Removing the Candy Boards

This winter I placed Candyboards on all four of my hives. It's not something usually done in the UK, I found the idea on Canadian and American websites. Provided the bees have enough stores a Candyboard shouldn't be necessary, but I figure if we have an unexpectedly long Winter like that of 2012/2013 I'd rather spend a few quid on sugar in December than replacing starved bees in April. It's the second year I've used them and whilst it appears to have been successful the fact is both Winters have been very short and mild. Whilst the sugar is placed on the hive as emergency food left to their own devices the bees will happily take it and fill the comb. That would mean less space for eggs and slow down the spring build up, the lack of space might cause them to swarm too.

The bees in Hive4 were using the top entrance and there was a lot of bee poop clearly visible. Possibly a touch of nosema or dysentery. This hive is on a solid floor unlike the other three and was the only one the bees have been using the top entrance for. The lower entrance on this hive isn't reduced and is clear of dead bees.

Needs a clean

There was some faeces on top of the sugar too in this hive. Whilst you'd expect to see some poop on the outside of the hive it's not really normal to find it on the inside -although it's a bit questionable as to whether or not the bees consider the cavity they made 1in the candyboard as inside or outside of the hive proper.

Some things you shouldn't do where you eat

..and a little more on the top bars

There was some more on the top bars below the hole in the sugar. I'd been planning to reuse the uneaten sugar from the boards to make syrup and whilst I'm not sure what temperatures nosema spores can stand I decided it'd be prudent to throw away this sugar. I washed it down the sink and gave the empty wood and mesh frame a long soak and scrub in a strong Sodium Carbonate (Soda Crystals!) solution and let it air dry before scorching it, I'll be treating these bees for Nosema too.

Opening Hive2 I could see the bees had also been taking sugar and for reasons best known to themselves had avoided the top entrance. They'ed taken all of the pollen substitute I'd left in the centre of the candyboard and there were still some bees licking the empty plastic wrapper.

Taking sugar

There was pollen substitute in that plastic wrapper

Populous colony for February

Hive2 was looking very strong with about 8 seams of bees, no doubt thanks to the mild winter. Moving on to Hive1 they'ed also avoided the top entrance and taken far more sugar than the rest, they'ed also taken all the pollen substitute.

Party food! ..although it was intended as emergency rations..

Hive1 looking well populated too

I think there was about 6 1/2 seams of bees in this hive. When I took the roof off this hive I found condensation on the underside. Shouldn't really affect the bees as there's insulation between then and the roof but probably doesn't do the wood much good so I used a Weed Wand to force dry it -it's not much use against weeds.. Last up was Hive3 with it's insanely aggressive black bees. They'ed also made a start on the sugar and the pollen but not taken all the pollen. Like Hives 1 and 2 they'ed also avoided the front entrance. Unlike the other colonies which were clustered towards the middle of the hives these were clustered towards the back where it's warmest.

"Why are they called Black Bees?"

Goth bees, good workers - very Industrial

So that's my fourth winter with the bees. So far I've lost one colony and that was a nucleus in the protracted 2012/2013 Winter. They'ed starved despite having food stores as they wouldn't break the cluster to go get it, I suspect if they'ed had a candyboard above them they may well have survived so I'll continue to use these board for the time being. I could probably make them a lot smaller using less sugar and making it easier to get the bees out when I remove them. At the moment clearing them involves a combination of brush, smoke and patience.

It's still too cold to do a full inspection but three of the colonies are looking fairly strong whilst Hive4 I'll be treating for possible Nosema. Hive4 was on a solid floor as an experiment to see if they fared any differently. It wasn't particularly scientific and there could be other factors I'm unaware of but they're my only colony that appear to have Nosema or dysentery so I'll be sticking with open mesh floors I think. In other news I'm currently working on an out-apiary and hope to move one or two hives out there in the the next couple of months...

Candyboards revisited

Last year I placed candyboards on the hives  in case the bees needed extra food over the winter.A candy board is basically a layer of sugar placed above the frames, it's an idea I've seen in American blogs and means wherever the bees are in the hive there will be sugar directly above them. The bees shouldn't really need this extra food but I prefer to take a belt and braces approach just in case something goes wrong -such as the Winter being too mild and the active bees blazing through their stores too fast or the Winter dragging on for too long and the bees running out of food. It's cheaper to buy a few kilos of sugar you don't need than replacing a lost colony in Spring, and the unused sugar can be reused to make syrup later anyway.

The boards I use are just a thick wooden frame with a wire mesh to support what's essentially a huge sugar lump. Other designs I've seen have been more like a crown board with slightly deeper sides and the sugar stuck to the underside of the wooden board rather than supported by a mesh. I already had 3 empty boards from last year so just needed to make one more for the fourth hive.

Making a fourth candyboard

Using some more or less 40mm x 40mm wood cut at 45 degree angles then screwed and glued together with a small entrance drilled in one side and a wire mesh is inserted and stapled in place by the sides. My old Argos stapler seems to be dying a death after only 16 years use so I wound up banging the staples in with a hammer whilst listening to Therapy.

Last year I'd put about 5KG of sugar in each frame, given how little the bees had used this was obviously excessive. This year I decided to put just 3.75 kilos of sugar in each board, I could probably use less but need to make sure the sugar lump will support it's own weight as there's some flexibility in the wire mesh. Actually in hindsight I could probably put a rigid support across the middle but that'd probably make it a bit harder to pull out the unused sugar in Spring.

Mixing a few kilos of sugar with minimal amounts of water is more like mixing concrete than cooking and I snapped a spatula last time. This time I bought  a stainless steel gardening trowel to mix it with and used a huge food grade plastic bucket I'd acquired courtesy of my local Subway. Well I say it was from Subway but it could've been absolutely anyone dumping two large buckets of breadmix with the labels scratched down the side of their shop next to their bins the night before they were due to be emptied... Anyway after a thorough clean they're proving useful.

Stir it up

Empty boards lined with plastic wrap
-don't want to glue them the utility room floor

As well as sugar the bees need protein which they get from pollen. You can buy pollen that bees have collected but you can't give this to your bees in case it harbours viruses or other disease that won't affect the humans it's being marketed to. I added some Candipolline Gold Bee Feed which contains pollen that's been sterilised with Gamma radiation -yep beekeeping is so olde worlde... I put a small block of Candipolline in the middle of each board with plastic on the top and sides to keep it from the sugar but the bottom side open against the mesh so the bees can access it from below.

Candipolline Gold Bee Feed with Pollen

With the Candipolline in place I then added the wet sugar with the trowel and more or less smoothed it out. Hopefully I pressed it together enough for it to form a solid block when it's finally dry. If the bees do use this sugar they'll need to add water to it before they can use it, in theory there should be some condensation in the hive that they can use for this although I've also read that the huge sugar lump serves as a moisture sink helping to keep the hive dry -however it works it seemed to go well last last year anyway.

The filled Candy Boards will need a while to dry

The wooden frames I've made are deeper than they need to be so there's just over an inch of air gap at the top. The empty void will just make it harder for the bees to heat the hive so I decided to fill the gap with insulation. The gap was too narrow for a block of Kingspan so I decided to use layers of thin insulation (Selitac 5mm expanded polystyrene floor underlay) glued together and attached to a plywood square that would rest on the sugar. I used a plywood layer to stop the bees nibbling the insulation and reduce the chance of water condensing on the insulation's foil surface and dripping onto the sugar.

Emergency Rations for Hive4, just in case.

After a couple of weeks drying time I put the candy boards onto the hives with the Kingspan insulation on top and then the roof on top of that. It's been pretty mild so far although the temperature doesn't seem to affect food stores as you'd expect - general consensus seems to be that whilst colder weather uses more stored food to keep the bees warm warmer weather means more activity in the hive which also means more food used. Hopefully it won't be needed and I'll be dissolving the sugar to make 1:1 syrup in Spring.

Insulation on top, just needs the roof and they're done.

The Dead of Winter

The beekeeping season has started and I've not posted for a while, been very busy with sales of my propolis and lip balm products. I've also made a Facebook page to help publicise my online sales, if you fancy a look it's over here: Hivemind Heavy Industries by Hull Bees.

12th March, 2014, sunbathing weather for some.

In early March I noticed Bumble Bees sunning themselves and beehives starting to appear in fields heralding the start of activity for bees and beekeepers alike.

Beehives ready to pollinate a field

Towards the end of 2013 we were told to expect the worst winter in 60 years, so I was expecting something along the lines of The Day After Tomorrow, albeit a little less crap than that 126 minutes of pure disaster. With that in mind, the winter I mean not the movie, and the poor year that was 2013 I'd decided to give the bees a huge amount of emergency stores using candy boards, a method which I gather isn't particularly common in the UK. Basically each hive was given about 7 kilos of white sugar formed into a huge sugar lump, a third of a pattie of pollen substitute and an extra entrance near the top of the hive. This meant that if the bees ran out of stores wherever they were in the hive they would have food directly above them -if it's too cold bees will starve to death rather than breaking the cluster to go get food stored elsewhere in the hive. The top entrance is for in case the main entrance at the floor of the hive gets blocked with dead bees. It turned out that like The Day After Tomorrow the much touted worst winter didn't really get off the ground either and save for a few freezing nights it was probably the mildest winter I've seen.

Lighting up my smoker and grabbing my hive tool on 15th March I decided to give the hives their first inspection. Whipping the lid off of Hive3 the sugar appeared to be intact but I could see the bees had
been taking the pollen substitute. In the picture below the dark area is empty space left where they've taken the yellow substitute. They need pollen for rearing brood so I figured that's possibly a good sign.

They've been nibbling.

This was the hive holding the captured swarm and was expected to be the weakest of the three colonies. When I removed the candyboard and I was able to see just one seam of bees. Not great, but the queen was already laying so I'm hoping she'll be able to ramp up worker numbers in the next few weeks.

Only one seam in Hive3

I did a very brief inspection and found they had a lot of stored food left over -probably on account of the mild Winter -that and the small population in this hive.

That's a lot of stores for Spring

They obviously weren't going to need feeding. In August this hive had had 4 seams of bees so that should mean a lot of dead bees somewhere. After the Winter of 2013 the hive floors were deep in dead bees but this year was very different.

Let the bodies hit the floor..

Removing the brood box to check the floor it was obvious that the bees had done a pretty good job of disposing of their dead sisters over the mild winter. With the floor cleared and swiftly blowtorched back on went the brood box, crownboard and roof.

Hive 1 and 2 both had about 4 seams of bees left in each and plenty of stores. As well as taking the pollen substitute they'ed also made a start on the sugar and had been making tunnels above the seams.

Hive1's Candyboard, slightly chewed.

Hive2's Candyboard, not much pollen substitute left.

There was some brood and eggs visible in both brood boxes so the Queens were getting into the swing of things. Getting the bees out of the tunnels in the candy was a bit tricky and involved a lot of shaking, brushing and the judicious application of smoke. There were more dead in Hive 1 & 2 than in Hive3 but that was to be expected given that there were larger colonies, but still nothing approaching the numbers of the previous year.

Dead On The Floor

Having removed the candy boards I knocked out the sugar into a large tub which I brought into the house giving my housemate the impression my bees had spent the Winter refining white sugar. :) I put it in an upstairs room to dry out in full sun and I shall probably be using it to make syrup later in the year.

The Candy Board

My bees have had a pretty ropey year and although I've fed them syrup till they're no longer taking it I'm not entirely convinced they have enough to get through the winter ahead. We're expecting the worst winter in 60 years according to long range weather forecasting although it's not unknown for the Met Office to be a little out I'd rather err on the side of caution so in case of any shortfall in the bee's food stores I've decided to add a Candy Board to each hive

A Candy Board, also called Sugar Board, is basically a wooden frame full of sugar that goes in the hive directly above the bees. If they run out of food and start to climb upwards they can find it and start eating. Obviously pouring a few kilos of sugar into a square wooden frame is just going to leave you with and empty frame a messy floor  so you need to add a little water to make the sugar cake together, put a wire mesh to hold it all up and add something to hold the wet sugar as it sets. They're fairly simple to make really, there's quite a good 'How To' here or you could just read on.

First up was making the wooden frame. A Commercial brood box has the same outer dimensions as a National brood box which is 46.5cm square. I decided to use some 45x75mm wood for the project, it doesn't really need to be that thick, 22mm will do in fact but I wanted them to be very solid so they'll survive a few winters and I figured the extra thickness might reduce heat loss too. There's a few ways you could put the frame together I opted to cut the ends of the sides diagonally at 45 degrees and screw them together. Time to break out the mitre saw that's been kicking about in the shed for a few years. It's meant to be bench mounted really and previously I've used it on the ground standing on it to hold it steady but this time I bolted the base to a piece of scrap wood and clamped that in the workbench which kept it still and made it so much easier (safer!) to use.

Guess the patio needs a clean then

I also rubbed the blade with a wax candle to stop it sticking to the wood and the top bar of the saw to keep it moving smoothly too. A little while later (okay a little while, a coffee break, and another little while later), I had 12 isosceles trapezoids, a tired arm and a couple of blisters. I also got some wire mesh, the holes need to be big enough for the bees to get through unimpeded, I opted for 13mm mesh just because that's what the shop had.

Pretty much finished. Not.

Turns out holding the frames square to pre drill and screw the corners together was a tricky business but eventually I had 4 square wooden frames held together by three screws per corner.

Squares

 That done the frames needed wire mesh stapling into place, and a hole drilling into one side of each. The mesh was stapled to the inner vertical sides of the frame so they didn't interfere with the fit of the candyboard to the hive. The hole has two purposes one is it allows ventilation and the other to allow the bees a second entrance for in case the lower exit gets blocked, by for example a load dead bees or snow or whatever. I used a 10mm drill bit for that. It just needed to be big enough to let one bee out and given that a bee space is 9mm wide that should be adequate for an easily defensible entrance.

Empty Candy Boards

With the woodwork done they just needed the food adding. I bought 15kilos of sugar so I could put 5 in each board. There's recipes for the filling all over the net, one here, it seems to come down to one cup of sugar per five pounds of sugar and a spoonful white or apple cider vinegar if you like. I had some left over 2:1 syrup that the bees hadn't taken so I opted to use that instead of adding water. Normally you place newspaper of something similar over the mesh to hold the syrup as it sets then later the bees chew through it to reach the sugar. However I had read on another blog that this could mean there were bits of paper and pulp in the left over sugar which a thrifty beekeeper might want to use to make 1:1 syrup in the spring, so instead I used some plastic wrap on the bottoms of the boards so I could pop the sugar in to dry then remove it before adding the boards to the hives -should make it a little more accessible to the bees if they need it too.

7 kilos of sugar and a little syrup

Using a huge stainless steel pan I dropped in 7 KG of granulated white sugar to start and added some syrup and started to stir. It was really hard work. I added more syrup as I progressed till the sugar was all a little damp then I started adding it to the boards.  The rest of the sugar I mixed in smaller batches before adding to the boards.

Small gap near the entrance/exit.

There needs to be a small gap in the sugar near the entrance/exit hole for ventilation and so the bees can get in and out of it if they need to. Some people leave in wooden blocks or a plastic box whilst the sugar sets, I just pulled the stuff back so there was a small gap. I did the same in all three boards -although in the picture below you can't actually tell.

Pollen supplement

I'd read a few people talking about adding pollen supplement to their candyboards so I bought a kilo of Candipolline Gold from Fragile Planet. Looking at the website it says it's a made of sugar, milk and egg proteins and and sterilised bee pollen -sterilised with gamma rays no less. Wasn't it Gamma radiation that turned Dr Banner into the Hulk? Well if I have angry green bees in spring I guess I'll know why... I wrapped each patty in plastic except for the side that's exposed to the bees, I'm not sure if the plastic is totally necessary but all the images I've seen have the plastic still on so I figured I'd follow suit.

Candy Boards, filled and waiting to go

Next up they just had to dry. I decided to pop them on the hives when I opened them to do the Oxalic Acid treatment  as I don't want to be messing them about too much when it's cold. When the sugar had dried it was set like rock. As well as providing emergency food if needed the huge block of sugar should also act as a humidity sink helping keep it nice and dry in the hives over winter.

Candy boards on the hives

A fortnight later I put the boards onto the hives. After a little smoke to push the bees down into the the frames I place the boards directly on top of the brood boxes with the entrance/ventilation holes facing the same direction as the hive entrances. Hopefully they won't be needed and the sugar that's left in Spring will be used to make syrup but if the bees do find themselves short on supplies over winter it's there for them.

Now, much to their relief no doubt, I get to leave the bees alone for a few months.