A swarm in May

On Sunday afternoon I was busy frame making. Yes, I know new frames should have been made up during the winter, but thanks to the constant rain of the previous several months the bee shed had been surrounded by a sea of mud and a moat, so was well nigh inaccessible until recently. I'd put the my workmate outside the shed - it's nicer to be outside on a rare sunny day - and was tapping away with my tack hammer when I spotted some movement in an old conifer about thirty yards away.

Swarm in conifer

Just above head height, glinting in the sun, was a lovely swarm. This is the first swarm to land in the small apiary in many years. Perhaps it was attracted to our bees but it's more likely they were lured by the lingering scent from a now vacant (and recently blocked with insect-proof mesh) long-standing feral colony's site. How the bees chose this particular tree is a mystery, but I am grateful they clustered in such an easy-to-reach spot, so could be quickly removed and marched straight into their new home.

I'm fairly confident that this swarm didn't come from any of my colonies. They are in large boxes; still have plenty of space; I haven't yet seen any swarm cells - and these bees are the wrong colour. So it looks as if either a local beekeeper (there are quite a few) has lost a swarm or one of the local feral colonies (there are quite a few) ran out of either food or space and decided to seek a new place to live.

BBKA Basic Assessment notes: On the day

On the day of the assessment it's very easy to be extremely nervous, to think you've forgotten everything - or believe never knew it in the first place. But those nerves will go, as soon as you're in front of the bees.

Make it easier for yourself
'Be prepared' well in advance, first by attending local classes, reading the study notes book or using online resources. It would be a good idea to make sure you have all the gear ready a couple of days beforehand, to be sure there is no last minute search for some gimp pins, a large matchbox or a tack hammer.

Apple Blossom Time.

Our fruit trees are, at last, covered with blossom.

There is more blossom per per tree than I've ever seen on these trees, which we planted not long after we moved into this house. I'm not sure why, maybe it's because the ground has been so very wet for so long - it started raining late last Spring and didn't stop for more than a few days at a time until early this year.

It may be that the trees are trying to make up for last year's lost crop - we had apples, or thought we had, until September, but then they all vanished. Not exactly disappeared, but they all dropped off the trees. It was a strange thing because we had no fruit at all. No apples, no pears. Nothing! If we had been dependent on our own crops we would have been in trouble, because virtually all our vegetable crops failed too - either rotted in the ground or eaten by slugs.

Basic Assessment notes - Part 5 : Disease and Pests

The last section of the syllabus is important, but these notes are brief - mainly because the information is readily available online at Beebase and it seems a bit pointless to paraphrase the experts.

If you are researching bee pests and diseases please follow the appropriate links and read more. Take your time to learn this subject, your bees deserve to be kept safe and healthy.

Beekeepers should, once they are sure the colony has a laying queen, inspect for brood irregularities and the condition of the bees they can see, rather than concentrating solely on the what is right. They should also be able to recognise symptoms of the most common diseases of adult bees.

Blog stats and referrer spam

Wow! Looking at the stats, this new blog of mine really does seem to be getting a lot of hits.

But ... when something seems too good to be true it usually is. Most of the traffic is coming from Russia, and from just a couple of sites. Nothing wrong with Russia, and nothing wrong with Russian beekeepers, but I couldn't imagine how they might have found my blog so quickly, and why so many would want to read it when it's still so new.

Clicking on one of the links took me to a place where I could watch an animated video telling me how to lose weight. Do they think I need to? (Actually I don't, but that's beside the point.) It was a true Homer Simpson, "Duh!" moment. I had clicked a link I didn't recognise, something I haven't done for ages.

Basic Assessment notes - Part 4: Beekeeping

The Basic Assessment's syllabus is very broad. In fact it's massive. It is an introduction to every aspect of beekeeping except microscopy.

The later, much more challenging, modules cover only one knowledge area at a time and in much greater depth. The module exams are written papers, taken under exam conditions.

Assessing a beekeeper's knowledge for the Basic comprises a practical hive inspection followed by oral questions. Both should be completed within an hour - the examiner is expected to cover as much as they can, to make sure there are no serious knowledge gaps. So it's a fairly quick sweep through as much of the syllabus as possible, otherwise the examiner will end up running late which can prove stressful for candidates who are waiting for their assessment.

Basic Assessment notes - Part 3 : Natural History of the Honeybee

I think it's important to remember that this syllabus is for the 'Basic Beekeeping' qualification - the first, and for some the last, beekeeping assessment they will take. The syllabus contains a lot - because beekeeping involves knowing a lot, but the basic care of a few colonies of bees doesn't require a depth of knowledge of every single aspect of beekeeping and bee biology. That knowledge can come later, as confidence and a need or desire to know more, develops.

I've underlined what I think are key words in each part of this section of the syllabus. This is because even the newest of beekeepers will probably have read books containing whole chapters describing any one of the topics listed below (- and as you're reading this blog you will have done a web search, and may have landed on this page long after reading piles of stuff elsewhere -) and there's a risk of wanting to regurgitate pages and pages of details. This is not necessary when preparing for the Basic.