Flying Visit(or)

I was relaxing at home this evening when I heard a loud banging and buzzing above me. Looking up I could see something large and going by the way the light was being moved with each crash fairly heavy was flying about below the ceiling rose. Given the noise I thought maybe it was a drone but the shape looked a bit off and it was moving very fast. Eventually it went behind a picture (Dali's "the Elephants, 1948, in case you were wondering) so I used my phone camera to sneak a look. I could only see the silhouette but it was clearly something cleaning it's antenna. I figured it was probably a wasp as I've seen them doing the same thing so often. Definitely looked a bit big though. I pulled in a bee jacket and some rubber gloves then removed the picture (it's a print, not an original -I don't sell quite that much honey yet). Before I got a good luck it took flight and went into the light shade. I tried knocking it out but only succeeded in damaging the paper globe. Doh. To get a better look I decided to  stick my phone in there with her.

Vespula Vulgaris in my now to be replaced lightshade

That was her. A Common Wasp , Vespula Vulgaris. She looks a bit on the chubby to me though. I can't be sure but I think she may have be a Queen who'd been woken up early from hibernation by the heating. It took a while to catch her and my light shade is a goner but I managed to get her into an old honey jar and take a couple of photos for posterity.

Those wings look longer than her body

Head shot

I then took the jar lid off and flicked her into the back garden. I think she may have been a bit dehydrated as once in the jar she wasn't doing much apart from staying still and posing for photos.

Wasp Control

Sometime in September I noticed the number of wasps in the out apiary rocketing upwards. It's in a very nature friendly location so I'd expect a few wasp nests to be in the vicinity. Last year other people poisoned two wasp nests but I prefer to let them be as they're useful pollinators and they do a great job of aphid control, but as the wasp season ends and there's no wasp larvae left to provide sugary sustenance for the adults they were turning to the apiary for food.

Wasp picking over dead bees between pavers

Two wasps trying to take the same dead bee

It's normal to have a few wasps flying around below the hives collecting dead bees to take home but from mid-September there were wasps attacking bees like the one trying to dismember a Drone below (don't worry I separated them with the flick of a finger). I was also finding them assertively trying to get into hives when they were open, they were landing in my syrup buckets when I fed the bees, even in the actual feeders.

Wasp attacking a Honey Bee Drone

Wasp visiting an open hive -I gave her a prod

Falling in the jug I use to fill the bee feeders

Dessicated Wasps that'd somehow managed to get into a feeder

This wasp landed on the syrup for a drink,
whilst the bees fed in their tunnel an inch away

It was clearly time to put out  some traps to thing the wasp numbers. I got some Wasp Trap Bottle Converters from eBay, four for 99p -wasn't exactly breaking the bank. Cut crosses into a couple of 2 litre drink bottles and pushed the 'converters' in. They're pretty simple things really, you could make some from mesh but they're so cheap it's not worth the effort. To bait the traps I used some fruit juice, beer, a little cat food and the magic ingredient dead wasps. I read somewhere that their scent attracts other wasps so with a small jar and some tweezers I caught about fifty wasps which I used to bait my two bottle traps.

Bottle traps

When adding wasp traps to an apiary it's important to place them correctly. I put these two downwind of the hives and in the flight path of visiting wasps.It seemed to work pretty well. A couple of days later there were quite a few in there, I took the picture below a couple of days later. At the time of writing the dead wasps form a layer over and inch deep. Whilst I'd rather not be killing them nature's plan for them is a slow death by cold and starvation so I don't worry too much about these traps really.

The traps are working

Wasps entering a stack of Supers

I also noticed a lot of wasp activity in the corner of a stack of Supers. they'ed found their way in through a small gap in the stack floor. I guess any wax moth invesitgating the stack would've had an unpleasant surprise. I've blocked up the hole now. Hopefully it won't be full of angry well fed wasps when I open the stack in Spring.

Wasp Nest

Last week a mate showed me a wasp nest in a birdbox in a local allotment site. We stood about three feet in front of the entrance watching wasps coming and going and even though they'ed reduced the entrace hole using paper they'ed made we could see wasps just inside doing whatever wasps do when they're home. I decided to go back with some protective it -bee jacket, gloves and jeans without holes in them, to take some close up photos and video of the entrance. Would've been an interesting post. Unfortunately when I went back the wasps had been poisoned and the nest removed.I too some photos anyway. Going by their markings and the wood they've used for the nest I think they're Common Wasps (Vespula vulgaris) but it's hard to be sure.

Top of the dead nest and a few dead workers

The top of the nest was on the ground. A structure made from paper created by the wasps chewing wood. Like bees they mae hexagonal cells but they orient theirs vertically unlike honeybee worker and drone cells. They'ed made a five tier nest in the bird box and I think this was the unfinished top tier. I found the other four tiers still joined together floating in a water butt. Word to the wise: if you're throwing insecticides around keep them out of the water. The four other tiers were rectangular as you'd expect having been built in a birdbox and joined by a stem of paper in the middle -it was a bit lie a gross little accordion. You could see capped cells in which wasps larve will've been metamorphosing.

Worker Wasps and Larvae

There was a little group of dead wasps and larvae along with some of the wasp's paper that was probably over the top of the nest. You can see the size of the larvae compared to the adults.

Talking to the holder of the next plot along his comment was that if he'd known about them he'd've been happy to have the birdbox and it's compliment of wasps moved to his plot rather than poisoned. Wasps are pretty useful things for the vegetable and fruit grower, looking at a post from the resident wasp expert in the Beekeeping forum it's reported the average wasps nest consumes a staggering 4 to 5 tons of aphids in it's life cycle. That's a lot of time and money the allotment holder wouldn't have to spend on controlling aphids. Of course there's the concern about stings but I've not been stung by one for years myself -and as a beekeeper I probably meet more wasp buzzing about my hives than most.

September insect activity

By now most beekeepers will probably have removed their Supers and be dusting off the honey extractors for this years crop by now but the weather seems to move a little slower over here in Hull. At present the hives are ..well.. hives of activity. One lunchtime last week filmed a few minutes of the activity  outside the hives, holding my phone near the entrance of Hive3

Activity at the Hive entrance on 5th September 2014

Looking back at my records I can see I took in the 2011 crop on 1st September and the the 2012 crop in late September. This year I'll be removing the Supers in late September again. It's not a particularly good crop to be honest. Hive3 with the two united swarms gathered plenty of honey in their brood box but refused to put any of it up into the super. I tried bruising the cappings of the ripe honey to encourage them and they did move the stuff but instead of moving it upwards they moved it sideways so it's actually still in the brood box. Contrary creatures. Hive1 and Hive2 have been using the supers but neither are looking particularly full either and I don't think that's likely to change before I remove them. I've really only left the super on Hive2 as it's housing so many workers at the moment.

I took my phone down to Pearson Park and the Wildlife Garden on Monday , the bees there were still busy too and like mine still have a super on their hive. As I had my phone in my pocket I took a few photos of pollinating insects at work in the park.

Honeybee on a yellow rose

Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax)

Honey Bee working flowers on a tall marginal plant

Bumble Bee in a flower

Different Dronefly (Eristalis sp.) on a Coreposis gigantea

In my garden I spotted a couple of Harlequin Ladybird Larvae, these things look like monsters from a bad sci-fi film. But what's unusual is according the UK Ladybird Survey they should've been at this stage in July and developed into Pupae in early August and into adult Ladybirds  by now.

Harlequin Ladybird Larvae.

Still on the predator front I noticed a lot of spiders on my plants at the moment too. One keeps making a web by the hives and catches the odd bee. I tend to brush that aside on a daily basis. I think they're mainly European Garden Spiders.

European Garden Spider

Actually a couple of weeks ago when Hive3 was being particularly boisterous, I'd walked to the other end of the garden and was brushing off angry bees off me I saw a spider looking like a disgusting dark grey gobstopper attached to my arm. Regular readers may have picked up that I'm not massively keep on the eight legged garden dwellers. I may have shouted a rather short word the neighbours probably didn't want their kids hearing as I batted it off. I suspect that it's round shape meant it was carrying eggs.

I also saw the very first wasp of the season buzzing round the hives. It didn't stay still long enough for a photograph though. I'll be expecting a few more to be appearing soon.

Last week on Newland Avenue I also spotted some sort of large wood boring wasp. It was over an inch long and looks pretty horrific -looked worse in flight- but that long pointy bit at the back looking a little like a needle is actually for making holes in wood where she'll lay her eggs and these things don't actually have a sting at all.

Wood Boring Wasp of some kind

Winter Feeding

Well with night time temperatures approaching freezing it's too cold to feed the bees syrup so it's time to drop some  insulation and a block of fondant icing onto each hive, leave the bees to it and hope for the best. I popped the insulation on a few days ago and instead of making this years fondant decided to buy some ready made. Fondant is that heavy white icing you get on cakes. In theory you can buy it from local bakeries so I went out to get some. After visiting a few shops it became apparent that most high street bakeries don't actually do any baking onsite -bit of a con but that's the high street. I wound up buying some Dr Oetker branded fondant from a local Sainsbury's. Hope it's not got too much additives in it but the ingredients list looked a little longer than the three items I used to make the stuff last time.

Winter fodder for micro livestock

After pressing the fondant into some food boxes I drizzled a few drops of Vitafeed Gold on each block just for good measure, slipped on a veil and some gloves and went out to feed the bees. Upon opening up the feed hole in the Nucleus crown board I was overwhelmed by a lack of bees 8-O It was about 9 degrees Celsius at the time so I'd expected active bees to come streaming out as soon as I opened up. Looking into the hole I could see a few bees making their way up the comb face to see what was happening but not the numbers I'd been hoping for so I'm wondering if maybe they won't be surviving the winter.. I popped on the fondant block replaced the insulation and roof then after feeding the other hives I went back to the nuc and had a look under the fondant. I was pleased to see more bees had gone to it and were making a start on the fondant, but I suspect this little colony may be a bit touch and go.

When I opened Hive1 I got the reaction I was expecting. Lots of worker bees who were already under the feed hole came ambling out to see why some fool had opened it. I placed the fondant block on hoping not to squash any bees and replaced the insulation and the roof then moved onto Hive2. It took a few seconds before workers started investigating the opened feed hole but they got there. I'm thinking Hive1 seems to be the strongest at the moment which corresponds with the Bee Inspector's visual survey of the hives back in September.

Hive	Combs of Brood	Combs of Bees	Diseased Brood
Nucleus	2.5	5	0
Hive1	7	18	0
Hive2	6.5	13	0

Colony inspection from September 2012

A comb is one side of a frame so the 5 frame nucleus has a total of 10 combs and the main hives have 11 frames which is 22 combs apiece. As you can see the nuc was about half full of bees and a quarter full of brood. It's not entirely impossible that it's still about half full but the cluster is positioned towards one end of the nuc rather than directly below the feed hole. Afterall the nucleus is ventilated only by it's entrance rather then through the open mesh floor which I keep closed, so there be some reason to do with airflow affecting their position within the hive. At the time of inspection Hive1 was slightly more populous than Hive2 and going by response to my opening the feed hole that still seems to be the case. As I mentioned in a previous post Hive2 had had some Sacbrood but since physically removing the affected larvae it hadn't recurred by te time of the inspection.

I popped back outside with the stethoscope to give the colonies a listen. I'd expected the nuc to be noticeably quiter than the main hives but that wasn't the case as far as I could make out, fingers crossed for them. Next weekend I'll be looking under the roofs and insulation so see how quickly they're taking the fondant and depending on how fast it's going down I may feed them again this.

In a normal cold period the bees do very little but generate heat slowly consuming their stores. However we've had occassional warmer days so they've been going out to forage which uses more energy than just keeping the cluster warm would use. Unfortunately on those odd days there probably hasn't much if any nectar out there for the foragers to bring back so all that happens is the stores get depleted for no return.


As I've mentioned before wasp activity has been very limited and late in season this year. I have seen a couple round the hives and spotted a couple near the nuc entrance which moved me to put  a trap out but it didn't catch anything. On Monday I spotted a very large shiny wasp investigating my house wall.

Saxon Queen

Around here you tend to see German Wasps and Common Wasps but they both have a set of 4 yellow markings at the base of the thorax whilst this one had 2. After looking at far too many pictures of wasps and identification charts I've come to the conclusion she was a Saxon Wasp or Dolichovespula saxonica if you're so inclined. These are usually found further South, according to my know-it-all mate Google and whilst Saxon Wasps are a particularly large species the long abdomen on this one suggests to my entemologically untrained eye that she was a queen. Saxon wasp colonies die off every year with only the queen surviving so I'm guessing she's abandoned her sisters so to find a place to make a cocoon and hide out. I left her to it and I'm really hoping she's not going to surprise me with a nest under the bed in Spring.

Edit 9/11/12 Checked to see how the fondant's going down yesterday and it's barely been touched. You might think that sounds bad but it actually means the bees in the cluster have adequate food stores so they've not had to go looking for more food. I'll be leaving the fondant in place for them though just in case.

Wasps At Last

It's been a difficult year for bees, as but they're not alone in that, it's also been a tricky one for wasps. The wet summer has made things difficult for Queen wasps to establish new nests, assuming they'ed survived hibernation and the aphid populations they prey on are down too. Up until today I'd only seen one wasp in my garden all year. Today marked their arrival at the hives. There was nothing like the numbers from last years population boom but there were a few buzzing around. After a little look at an online wasp identification guide I'm pretty sure they were Common Wasps or Vespula Vulgaris if you're feeling pedantic.

Common Wasp with a dead bee

I doubt numbers will be getting high enough for me to have to put traps out but we'll see how it goes. The ones I saw today were content to pick up dead bees from the ground. They have no use for some parts of the bee such as the head, legs and and wings. I filmed one butchering a dead bee.

Whilst my the camera phone work is a little shaky  you can see at the start it removes the bee's head, next it chews off a wing. After rolling over the bark chipping you can see it making short work of a couple of legs. After this it evidently decided it didn't like being watched and took the bee behind a blade of grass and a bark chipping to finish work in a little privacy before flying off taking the thorax and the abdomen.

I think it's fair to say as a society we're a little prone to over reaction when it comes to wasps. The usual reaction upon seeing a wasp is flap about or try to kill it, both of which bump up your chances of being stung. However as you can see I was holding a camera phone about 4 inches from this one whilst a couple more buzzed about out of shot and I didn't get stung, bitten, murdered or otherwise molested by any of them.

The Hornet Mimic Hoverfly and Other Visitors to the Hive.

Not had an update for a while as I'm working on a couple of bee related projects that I'll making a larger post about in the near future. August is really the time to harvest honey and start mite treatments, but as it's remained warm and the bees have still been flying I've left the supers on and plan to remove them next week, in early September. The deep national super is really heavy and the shallow super on Hive2 is about half full. This week I noticed that the bees in Hive1 have largely ignored the box of used wax I put below the roof whilst those of Hive2 have almost emptied theirs. The queens are still laying eggs in both hives and the bees haven't been trying to make queen cells so I guess they're happy at the moment. There's a lot of stored food in both hives, in fact Hive2 has 2 complete frames of nothing but honey all ready for the winter.

National Deep Frame full of Honey

This evening, in the garden, I saw what appeared to be a cross between a horsefly and a hoverfly  on steroids. Eventually it took off and from it's flight it was evidently some kind of big (ugly) hoverfly. A Google search later and I'd identified it as a Hornet Mimic Hoverfly or Volucella Zonaria. Apparently their larvae live in wasp nests alongside the wasps and eat the detritus found in them. They're common in the South of England but not the North East. I've certainly never seen one before so I'm going to go ahead make an uneducated assumption it's the result of climate change and/or this year's bumper wasp population boom. Really ugly thing but quite harmless. I didn't get a picture of it but here's one of a wasp investigating the outside of Hive1.

Vespula Vulgaris investigating Hive1

Actually during this weeks hive inspection I noticed a wasp fly into Hive1 whilst it was open and a bumble bee checking out Hive2 when that was open. Cheeky buggers. I also found  small spider in the roof space of each of the hives.

Wasps

Spotted some wasps flying near the hive today, and a dead one on the floor in front of  them. Wasps are happy to steal honey from a hive, being carnivorous they'll probably happily eat bees, steal eggs and larvae too. There's also some larger hornets will decimate a colony in next to no time but I don't think we have them in England yet thanks to our climate and the channel. Wasps are physically stronger than bees and in a one on one fight the smart money is on the wasp. However a healthy honey bee colony should be able to fight off a random wasp -albeit at the cost of a couple of bees, but enough wasps can overpower them and even kill off the whole colony. What beekeepers do to keep their bees safe from wasps is put out a wasp trap near the hive, although I've always wondered how many extra wasps are drawn toward the hive by the bait in the trap. There's other things you can do too like reduce the size of the hive entrance to make it easier for the bees to defend and not spill syrup and honey all over the place so the wasps aren't so attracted in the first place. I may put a small trap out there myself whilst hive2 is queenless but I'd rather not as wasps play their own part in our ecology. Whilst bees get their protein from pollen wasps get theirs from eating other insects and whatever bits of meat they can find. That makes them pretty useful around the garden as they eat the bugs that're dining on your plants, as well as pollinating them.

Vespula Vulgaris (I think)

Addendum (23/7/11) Turns out there's more wasps than usual this year to the point that the National Bee Unit (part of FERA) have published an advisory about wasps for beekeepers. coincidentally today after inspecting the hives I saw quite a few wasps and saw some attacking individual bees so I guess the common and german wasp does kill adult bees. I stood and watched for a while, killed six of them with a stick then made some small wasp traps.