Wax Moth pays a Visit

Today's inspection yielded some good news :) Starting with Hive1 I checked the frame of eggs I'd added last week to see if the bees were making a queen. I was happy to see that they weren't and also there were new eggs on the comb. Going through the frames I saw the red marked queen who I'd been unable to locate previously. It seems she had a bit of a break from laying but has resumed again. I think I'll leave her in there, if the bees don't like her they can supersede her -I'm pretty sure they know a lot more about queen bees than I do anyway. Some of the brood from the frame I'd added had hatched out too and whilst I could still see some sacbrood infected larvae numbers were lower than in previous inspections, which I think may be in part due to the increase in workforce.

I had a look at the rapid feeders I'd put on both hives and found a few drowned bees in both. I pulled out the dead ones, my chickens seemed to enjoy their syrup coated bees. I think I may roughen the sides of the plastic island the bees walk down with some coarse sandpaper to give them better purchase. I noticed Hive2 had taken most of the syrup down already whilst Hive1 had taken just a little so far.

Drowned Bees in Rapid Feeder

Opening Hive 2 I was surprised to see a small pale moth between the follower board and the hive wall. Wax Moths can pose a danger to bees. They lay eggs in active hives and their larvae called Wax Worms then live on the beeswax, bee larvae casings and developing bees. I tried to catch it unsuccessfully and eventually it fluttered out of the hive. Bizarrely I found the moth sat on the frame perch after I closed up the hives and was able to take a photo of it before killing it.

Greater Wax Moth

After looking on google I've decided it's probably a Greater Wax Moth (Galleria mellonella). They're actually pretty common things and their larvae are often used as fishing bait or to feed reptiles and carnivorous plants, as well as being eaten by people who aren't too squeamish about entomophagy. The bees should be able to control wax worm within the hive but numbers are still a little low so I'd guess that's how it got into the hive. For the bees the space between the follower board and hive wall is technically outside of the hive as they see it so maybe they'd've got it when it went to try and lay eggs in the comb. Of course it may have already done that. Wax worms can also damage the wooden frames of the comb too so I'll be looking out for any on the next inspection.

There were no swarm preparations in either hive so far, but I did spot a couple of drones wandering about in both hives. The numbers currently being low though they're not being made in the sacrificial drone comb yet.

Spot the drones, there's at least 3 of them in this picture

Changing Urban Landscape

A potential problem for urban beekeepers is people. Other people. The prospect of a couple of hundred thousand stinging insects living next door is probably fairly daunting for most people in this country -especially those not too familiar with bees. When siting my hives, well intially my hive, I had to position them to minimise the chances of any neighbour/bee encounters.

Luckily bees fly in straight lines. When they fly over an obstacle they maintain that height instead of tracking the terrain. So my hives have been sat in a corner of the garden with the entrances facing a wall and my neighbour's shed. The bees have been flying over the wall and shed then crossing neighbouring gardens too high to bump into anyone. Good plan Batman.

For reasons unknown the garden wall is far lower here than the rest of the wall. There was a section of rather decrepit wooden fencing sat on top of the low wall and leaning on the shed, it was falling apart though so before getting the bees I got a couple of pallets, a plank of wood, some screws and some wood stain and made a new section to replace it.

Palletwood panel and shed

Recently my neighbour decided to replace the old shed it with a brand spanking new corner shed. If I'd known I would've just closed the hive entrances up the night before work was started but I wasn't aware until the old shed started coming down.. I suppose about three hundred quids worth of new shed (some assembly required) sat in our shared passageway for a fortnight could've been a hint but as I rarely use the passage I hadn't noticed the quarter ton of cut wood neatly stacked there. The upshot was the bees were already flying and if I'd closed up the entrances returning foragers wouldn't be able to get back into the hives. Foraging bees are the older workers, they also do guard duties. When you get too close to a hive they're the ones who start headbutting you and if you're a bit slow on the uptake they're also the ones who'll sting you. So, a cloud of confused angry forager bees building up was something to avoid.

I lit the smoker and sat it on the hives to calm them. With some 20mm plastic mash, a signpost, part of a door, half a shed side and my suddenly redundant palletwood fence section the neighbour and myself made a quick barrier for the bees to fly over. It gave the garden a bit of a redneck look but did the job and next door finished taking the shed was taken down.

Shanty town chic

The neighbours had some spare bricks and decided to raise that section of wall in line with the rest of it. For that the barrier would need to come down. Believe it or not bees don't see red, so that night by the light of a bike rear light I jammed some sponge into the reduced hive entrances locking the bees in. I also took the opportunity to put some landscape barrier down on the ground in front of the hives as its a bit awkward to reach if anything starts growing there. I popped some stones and a couple of breezeblocks on top of that so the chickens don't just rake it up and threw some lose soil and mulch over the fabric.

The wall grew

The builder came along and added eight courses of brick in an afternoon before laying a concrete footing for the shed, when I got back from work I opened up the hive entrances again. The bees had stored food in the hives and I'd also put feeders in place so it wasn't a huge hardship for them.The next day the bees were free to go about their business whilst the new shed parts were being painted. When it got dark I got out my bike light and locked them in again so they didn't bother people whilst they were assembling the new shed. Better to err on the side of caution keeping bees in urban areas.

The next day I was surprised to see a few bees on the outside of the hive. As the day wore on there were far more of them buzzing about than I'd expected. I did briefly wonder if there was a gap in one of the closed up entrances and they'ed been coming out of but the bees seemed to be arriving rather than leaving. I lit the smoker stood it with the smoke drifting above the hives and put some crownboards and correx sheets on top of the wall to make them fly higher.

In the evening I opened the entrances, it was too late for bees to be going out but it gave the foragers knocking about a chance to get back in. Next door the shed was taking shape but wasn't quite finished so I figured I'd need to seal them in another day. It'd been pretty hot and stuck inside the hives the bees had no access to water -well they had some 1:1 syrup I'd given them to stimulate brood but that was all and I'd given the mesh floors a quick spray of water, but I thought they might need a more substantial water source for another warm day so I poured some tap water into the indentations in the tops of the rapid feeders I'm currently using. I didn't know for certain that the bees would find it, afterall it's dark in there and it has no scent but it seemed a good idea. In retrospect what I think I should've possibly done was just place a wet sponge above the crownboard that the bees could've reached.

By about five o'clock the next day the shed was finished and in place. There was a small gap between two parts of the trellis I spotted a couple of bees flying through so I put a little plastic mesh over it. There's a yellow and green leaved creeper of some kind near it so perhaps I'll be able to train it to cover this gap and remove the wire mesh. Opening the hive entrances again it wasn't long before bees started flying again. I soon spotted a coroner bee carrying away a tiny chitin clad corpse for disposal away from the hive.

New wall, trellis and shed behind the hives

 Talking to the neighbours they'ed observed a large wasp attacking the bees on one of the days they were open. I suspect wasp numbers will be pretty low at the moment but given how low in number in the colonies are I've decided to put out a wasp trap for now.

Water Gathering and Frog Life

Another inspection done and I'm pretty sure Hive1 is queenless. I'd marked with red paint last month but haven't seen her since. I also couldn't see any eggs in the hive this time. It's quite possible that after marking her the workers took a dislike to her and offed her, bit odd they didn't start making a replacement though. There's also always the chance she's still in there but really good at hiding and not currently laying any eggs but I doubt that and if she's not laying eggs she needs replacing anyway. When I inspected them on Friday I moved a frame with eggs from Hive2 over to Hive1 so if they need a queen they can get on with making a new one. When I inspect them next week I should know for certain as there'll be queen cells on the fame I added. If they've not made any Queen cells then the Queens in there and I need to revisit the drawing board -or more likely find, squish and replace her.

Today it's been warm and sunny and the bees have been busy gathering water. In their first year they only collected from the bird bath but this years they're collecting from the nearest pond as well.

"We'll be fine if we act like a sparrows."

Sunny day

Air traffic over the pond was a bit honeybee heavy but I spotted a black and yellow thing flying about that was different. It was a Sunfly or Helophilus pendulus, a hover fly which wikipedia tells me is associated with waterbodies, such as my pond. They need very wet soil for their larvae which eat rotting matter and the adults pollinate plants for us. Helpful things to have round the garden, which is just as well as they're apparently very common.

Sunfly sunbathing poolside

Collecting water is a hazardous job for bees. There's always the chance they'll fall in. Failing that there's a load of frogs who'd like a bee or two to dine on. There's a large contingent of tadpoles in both ponds at the moment and adult frogs can be seen and heard in the garden too.

Common Frog Tadpoles

Come on in the water's fine.

"Hello bee, what's it like having legs? I'm thinking of growing some myself."
"Well I like em. I've got six and they have these dead useful grippy things on the end."
"I'm thinking of four, two big ones and the back and a couple of small ones at the front."

Stand off.

Slow Start

This time last year the hives were bursting with bees, Hive2 had two brood boxes on it and I was preparing to split off a second colony. Not quite the same story this year unfortunately. Today's inspection showed the buildup is still very slow. Hive1 had 5 seams of bees and Hive2 only three. York Beekeepers Association have put back their 2013 auction to June because of the lateness of the season start so if my colonies haven't built up numbers by then  I'm toying with the idea of uniting them and purchasing a new colony.

In Hive2 the queen has been laying and despite her patchy start seems to have managed a fairly normal brood pattern. Ideally there should be a large oval area of capped brood with young uncapped brood on the edge and eggs around them.

Hive2 are getting their act together albeit a little slowly.

There's a few gaps in the capped brood but they've mostly got healthy looking brood in them whilst some have eggs in them. The uniformity of the pattern is used as a reflection of the quality of the queen, whilst that pattern was good there was still not a lot of it. I'm not entirely sure how long I ought to wait and watch before decided to requeen or not but as long as she's laying eggs if she starts failing the bees will take matters into theirs own hands (well okay claws) and replace her themselves.

Scarlet Lady

Marking the queen made her far easier to spot, and it doesn't appear to have done her any harm. Bees breathe through holes in their sides called spiracles and their exoskeleton has a waxy coating making it an impermeable surface unlike animal skin which is a selectively permeable membrane so the bit of paint shouldn't really effect her like it would affect a human.

The only red thing in the hive

The bees have been busy bringing in some yellow pollen too which you can see in the above pictures. I'd fed both colonies recently but neither had taken much syrup down so I removed the feeders today and poured the now mouldy syrup away. the brood pattern in Hive1 was pretty poor due to sacbrood. Last year I had this in Hive2 and after removing the infected larvae it seemed to clear up. There's no treatment for it but it's something the bees should be able to take care of themselves normally. Sacbrood is generally seen as something some bees are genetically susceptible to and the usual solution is to replace the queen. It might be that a stronger queen has brood less susceptible to it or it may just be the break with no brood that causes the virus to die back. As this colony hasn't had it previously I'm inclined to think its presence is due to the small size of the colony so if, or hopefully when, their numbers increase they should be able to cope with it.

Patchy brood pattern

I didn't actually see the queen in Hive1 today at all. There were a few eggs though. I also spotted a large drone wandering along the comb, probably the first of the season in my colonies. Also watched a couple new bees emerging from their cells. All in all not a great start to the year really. Both colonies building slowly and Hive1 dealing with sacbrood. On the plus side both colonies have stored food, new bees are emerging and they're not preparing to swarm yet.

Queen of the Sun

I recently stumbled across a documentary film about bees. Queen of the Sun is a 2010 documentary film distributed by Collective Eye -an interesting non profit company that specialising in documentaries on a number of subjects. Queen of the Sun seems to have garnered some recognition, it's Wikipedia entry mentions a few awards it's received and shortlists it made.

You can buy it from Amazon, of course, or the direct from from the film's dedicated website. The more naughty people out there can probably find a Torrent file to download it illegally with bitTorrent -but of course the downside is you'll burn in hell for undermining the entertainment industry. I think there's about 22 seeds at the time of writing, not that I'd do that of course.. It doesn't seem to be on Usenet at the moment.

The film opens with well let's call her an eccentric lady, a less charitable person might call her a whackjob but we'll go with eccentric. She's dancing apparently topless but for a load of bees on her upper body and lower face. I don't have boobs but if I did I don't think I'd want to be stung in them. Truth is that when bees swarm they're fairly placid and when people do those bee beards or in this case bee beard and bee bodice they attach a caged queen bee to themselves and the bees swarm to them. Still don't think I'd fancy it. I'm also inclined to think it's buggering your bees about unnecessarily. There's a shot of her at the end of the credits too, just in case you missed it at the start.

The first speaker is a Biodynamic Beekeeper called Gunther Hawk, some of the footage of him was also used in the 2009 documentary film The Vanishing of The Bees. Gunther co-wrote Bees in 1998 and in 2002 wrote Toward Saving the Honeybee so evidently he's been around bees for a long time. He also created a honey bee sanctuary, Spikenard Farm, which is shown in the film and appears to be still functioning today. He was trying to frame the honey bee crisis as a learning opportunity. He was shown pulling a huge frame of bees from a very large hive armed with a smoker and hive tool but no protective gear on -this seemed to be a common thing amongst the beekeepers shown through the film.

Next up was an organic queen and bee breeder by the name of Kirk Webster. His contribution to setting the scene was pointing out that without bees we'd be living on bread, oatmeal and a couple of nuts. Then we had Carlo Petreni, an Italian chap and founder of the Slow Food, the Slow Food UK website is worth a look. He tells us there'll be no agriculture without bee. Michael Pollan, author of a number of books I've not read including The Omnivore's Dilemma. He tells us bees pollinate about 40% of our food. By now the watcher is possibly a little confused about how much of our food is actually pollinated by bees but probably pretty sue that losing them wouldn't be a great thing for us.

Next up as another eccentric chap in France who's shown working his hives clad in only loose white trousers, some beads and a pair of sandals. Yep he's beekeeping topless, and  very nearly trouserless too going by how thin his kegs seem to be. He talks about the love he feels for his queen bees and goes on to stroke the bees with his moustache telling the camera they enjoy this. I'm not entirely sure how he knows this but they don't sting him in the face to prove otherwise.

There's some information about the history of bees and honey in relation to human spirituality and nutrition. There's a stop start animated sequence representing an archaeologist finding honey buried with Tutankhamen. The the chap tells us that honey contains a lot of silica, which is in all things then it gets a little hippie with the silica content linking man to everything else or something. I think my hippy filter kicked in at this point and I zoned out for a few moments. Coming back into reality with a bump we're told how a chap called Rudolf Steiner, father of biodynamic agriculture, had foretold industrialisation would damage bees. Whilst he appears to have been right the food industry marched on with industrialisation anyway. He was also right in 1923 when he suggested it'd be a bad thing for central Europe if the National Socialists came to power in Germany, which goes to show just because you're right doesn't mean people are going to listen.

Various practices are offered as causes of Colony collapse Disorder with Bayer being named as one of the pesticide manufacturers responsible for the current mess. In a literary nod to Cervantes an Italian chap compares beekeepers fighting pesticide companies to trying to fight windmills. The film goes on to discuss negative aspects of monoculture using the California almond harvest as an example. Apparently it takes three quarters of the USA's honeybees to pollinate the almond trees which are grown in a massive monoculture which nature itself would be unable to sustain. Gathering so many bee colonies together allows diseases to spread rapidly between them and when they leave the almond harvest they take any diseases they've acquired home with them. How antibiotics used on bees find their way to people -although in the UK we're not allowed to use them ourselves anymore. Artificial insemination of bees and genetic considerations are also touched upon. The various theories on Colony Collapse Disorder aren't yet proven, and certainly weren't when the film was made, but they're presented as if they are known facts -although I personally suspect monoculture and pesticides are the biggies.

The film has previously been criticised for it's lack of balance and presenting theories as facts but something I'd draw issue with is some of the speakers. There's a variety of them ranging from biodynamic beekeepers to physicists and biologists with a range of credibility for example I'm not certain what qualifies a physicist to talk about beekeeping over any other beekeeper for example, and a guy who brushes his bees with a his moustache strikes me as a little unwise. Some of the speakers make claims that are simply wrong, for example an Australian chap states bee venom and rattlesnake venom are the same the only difference in quantity. A little googling shows me they're actually chemically very different substances. And of course there's the various beekeepers dislike of protective equipment. Away from the various speakers there's footage of a few unusual hives including a large egg shaped one, and some other large hives I wasn't familiar with. There's also some someone using  lift to nadir a Warré hive and some great video of young varroa mites. Unfortunately the whole thing has an air of new ageism which may well appeal to die hard hippies and crusties out there but it really made me cringe in places and may serve to undermine it's message.

Moving up in the World

Beehives are usually kept on some sort of stand. This is to keep the hive out of the damp, make it harder for certain pests to get into the hives, facilitate airflow  below the hives and to allow the beekeeper to work the bees more comfortably. There seems to be a range of different height stands in used to suit different purposes and people, they range from a few centimetres to about four feet in the case of the White house bees.

As I start my third season I decided mine needed to be higher, after all inspecting 2 hives worth of frames means picking up and putting down 22 frames and they can get heavy. My plan was to replace the individual breeze blocks with stacks of four laid on their largest face for stability. However when I got to B&Q I found it worked out cheaper to buy a smaller number of blocks twice the size of the original ones so that's what I did. They're actually Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) blocks for anyone feeling particularly pedantic today. They're lighter than regular concrete blocks, there's a few other reasons people use them for building but none of them are particularly relevant to my using them here. These were 21.5cm wide and 27.5cm high, nice round figures chosen by the building industry there.

Hives and AAC blocks

Having acquired the AAC blocks I needed to move the hives out of the way. I removed the garden boxes and roofs to lighten the hives, as the season is getting off to a very late start this year the brood boxes were very light anyway. Leaving the crownboards and floors in place, aided and abetted by an extra pair of hands I moved the populated brood boxes onto a wooden hive stand and started arranging the new blocks.

Hive2 sat on top of Hive1

Whilst I was deciding how to arrange the blocks foraging bees were returning and finding their hives weren't where they expected them to be were buzzing about exactly where I was arranging the blocks. Being so large the blocks were stable on their thinner longest side so I popped the hives back in place, replaced the roofs and garden boxes then stepped back to admire our handy work. The blocks stacked this way were 55cm high, plus the wooden beams. At this point I realised they were a few inches too high. Whilst I'd be easily able to inspect the brood boxes once I started adding supers I'd probably run into difficulty.

Too high damnit!

The hives were actually very light to move what with colonies being smalls at present and very little stores so far so I figured I could move them by myself. To avoid a cloud of returning bees forming where I was trying to work again I waited for the temperature to drop so foragers would have returned to the hives before I moved them again. Removing the hives and turning the blocks on their sides dropped the height of the blocks to 43cm, almost the height of a super. Just right. I hope. I'll have to see how it is for a year before I decide.

The right height!

I currently only have 2 hives as the nuc died out whilst Spring was masquerading as Winter. However I plan to create a new nuc colony at some point so shuffling the old blocks and adding a half an AAC block previously liberated from a skip I put the new nuc at the same height as the other two colonies. By this time next year I should have decided if they're the right height or not.

Finished, for a while anyway.

The Masons

On 19th March a friend decided to do some work on her garden. One of the things she did was drill some holes in a fence post to see if anything would nest in them. She had expected maybe some garden spiders to occupy them but looking today she noticed some of the holes were blocked .

Top and bottom holes have been blocked up by something

She spotted some insects buzzing in and out of the holes and like any sensible person reached for her smart phone to photograph them and sent me the images in this post. They turned out to be black bees with orange fur on their abdomens. When I saw the initial picture I thought they were Common Carder Bees, they certainly look similar but the behaviour was wrong as Common Carders are ground nesting and have more fur on their backs. Bearing in mind the mud plugging up holes it didn't take me tto long to realise they were some sort of Mason Bee. A little internet research eventually helped me identify them as Red Mason Bees.

Red Mason Bee

The original pictures were 8 megapixels and taken on a Samsung Galaxy S2. I asked what size the holes were as they were evidently right for these bees. She said they were maybe wide enough for a pencil and maybe a finger deep. You can make your own mason bee box, or buy one but evidently some slightly random holes in a fencepost are adequate.

"This looks like a nice place to raise some kiddies"

One of the holes was blocked with mud and the other with what looked like chewed wood. I initially wondered if some sort of wasp might have made a home in one as they seem to make use of chewed wood but apparently mason bees do too so perhaps the difference in material was just down to what the bee found available first.

Different materials have been used to block these holes

Red Mason Bees are actually a type of solitary bee but they can often bee seen in what appear to be groups when they're nesting in close proximity to each other or collecting mud from the same place but they're actually working individually just drawn to the same resources. Not as familiar to people as honey bees they're very important fruit pollinators particularly for apple trees.

"Found me a Hobbit Hole!"

They're called Mason or Masonry Bees as they tend to nest in holes in masonry as well as wood, enlarging them as required. This can lead to some damage to buildings but isn't usually something to worry about. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings recommends blocking holes before bees nest in them and placing nest boxes elsewhere to entice them away from buildings if there are concerns about their impact.

I'm not sure if it's down to the choice of materials or the size of the holes or something else entirely but whilst they've been busy in my friend's garden I notice the solitary bee box in my garden appears to be languishing unused at the moment. It may be relevant that my friend has some raspberries growing in her garden and nearby are some cherry and crabapple trees.

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