Combining colonies

On last inspection I realised that one of my colonies wasn't going anywhere useful. This is the one that had a drone laying queen, and had made both what appeared to be a queen cell and an elongated 'drone queen' cell. I couldn't see any eggs or larvae, so there was no active queen and, fortunately, no laying workers either. A test frame from another colony had shown they were eager to produce a new queen - but it's getting a bit late in the late in the year, and it would be mid-September before the colony had its' own foragers.

The brood box was also top-heavy with drones which were clambering over each other on all surfaces, so much so that I suspected that this hive was attracting all local drones that had been evicted from their home colonies. (I've read that this can happen, but have never before seen evidence for myself.)

There were three things I could do:

Blackcurrant and Honey Jam

I tasted some Blackcurrant and Honey Jam, having ambushed a Class winner after a recent Honey Show. It had the usual slightly tart flavour of blackcurrants with an added, but quite subtle, aftertaste of good quality, strong, honey. It was absolutely delicious.

As there was a decent crop of blackcurrants this year, more than needed to add flavour to basic apple pies, I decided to make some of this jam myself.

The recipe I used isn't quite the same as the one I was given, because when I checked online there were several versions, each with a different ration of fruit:sugar:water. I decided to keep to the ratios I've always used for blackcurrant jam.

Drone layers and queen cells

We all hope that a new queen will mate successfully, but it doesn't always work out that way. Bees do work to a timetable, once the colony has got going, but a new queen will sometimes bide her time before starting to lay. It might be nice to see if a new queen is laying, and to be able to see eggs, but a too early check can be disruptive for the colony - and there's always that risk of crushing the queen.

Two of my colonies should have had actively laying queens by, at the latest, 5th - 8th July. The latest time the first eggs would be capped would be 15th July, so there wasn't any real need to open up before then.When I inspected I was disappointed to find that both colonies had drone laying queens.

Nucleus headed by poorly mated queen
I wasn't really surprised that the little queen that was found in the bee shed hadn't mated well, but it was disappointing all the same.

This is what I saw:



The signs of a drone laying queen are clear -  there's a good laying pattern, but there are only sealed drone cells.

Fishing line and brood frames

There's a popular trend to try to return to more natural, and less industry-dependent, ways of doing things - if we can. In beekeeping one of the ways of achieving this is to let the bees draw their own comb with less interference from the beekeeper. It takes quite a leap of faith to move away from the apparent security, ease and speed of construction, of using complete sheets of commercially pre-wired, cell-imprinted, pressed foundation that is available from all 'big' beekeeping suppliers, but I think almost all beekeepers who try it will never completely return to the 'old ways' - more especially if they buy beautiful foundation from specialists suck as Peter Kemble.

Unwired frames are fine for shallows, especially if used for cut comb, but large (deep) brood frames such as Dadant, Langstroth Jumbo, 14x12 National and 'Commercial' are a different matter. A lapse of concentration during an inspection can lead to new comb slumping from the frame, taking eggs and developing larvae with it - a disaster and a mess for both bees and beekeeper. So brood frames need to be strengthened, usually by wiring.

ISP safety filters and beekeeping porn

Our internet service provider has automatically switched on some handy new features including 'HomeSafe', which they reckon will, "[Help] our customers keep their families safer online". Kind of them, don't you think, to make sure that nobody in this household can visit dodgy websites that could transmit a nasty virus or show us unexpectedly rude pictures.

Our first experience of this safety filter was when we tried to follow up an offer of some bin end wine on a supermarket site. Not a chance! The on-screen message tells us we are unable to access the site because it will let us see pictures of alcohol.

Later on I decided to read the most recent updates on Rusty's Honey Bee Suite blog. Nope, it won't let me! The warning tells me:

"The site you tried to access was detected to contain content that falls into the category Pornography, which your HomeSafe settings won't allow."

So there you have it, me and my family need to be protected from beekeeping porn. It made me chuckle when I realised just how often beekeepers talk about unmated virgins, mating flights and so on, but I'd never once thought that these discussions could be thought worthy of being hidden behind an internet filter.

So, Rusty, if you're reading this you'll know why at least one of your UK visitors has disappeared for a while, whilst they work out how to fix their ISP's automatic filter.

~'.'~

Two beekeepers try to transfer a cast swarm

Another member of my BKA needed a new queen, and if possible some fresh bees to go with her, to repopulate a queenless colony. I offered him a little cast swarm that had arrived in an unoccupied nuc box the day before. He came to the small apiary to collect the colony before they'd had a chance to get themselves too settled.

It seemed a straightforward thing to do, but the only problem was that the other beekeeper uses National hives, and I use Jumbo Langstroths - the frames aren't compatible. He thought the easiest way to move the bees would be to shake them into their new box, which was a clean but well-used wooden 5-frame nucleus, complete with a frame feeder and some lovely new foundation.

Easy!

Taranov Split

The idea behind any form of swarm control is to mimic what happens in nature, but it's the beekeeper who makes the decisions, not the workers.

Almost all new beekeepers will be shown how to do one method of swarm control, in Britain it's the Pagden - usually known as an artificial swarm. It's easy enough once you get your head round it, but done properly it involves moving large boxes of bees several times - and the beekeeper has to be able to isolate the queen.

The thing is that I'm absolutely rubbish at finding queens. I can do it, but it's time consuming and disruptive to the colony to either go through the brood box several times looking for her or to split and separate the combs into two boxes so the queen is isolated between two frames. I decided I needed a way of controlling swarming behaviour that would be quick and relatively simple, and that didn't involved a lot of heavy lifting. I settled on using a method designed by G.F. Taranov, which is outlined on Dave Cushman's site. I then got cold feet, mainly because some more experienced beekeepers told me it was far too disruptive.

I recently read more about this Taranov method on Honey Bee Suite, including a guest post, and decided that if it worked for them it should work for me. I also thought I should make up my own mind up about the disruption, and how quickly they settled afterwards.