An Inspector Calls Again

Warmer weather at last, bees are flying and in the pond frogs are doing unspeakable things to each other. Yesterday, marking what may at last be the start of the beekeeping season I gave both hives a contact feeder full of 1:1 syrup.

Dinner is served

I actually had 2 litres of 2:1 (2kg sugar:1 litre water) syrup that'd been left over from last year. Rather than binning it I'd put it in a bottle and left it in the freezer for a few months. After defrosting it in the fridge I added 1.5 litres of hot water , it won't be exactly 1:1 syrup but I think it will be pretty close. I stirred it a long time and then with a few ml of Vitafeed Gold poured it into the feeders and placed them over the feeding holes. I could see there was still some fondant on the top bars but I left it there for the time being, I didn't open the hives at the time as I wanted to minimise disruption to the bee plus I was planning to do that today because..

Today was my second of three visits from the Regional Bee Inspector as part of the European Union Pilot Surveillance Programme for honey bee health. The previous inspector had changed roles and I gather is still working with bees but in a microscopy type role now and his position hasn't been filled yet (job vacancy there for someone who knows their bees and bee diseases) so today's Inspector, a chap with 45 years beekeeping experience, had been drafted in from another region.

The visit started off with a discussion of changes in my apiary, colonies added, sold, lost, merged and split. The only change to mine was the loss of one colony in the nucleus. There was a few questions about what I've been doing with my bees since last inspection too such as any treatments, I'd given them one treatment with Oxalic Acid back in January which was duly noted. He mentioned about heavy bee losses all over the UK particularly Scotland this year and how the past few years weather has been very different from that of previous decades. This time last year my hives has been teeming and I was removing drone brood to control varroa. The strange weather this year has meant the colonies are about 5 weeks behind their normal spring buildup. Next we went outside to meet the bees.


During the previous visit in September samples were taken from all three hives, in this visit samples were only being taken from hives showing signs of disease. I felt Hive1 may be a little touch and go as numbers were far lower than Hive2 so the inspector suggest we start with Hive2 to avoid transferring across any disease that might've been present in Hive1. With the crownboard off the inspector quickly located the Queen and some existing capped honey remaining. I like tot think the presence of capped honey meant I got things right preparing the hives for winter, it also explains why they hadn't paid much attention to the fondant and told me that the fondant on top of the frames wasn't necessary. We scraped of the existing fondant, I noticed a few bees had actually been trapped in the fondant when I'd placed the crownboard over it so I'll have to take a little more care next time -maybe smoke the bees down into the box more than I did. There were some eggs visible so she'd only started laying within the past 3 days. One frame had a small number capped brood on it, they weren't particularly well grouped. So she'd started laying on a previous warm day but stopped again. He felt this might indicate she wasn't mated well and may need replacing. I'll have to watch how she does as laying progresses.

Hive1 was less populous than 2, as I'd expected. There were a few eggs but the pattern better than in 2, the Inspector felt that despite there being less bees in Hive1 she may actually turn out to be the better queen. In this hive he spotted a few larvae who weren't quite correctly adhering to the vertical cell wall and had slumped a little. Segmenting of the body was still visible but did look a little relaxed. Out came a matchstick. The test for Foul Brood is to dip a matchstick into the dead larvae and pull it out, if it has Foul Brood the contents will stick to the stick and the cell contents forming a rope of slime. That didn't happen with these so no foul brood. I wonder if perhaps they're in early stages of a little sac brood, going to be a case of watchful waiting there really. I removed the fondant from this hive too.

He'd also spotted pollen being brought into both hives and no obvious signs of bee diseases in either. Given the high mortality rate in Hive1 I'd saved a jar of the dead bees in the freezer which he took. Looking at the jar he said he could see a black, hairless, shiny bee in the jar -that'd point the finger at Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus (CBPV), although there'd been no visible signs of it amongst the living bees. CBPV affects honey bees all over the world and is endemic in the UK. Normally present to some degree in most colonies it only seems to become a significant problem when the bees are crowded and unable to forage such as has been the case with the long winter. There is no treatment for CBPV but as they're no longer crowded, now foraging and I've pulled out the dead perhaps the colony will work through it if it hasn't already.

He had a quick look a the dead nucleus, I'd already pulled out most of the dead though there were a couple with their heads still in the cells. He concurred with my thought that the white mould visible on the comb had grown after the bees died too. There was still capped honey on the frames which the bees hadn't eaten having refused to break their cluster to get it. Whilst it certainly looks like they'ed starved he took the sample of dead bees from here that I'd frozen for testing in case there was anything more sinister at work.

Frozen bees

I'll check BeeBase at a later date to see if examination of the dead bees yielded anything unusual, but so far it seems there's nothing too major to worry about. No obvious signs of diseases, eggs being laid in both hives, pollen being brought in and capped honey still present in both hives, no varroa mites spotted. He felt Hive1 would build up rather well assuming the weather doesn't do something unexpected. Just need to keep an eye on the brood pattern in Hive2 and consider replacing her if she doesn't get her act together.

Bring Out Your Dead!

As winter progresses the bee colonies die back. Those dead bodies can accumulate on the hive floor  reducing the ventilation element of the wire mesh floor and even blocking the exit so living bees can't get out. I don't imagine it's a whole lot of fun living in a house where the floor is covered with rotting corpses and doors jammed shut by more of the dead. Normally the colony will remove dead bees from the colony carrying the dead away and dropping them away from the hive, when it's too cold for flying they can't do that and the tiny corpses accumulate. Last winter seemed happy to hang about and lasted well into spring which caused a few problems for the bees including meaning they were cooped up in the hive longer than expected so there's more dead on the floor than you'd expect in a normal year.

There's probably a few ways you could remove the dead bees but possibly the easiest, quickest and least disruptive is to whip out the corpse covered floor and pop in a new one. I gather that the original National Hive floors had a slope so water could run out which also gave the floors half turn symmetry so you could just pull out the floor turn it over and put it back under the hive, that's no longer the case with open mesh floors, it's easier to make horizontal ones and it's not like water pooling is going to be a problem.

New hive floor, flat packed like Swedish furniture.

Having seen the floor of Hive1 was deep with dead bees last week I ordered a new floor from Fragile Planet. Couldn't find them cheaper anywhere else, and it included a correx board to check the mite drop. Before assembling it I treated the wooden parts to a coat of shed and fence paint. Normally I wouldn't put that stuff on surfaces the bees will come into contact with as it probably has a pesticidal component to stop bugs gnawing on your sheds and fences but I don't want the floor to rot out from under the hive.

Treated for the weather

After a look at the instructions and viewing of the online video I knocked the new floor together. The floor it was replacing has a landing board -a sloping piece of wood the bees can land on before entering the hive. I didn't really have to time to add on to this floor as I wanted to get it under the bees asap.

Hive floor ready to go in

Landing boards seem to be more for the beekeeper than the bees anyway. It gives us a chance to see what's entering and leaving the hive, and whilst the bees will use it it may be something of a liability for them often being wet, providing purchase for mice and providing a place for bees to loiter whilst wasps pick them off. On the other hand some people suggest they make the bees' return easier to the hive after foraging.

After a quick peek under the crownboard I could see the bees were taking the fondant I'd  given them the previous week. Good news. Prising them apart with a hivetool I broke the propolis seal the bees had glued the brood box to the floor with and removed the brood box with the crownboard in place.

Deep in dead bees

As you can see it was pretty deep in dead bees. So deep they were actually blocking the exit stopping the remaining bees being leaving the hive at all. To keep the exits clear over winter beekeepers usually poke a stick or a wire into the entrance and waggle it about to create a clear space but with so many dead it didn't make a difference for this hive. I moved the corpse carpeted floor onto the ground the putting the new floor on the two beams supported by breeze blocks which I call a stand I popped the brood box back on, then replaced the insulation and roof. This time last year the bees were already active and filling supers, hopefully I'll be removing the insulation next week and the bees will begin building numbers as the weather warms.

I took the floor away from the hive and gathered the dead bees into a large metal bowl. Gave the chickens some but they weren't too impressed. Then I gave the propolis a quick scrape before lighting a butane torch and scorching all the wood and the mesh of the floor. Doesn't look as pleasant as it did now but my scorching was thorough so there shouldn't be any unpleasant germs or virii in there to infect the next set of bees it comes into contact with.

A thinner layer of dead bees in Hive2

That done I repeated the procedure with Hive2. A quick look under the crownboard showed me they're working the fondant. It had an almost complete carpet of bees on the floor but it was only one bee deep and hadn't blocked the entrance this time. This colony is larger than Hive1 at the moment and the bees were more active than I'd expected so a few puffs of the smoker were called for.

Floor, landing board, reduced entrance, and dead bees.

I placed the recently scorched floor from Hive1 on the stand and put Hive2 onto that taking away it's original floor. After removing the bees I scraped and scorched the last floor before putting it away till next spring when I'll probably repeat the whole process. In case you hadn't noticed beekeepers spend a lot of time cleaning things. The dead bees I've put in a sealed bin liner for now. A mate said she could add them to her compost heap. They might attract a few wasps but it's far better than popping them in the wheely bin. If the weather continues to improve I'll be starting proper hive inspections soon.

Hope there's no queen in this lot..