A couple of home made beekeeping tools

Okay so honey bees have been domesticated since 2422 BCE, and cave paintings record honey being collected way back in 13,000 BCE (thanks for that Wikipedia!) so it's probaby safe to assume all the usefull beekeeping stuff has already been invented however I'm not above a little innovation myself. OKay the first thing I made wasn't my own invention at all and was a blatant rip off of a frame perch I'd seen on the beekeeping course last year. Basically it's a small rack that hangs of the side of the hive and you pop a frame on to give you more room in the hive for doing whatever it is you're doing poking around in there. I thought it was a pretty good idea but I wasn't about to buy one. I figured had enough junk lying about to knock up my own anyway -turns out this is just as well because back then I still thought I had a national brood box so I'd've probably bought one the wrong size. Anyway a piece of wood, a handfull of screws and four brackets later I came up with this:

Frame Perch

It also gives me a 2" shelf on the edge of the hive to put things as I'm working the hive which is pretty useful at times, honestly. You can probably figure out how it works but here's a photo anyway. You can also see a rather rough and ready follower board I cut out of plywood. Since taking this picture I've started placing the perch at the other end of the hive so that any bees which drop off the frames can land on the landing board and get back into the hive.

Frame perch in use

Shortly after installing hive1 I got stung by a bee. At the time I was checking out a fence panel I'd replaced on the side of my neighbours shed which the hives are facing. Basically I'd stood in front of the hive a bee saw me and buzzed out and stung me on the knee. I already knew you weren't really meant to stand in front of the hives and I'd positioned it to make it unlikely anyone ever would, but then I reallised it might be handy for me to be able to see from close up what was actually happening at the entrance. So, I made my next bit of useful kit. I like to call it the "BeeSpy 3000" but most people prefer to call it "just a mirror on a stick." Basically it's a £1.69 walking stick purchased from Newland Avenue with a wooden handle carved to vaguely resemble a whale, a very cheap plastic framed shaving mirror from Wilkinson's and a tube of Poundshop high grab glue. Here it is in all it's glory:

The BeeSpy 3000!

Yes, it does look a bit pervy. Lets me stand next the hive and see what's happening at the entrance and on the landing board tho. I can also pop it under the open mesh floor and look up into the hive too to see how many frames the bees are on.

Syrup and Contact Feeders

So, the home made contact feeder (ice cream tub with holes in the lid) I placed on Hive2 leaked sugar syrup down through the hive. The syrup hadn't leaked out of the holes but out of the edge of the lid. Quite annoying, I'd tested it with water prior to using it and it'd been fine. Anyway I removed it from the hive and put in place some smaller feeders I'd made from glass jars with holes punched through the lids. They worked fine although I felt they were a little small. I later upgraded these for large coffee jars with holes drilled into their plastic lids -tested with water and red food dye in case of drips. Later decided to bite the bullet, stop being a cheapskate and buy some proper contact feeders so I bought two large white bucket type feeders from some guy on eBay and haven't really looked back.

However on one occassion I had my feeder full of 1:1 syrup and Vita Feed Gold, popped the lid on walked away from the hive and tured it upside down and off fell the lid. I guess I hadn't clicked it on properly. I now have a big patch of dead grass to show for my troubles.

I also have an Ashforth feeder which came with the hive. I've scorched it and painted it but haven't used it yet. I'm going to leave it to cure for a few weeks before I put liquid into it. It's not got a baffle to keep bees out of the reserviour so I'm thinking I'll have to make a float for that at some point.

Into the second hive they go

Having given the second colony two days to get used to my garden I popped them into their new hive, adding adapters to the national frames as I inserted them. Whilst doing this I saw the queen. She was pretty huge and had a large splot of blue paint on her back to show she was from 2010. I also saw eggs and both capped an uncapped brood.

Blue queen

After putting the frames into the new hive there were still a lot of bees clinging to the crownboard that had been on the nuc and in the box the frames had been in. I placed these outside the hive entrance so the bees could climb out onto the landing board and walk into the hive. I'd read about them doing that but seeing it happen was something else.

I popped on a crownboard, then a contact feeder I'd made by punching holes in an ice cream tub lid. Added the second National deep as an eke and my second lid then left them to it. Whilst I was there I also checked out Hive1. I still couldn't see that midget queen anywhere but there was plenty of eggs and brood in the comb.

Bees, eggs, uncapped brood, capped brood

More Bees

Whilst waiting for the arrival of my replacement queen I came to the conclusion that I really needed to have two populated hives as insruance against problems like queenlessness. Luckily there was another beekeeping auction in driving distance on 14th May 2011. So off I went with smock, ratchet strap, gloves, smoker, lighter and a bit of sponge for the nuc entrance. This auction like the last started with the sale of a range of used beekeeping gear, I'd been told this auction was shockingly expensive compared to the last so once again I didn't bother with any of the equipment and kept my beertokens for the main event. When I set off it'd been nice and warm in Hull and I only grabbed a jumper to take as an afterthought. This auction took place outdoors at a farming museum, and it was freezing! I wandered about, looked (ok yawned) at old tractors, and WWI trench digging engine. I don't think it worked but it looked pretty interesting -no I didn't photograph it and their website only seems to show tractors unfortunately. Anyway where was I? Oh yes, buying bees.

So eventually the auction moved to the bees. There was a number of nucs on sale and some bees in travelling boxes. I'd driven about 35 miles to get there and figured for the drive back I'd best go for a travelling box rather than a nuc as it would be better for the bees plus I wouldn't have to wait 6 hours for the bees to get back in the box as the nucs had their entrances open and their bees flying whilst the travelling boxes were closed . Unfortunately of the four travelling boxes some were quite obviously leaking bees, as the auctioneer pointed out. I certainly didn't fancy driving home with a leaky box of bees in my Corsa.

I was pretty certain the first box was leaking so I didn't bid on it, a few people did and someone won. I didn't think the second box was leaking so I thought I'd best go for that one. It wound up with myself and a middleaged lady bidding against each other for that one. I'm not sure if she was particularly attached to that box or like myself she was wanting to take a box she knew wasn't going to fill her car with angry insects but as we bid against each other she was evidently not happy and was really glaring at me. Well that was my second auction ever and I feel that I bred a little enmity there, however I'm fairly certain that people bidding against you is what normally happens at an auction so I won't worry about it too much. I won the next travelling box of bees for the princely sum of £140 plus £7 which I think the 5% extra charge was toward the association hosting the event or the venue maybe. I was now the proud owner of a second box of stinging insects. Ace!

My second box of bees.

I got these home without a problem, sat them next to the first hive, removed the travel lid and popped on the crownboard, contact feeder, eke and metal roof from the first nuc for a few days and gave them some 1:1 syrup to drink. The whole lot looked a little precarious so on went the ratchet strap whilst I assembled the commercial frames I was going to put in their brood box.

Imported Royalty

As soon as I thought the hive may be queenless I started looking online for a new queen but nobody could supply one for a month. Whilst I waited I observed the existing brood hatching and eventually even the drones had hatched too but still no eggs were being laid. Of course if I had 2 hives I could just transfer a frame with eggs into the hive and let the bees deal wth it, but I only have the one hive. Eventually I ordered a new Buckfast queen from Fragile Planet. They rang to verify delivery days as obviously you can't leave a queen bee in a box in your local sorting office for a week till you pick it up and the lady was delivered.

Except she wasn't. Quite. My housemate texted me at work to let me know a 'While you were out' elivery card had come through the door so in my half hour lunchbreak I drove home got the card and went to my sorting office. I was lucky and the parcel had got there before me so I was handed a cardboard box with two finger sized holes in the sides and a warning about live bees written in big letters. I wondered about the two large air holes but it turned out the queen and ger attendant bees were in a tiny plastic queen cage taped to the inside of the box.

The new queen was marked with a dot of white paint to show she was hatched in 2011. Other than that she looked suspiciously like a worker bee. As queens go she was something of a midget.

I've read that delivered queens are often dehydrated upon arrival so I dribbled some sugar water over one end of the cage, popped it back in the box and left it in a darkened room whilst I went back to work. In the afternoon when I got back again I opened the hive and pushed the cage into the honeycomb. I put it with the opening pointing upwards so that if the attendant workers died before being released their dead bodies wouldn't trap her in the cage.

Five days later I opened the hive and removed the empty cage. By my reckoning the hive was queenless for 4 weeks before I added the new queen so I was a bit concerned about laying workers and so on. I couldn't see the queen at all but to be honest with her being a such a midget I wasn't too surprised, I also suspect the white paint doesn't shows up particularly well in the hive and it may even have rubbed off her anyway. However I did find that something had been laying eggs in there so I'm fairly confident she's survived and been accepted.