Warm sunny days in early September are good news. The Victoria plums in the back garden are the best and tastiest ever, and the wild brambles are worth picking too. Having days reaching 17 degrees Celsius means that the APILIFE VAR strips are working well for my new colony in the out apiary and killing 15 varroa daily, on average. Consisting mainly of thymol, eucalyptus oil and camphor, this varroa treatment works by the bees removing the friable wafer-like fabric and spreading the ingredients round the colony. It’s eye-wateringly pungent if you inhale a whiff but it’s not going to cause varroa mite resistance. The dose is one strip every 7 days, completing the treatment using 4 strips. You need to remove honey supers to avoid tainting the honey. A word of caution: they are very easily broken so handle packets carefully.https://www.simonthebeekeeper.co.uk/hive-care-feeding/10059-apilife-var.html
No Sentiment in Nature.
The drones have been evicted in both apiaries and territorial robins are fighting to the death. Usually depicted as fluffy red decorations on Christmas cards, these birds are using the survival kit they evolved with. The other day, I was sitting in the garden studying honey bee anatomy for my exams next year when a robin flopped at my feet on the concrete. It was hotly pursued by its stronger rival but didn’t stand a chance and the rival flew off leaving it to its inevitable fate. Severely injured and partially paralysed, it lasted only an hour in the dark recovery box I use for calming stunned birds that hit windows.
“Queen Betty The Bad”.
Fortunately young Connie has a good grip on what happens in nature too and she is not upset when we remove Queen Betty 2nd from the small colony. We discuss what having a drone laying queen means for a colony and she says, “better that one bee dies than all of them” which sums it up perfectly. She tells me that one of their 6 hens is “broody” again, and if it happens any more, “she’s for the pot!”. Now dubbed Queen Betty the Bad, by Connie, we prepare to search for her and get the marking kit out so that Connie can practice her skills on a real queen rather than drones as we’ve done before.
Wasps.
The wasps were a problem round this nuc when I fed sugar syrup earlier but they didn’t get the better of this small colony. There were very few dead bees to be seen, but I found these the other day on the pallet near the front. I’ve decided to use fondant instead of syrup in future and now have boxes of the stuff stored in the bee shed. I have to confess to a bit of sport catching wasps in my butterfly net recently as they surround the nuc. I keep them in the freezer for practice dissection over winter. I need to do lot more work in that area before I sit the microscopy part of the National Diploma in Beekeeping exam next year.
Evaluating New Floors with Wasp Deterrent Entrances.
I haven’t seen any evidence of wasp damage at the 2 hives with these entrances, but I’ve noticed a pile up at the entrance before a shower of rain, and the bees scrabbling to get back in and slipping down the side . So, I’m thinking about how I could roughen the surface of the wood to help the bees get better purchase and a faster entry. I treated these colonies, with the narrow slit entrances, for varroa with Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS) based on formic acid. There was a very high death rate in one colony with lots of dead drones. The other was as expected: a cupful or so, but, interestingly, the colony with the higher death rate had more than the average number of drones. The entrance should be wide open when you are using MAQS by the way. This was the colony that I accidentally placed several brood frames with drone foundation in, so I am wondering if drones are particularly sensitive to formic acid, or did it stimulate the workers to throw them out? I treated 8 colonies with MAQS and all the queens survived, so far.
Where to Place the Stores Over Winter?
A few years ago, one of the speakers, organised by the Scottish Beekeepers Association to tour the country, came up with a new idea (at least it was new to most of us in Nairnshire). He advocated placing the shallow box of stores for winter under the brood box rather than above it. The theory is that the queen will not start laying in the shallow box in spring. It seemed like an alien idea given that bees naturally move upwards but I was curious. I’ve tried it over a couple of seasons and it works: the bees survived and the stores in the shallow box under the brood box were gone. However, for me, working alone mostly, it means too much manipulation and heavy lifting so I don’t do it any more. I haven’t had a problem with the queen laying in the super and I always manage to get the queen excluder on early enough in spring before that happens.
Apiary Increase.
Having started the season with 3 colonies I’ve now got 9, with plans to increase to 15 next year. It’s been a good season for me with concentration on increasing rather that honey production. I’m hoping for more honey next year to keep up with local customer demand though. I’m pleased with my decision earlier in the season to euthanize the brood and house bees in the colony with chronic bee paralysis virus. Saving the queen and foragers has paid off and the colony has been well all season (blue poly double storey nuc in photo below).
Last Harvest.
I’ve still got one super to harvest and extract. A full super of honey removed earlier is waiting in the shed to return to the colony (on the left in the photo below). Hive inspections are over now and cleaning and tidying equipment is next on the list. I will be assessing how many new frames need to be made up later for the new season 2021.
This last jar of runny summer honey was sold yesterday to a passing motorist. No, I don’t go for long walks with jars of honey clanking in my pockets but I was stopped at the roadside on my way to the woods. The driver asked if I knew who made honey in Piperhill…………
As usual, I enjoyed reading your blog, Ann. I’m glad you have the wasps under control. Last year we were plagued by them. This year I followed Jackie Elliot’s advice and hunted out queen wasps in the spring, on Cotoneaster horizontalis. I caught 8 queens and so far we have not had a wasp problem, though yesterday John was phoned by a neighbour who has a wasp nest in his attic. What was interesting last year was to watch the behaviour, at the entrance of a hive of drones, as they ‘ganged up’ quite successfully on wasps that were trying to enter their hive, making up for their lack of sting by pairing up. We are still wating for a warm day to sort our colonies out for the winter and assess whether they can spare any honey for us. Thank you for your interesting blog, Ann.
It has been a good year for the bees though the lime crop was a washout down here. I have tried fondant feeding this year but the wasps were just as keen on that.
I find that a jam or coffee jar with a small hole in the lid and squashed up grape, apple and water is irresistible to wasps and repellent to bees so you can put a trap on the roof of each hive, you even get hornets though they are not such a problem. Also worth putting out traps prior to the feeding regime to ‘clear’ local wasps out.
Good tips, thanks Tristan.
Thank you for this report on your end-of-summer bee work. One question. Have you always had a problem with wasps in autumn, or has this problem increased in recent years? Are yellowjacket wasps seem more abundant now than, say, 5 or 10 years ago?
Wasps are always a pest to some degree but some years are worse than others, Tom. A bit like a mast year with trees! This is not a bad year. The problem of them sniffing round the nuc stopped from the moment I changed the feed to fondant interestingly.