideal since the swarm is primed to produce wax. There might be situations where comb is built unevenly making frame handling difficult, but you can get round that by using bamboo skewers to give the bees guidance. Making wax takes a lot of energy in terms of calories so, unless there was a heavy nectar flow on, feeding the bees would be the way to go to get the comb built. I live in the north of Scotland where conditions vary considerably regarding a good nectar flow and warmth, but if you live in the south it will be easier for bees to draw out comb without assistance.
I agree with you about the feeding, even for soft southern bees. I had a Kenya top bar hive for Christmas and fed to get them started as well as giving them a couple of shaped pieces of foundation to start them off in the right direction.