Into the hive they go

After leaving the bees in their nuc for for 3 days, with a contact feeder placed above a hole in the crownboard in an eke I'd knocked together just for the occassion, I decided it was time to pop them into the hive. My plan was simple, just open the nuc and the hive and move the frames from one to the other quickly and with no fuss. So having put one shallow and five deep Commercial frames into the hive I them opened the nuc and started transferring the frames over. There was loads of brood in there and I also spotted two big fat queen cells two thirds of the way up one frame. As every new beekeeper gets told these need to be cut out to prevent swarming so cut them out I did. I closed up the hive and felt fairly pleased with myself for having thwarted the first attempt to swarm.

I hadn't seen the queen or inspected the brood for eggs but felt she was bound to be in there somewhere. Anyway as you may recall I'm using a Commercial brood box, however the bees were on National deep frames. The National frames are a bit smaller so what tends to happen is the bees make a lot burr comb in the space that's left making it difficult to manage the hive. The simple way round this is to attach some wood to the sides of the National frame to pad it out to the size of a Commercial frame. So I made some frames and drilled holes in them so I could quickly cable tie them in place (one tie on each end at the top and one at the bottm in the middle. I then opened up the hive a few days later and installed them -which would have been a lot easier if only I'd had three arms rather than the more traditional two..

The cable ties visible are from my National to Commercial adapters

Whilst adding the frame adapters I had a a good opportunity to look at the comb contents. I could see a lot of capped brood still but no uncapped brood and no queen. Uh oh. I was using a contact feeder on top the hive using one of the National brood bodies as an eke for the first couple of weeks. When I next inspected the hive I still didn't see any queen and no eggs or uncapped brood. Plenty of syrup was being stored though and lots of pollen was being brought in. I decided to stop feeding for a week in case the reason for the lack of eggs was that the bees were filling every cell with syrup but on my next inspection I found this wasn't the case so resumed feeding. I suspect that the queen who was marked according to the documentation had either left the hive in a cast swarm immediately before I purchased it or immediately after I got it home whilst I was at work, however the nuc was still visibly crammed with bees when I opened if so it may have been that they had balled her due to overcrowding. Either way the two supersedure cells I'd cut would have probably been enough to correct the problem when one of the queens was hatched and mated. Shame I'd gone and cut them out then.

Arrival of the Bees

I went to my to local beekeeping association's annual auction on 10th April, 2011, to buy me some bees. I'd never been to an auction before but saw one once in a James Bond film years ago. It wasn't much like that. The first part of the auction was beekeeping equipment -hives, bits of hives, tools, clothing, white buckets (yes buckets -foodgrade apparently), and a load of stuff that I didn't have a clue WTF it actually was including a very small door that seemed to open into the ground.

The auctioneer, an older chap, seemed happy to display his hundred or so years of knowledge by explaining what most of the kit was -apparently the door to the floor was something called a foundation press. I moved about the hall a bit, got a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea (I'd been out clubbing the previous night and breakfast is the most important meal of the day afterall). At one point I was sat next to a middle aged couple who were complaining to each other about the auctioneer's apparent need to explain every item and it's use in detail. Maybe they already knew everything but whilst it may have slowed proceedings slightly I certainly learnt a few things which I hadn't found in my research thus far. It turned out my crownboard was actually a Snelgrove board and I could've got a couple of actual crownboards for very little at the auction but having seen the price of bees online decided to save my funds for the actual bees and so didn't bid on any equipment.

Eventually came the auction for the bees. We wandered outside to where some small boxes and a larger one were sitting on the floor. They turned out to be one hive (brood and a half), and a few 5 and 8 frames Nucs which I was surprised to learn is pronounced "nuke" as in "nucleus."

I didn't bid on the hive full of bees but did bid unsuccessfully on the the first couple of 5 frame nucs. The third nuc I won. Go me! After the fourth interest in the bees seemed to tail off so I could've actually bagged a bargain if I'd hung fire but what the hey I didnt want to risk coming away beeless and going by the price of bees online I did very well parting with £130 for an inspected and apparently very full five frame nuc.

The nucs (and hive) all had open entrances and the bees were flying about -presumably asking each other how on earth they'ed wound up in a field behind a village hall that morning. I had no idea what was next but noticed nobody was hurrying to pick up the bees. I overheard someone say they were going to wait for the flying bees to return to the hive then take their nuc home about 6pm, they sounded like they knew roughly what they were talking about so I figured that was a good plan for me too. Off I went to visit a mate in a nearby village for a cuppa -and to beg a bit of kitchen sponge to block the nuc entrance for the car ride home.

Later I returned to the village hall where a couple of guys had also returned to collect their bees. I wandered round in front of the hive with and I saw my bees for the first time.

They're really in there, honest

I had come prepared with a brand spanking new ratchet strap, from the Poundshop no less! I also had my smock with a veil (in a nice olive green rather than one of those white astronaught type affairs). Being female the flying bees took aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages to get into their nuc before I could drive them home. Whilst waiting I spoke to chap who'd had the misfortune to purchase an apparently queenless nuc the previous year and was hoping to do better this year. Bet that was annoying. Anyway eventually the bees were in so I stuffed a blue bit of sponge in the entrance and ratchet strapped the roof onto the box before loading it into my car boot for a very careful drive home. When I got home I popped the box onto the stand I'd made (some pavers embedded in what had been a bit of flowerbed with three breezeblocks on them and two treated pieces of wood running across them. My housemate who'd expressed some trepidation about their arrival was pretty interested and I think pleased to see their arrival. I pulled out the piece of sponge and retreated whilst wondering what had possessed me to do so without my smock and in a sort sleeved tshirt.

I had had visions of a horde of angry bees boiling out of the box but that didn't happen. I reached around the front with my phone to take a picture of the bee nuc in situ.

The nuc is open for business

 I decided to leave the nuc alone for 3 days for the bees to get used to the geography of my garden before moving them into the hive.