In the Apiary - Summer 2002
In the Apiary 5th October 2002
Another season is over. Whilst still being one of the poorer seasons I have known, things did pick up towards the end thanks to the borage, and I still managed an average of over 80 pounds per hive
Throughout the season I have been slowly modifying hive record cards at each apiary visit. I think I have almost reached the ideal system now so I will print some off for next year
All the colonies have taken down 10kg of sugar in solution. Half of them are on open floors for the first time so it will be interesting to see how they over-winter. All the equipment has been cleaned up and neatly stored in the bee-shed. My Beekeeping in Britain Survey for the BBKA has been filled in and all I have to do now is to draw up a summary of all my hive records. Beekeeping for the next five months will now consist of bottling honey, and polish and candle-making.
In the Apiary 30th August 2002
A long time ago, Clive de Bruyn told me that he never went away without putting an empty super on each hive just in case something unexpected came on flow. As usual I followed his advice.
I got back from my holiday to find that none of these had been touched; all empty. What was even worse was the plague of wasps. One large colony, one of the best had been completely wiped out. No bees, no stores, nothing but the odd wasp strolling around in the brood box. All but one of the other hives had next to nothing in the brood box so wet supers were immediately placed on them and this kept them more than happy. These are almost clean apart from the odd super of crystallized rape.
I keep a garden syringe filled with plain water in the apiary and each day I take out these frames and mist them down to enable the bees to remove the hard honey. Once these come off then I'll give them Apistan for three weeks and then Miller feeders will go on each hive. In the meantime I've ordered some Apis mellifera mellifera queens to see how they do.
In the Apiary 31st July 2002
It says a lot about the year when you are already cleaning up equipment ready for winter as early as July. Last year I was struggling to extract and get the supers back on whereas this year, with half as many hives again, I have supers sitting empty in the bee-shed.
I have just finished my penultimate extraction, a strange mixture of dark and light honey. The dark is most probably from the borage but I am unsure of the lighter variety. The borage has now been swathed so that's the end of that. A small patch of Nigella is still standing and the bees are working that along with the hedgerow blackberries.
Each hive has at least one super on it, which I hope will be filled in the remaining weeks. All hives are now queen-right and all but one have a 2002 queen. Most of them superseded even though their queens were only a year old. Two were raised in nuclei and one swarmed whilst I was away. Their behaviour seems to have settled down again so I am still in a quandary as to whether I should invest in some Apis mellifera mellifera from Ireland.
In the Apiary 15th June 2002
Two more weeks and still no more honey. What little the bees can get from the field-beans in the gaps in the weather they have to eat during the long hours they are confined to hive.
Rearing new queens, and even keeping those I already have has been a real problem. Two colonies have superseded but one lost the new queen, possibly on the mating flight. I have three nucleus colonies supposedly for obtaining queens to replace those where the behaviour has deteriorated. One is now on its third 'frame with a queen cell', the second nucleus was a 'dead-in-cell' and the third lost the queen on her mating flight.
In the Apiary 30th May 2002
Well that's that as far as the oil-seed-rape is concerned. 50 acres of it sitting more-or-less in the apiary and for all the time it was on flower the appalling weather meant that the bees could only get at it for seven or eight days. I should have got several supers of honey from each hive but as it was, I only got about one or two partially filled supers which had crystallized before it was fully capped. The field-beans have been on flower for a week now but as it has been cold and wet that too has failed to bring in any harvest. Honey from this part of Essex is going to be in very short supply for the next year
The cold and rain has also put a stop to mating flights. I have three hives which I wish to requeen by uniting with nuclei but until the new queens are laying, there is nothing I can do. There is a limit to how many times one can tidy the bee-shed
In the Apiary May 11th 2002
My footpath warning signs were a bit premature. The weather changed for the worse and the bees are more-or-less 'confined to hive'. They manage to get out for short spells but not enough to really forage. The oilseed rape is now going off so it looks as if we've missed the bumper harvest I hoped for. There are field beans about a half a mile away and they should be on flower soon. Still no sign of swarming but two colonies with year 2000 queens are trying to supersede; just one centrally positioned queen cell in each. They will need the sunshine if they are going to have successful mating flights. This afternoon the weather has been just a little better and the bees have been able to fly. It's strange how you notice something different every year. I was planting out the celery when I heard the familiar hum and looked round for a swarm coming in. No sign. It was the oak and the field maple beside me, on flower, with bees foraging all over them and ignoring the rape beneath the branches.
Converting from National to
14 x 12
Wild comb is built below the old National frame. (Note the four queen cells on the top bar)
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