The Week on Camera

Honey

It’s been another of those exciting weeks when everything seems to happen at once. The local health food shop has nearly sold out of my soft-set honey. Customers ask for it specifically—so, up very early one morning to jar the two buckets of honey that spent 48 hours in my new Lyson creamer. More on that machine another time.

I have a lovely daughter in law called Maayan who helps me with the bees when she can, takes amazing photos, and spoils me rotten. Birthdays in this house used to go by largely unnoticed, but not anymore. Last weekend I was presented with a scrumptious chocolate mousse cake made by Maayan with tofu, and so full of protein that second helpings were mandatory. You can see the magnificent flowers, and the new teapot so that I don’t burn my hand on the metal handle of the old one anymore.

Later in the week Linton’s gift arrived from Northern Bee Books. This is a serious read so not one to take to bed when I am half asleep and can’t absorb the content; definitely one to study carefully.

As if that wasn’t enough birthday excitement, Louise brought over the gift of a BroodMinder sensor and set it up for me in Hive 1 which is the native dark bee colony that featured last week. More on that when I catch up with the data and learn how to use the app properly. The key reason for having one (for me) is to monitor the temperature so I can see the normal slight temperature rise after a swarm leaves the hive and know right away which colony has swarmed if I miss one. There are of course other useful reasons for having one and you can find out more here https://eu.broodminder.com/

Talking of swarms, the obs hive got very crowded and I knew it was only a matter of time before they swarmed. So, I set up a bivouac lure on the cherry tree outside the bee shed where the hive sits. I secured a pheromone lure inside my straw skep and secured it to the tree with easy-to-remove Bungee cords. In the observation hive there were three queen cells on the front bottom frame, and 2 on the back. I figured that they would swarm today (solstice, 21^st, or tomorrow) and had a friend on standby to come and watch with me. David was to collect the swarm. I have to be disciplined and only keep five colonies in my apiary.

Yesterday was hot for here and the temperature rose to 26 degs C in the apiary. It was time to check on Hive 1 containing the 96% Amm dark native bees and remove excess queen cells. The queen was safely in a nuc as part of last week’s swarm control management. Early in the week, my new friend Stiliyan from Aberdeen came up to collect a frame of eggs to graft new queens from this lovely strain of bee. It feels good to be sharing these genetics with other people who value native bees. I gave Barbara from Kiltarlity a lovely queen cell yesterday. Barbara made up a queenless nuc and brought it to me. I put the nuc in an isolated part of my apiary and removed 6 emergency queen cells from this nuc before I placed this lovely frame with the queen cell in the middle of the box. The plan is to leave the nuc for a week till the new queen emerges then Barbara will take the bees home so that the queen can mate from her apiary.

As I was closing up Hive 1, I heard a lot of bees making a lot of noise behind me and turned round to find the observation hive bees exiting in full force. I had only just checked the queen cells a couple of hours previously and reassured myself that they would not leave for a while as the cells were not nearly sealed. Ha ha!
Did they go to my lovely bivouac lure? No, they didn’t. They went to the highest part of the tallest Leylandii tree above the bee shed. Meanwhile Linton called David over for me while I shut the hive up and put the queen cell in Barbara’s nuc.

David and I stood there assessing the situation for a bit before deciding regretfully that the swarm was too high up to collect. However, the intrepid resident arborist volunteered to get his new ladder (£100 second hand) out and scale the heights to retrieve the swarm in my swarm bucket. He sprayed the swarm with a light misting of water to cool them down if they had been warming their flight muscles for take-off. You can see that the swarm bucket has a cross beam for the bees to settle on and the handle makes it so much easier to carry than a straw skep, especially to such heights. Linton hit the jackpot and got the queen the first time though he did go back up a second time to be sure. We knew it was in the bag when the bees came down from the dizzy heights in droves and crowded into the nuc box. We gained the swarm but lost my new secateurs which Linton threw over the tree onto the lawn for safety. They must have landed in shrubs so I will search again later today.

David came in the evening to collect the swarm which was housed in his nuc box on fresh new foundation. He will feed them soon as they are not a massive swarm having come from a two-framed observation hive.

And another week comes to an end. One of the useful tips I learned from Stiliyan, who has been keeping bees for over 30 years, is to cover the open mesh floors of nuc boxes to prevent small colonies from chilling down and getting chilled brood or chalkbrood.