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.

Frames. Something's not right.

OK the hive is ready, the frames have been taken apart and scorched, boiled and cleaned with flames, harsh chemicals and elbow grease. I'm pretty certain no germs survived that. Next thing is to get some foundation and reassemble the frames. Whilst Googling for information on foundation I came across this table of foundation sizes courtesy of Paynes Bee Farm. Looking at the table and looking at my frames I began to think something wasn't quite right. My frames looked too big, and the shallows were quite blatantly more than 5" deep.

After a lot of head scratching and little measuring I realised that the hive I'd bought wasn't actually the hive I'd thought. I'd believed I'd purchased a national hive with two shallow supers. But I hadn't. What I had was a Commercial brood box and the two supers were actually National brood boxes. Oops. That's a huge hive. Well I hadn't seen a beehive in real life since the introductory course and re reading the advert for the hive as it was advertised it was pretty clear that the seller knew nothing about beekeeping himself so the advert hadn't been too clear. In the immortal words of everyone's favourite jaundiced everyman Homer Simpson "D'oh!"

Still whilst I have 2 National brood boxes and their frames as well as the Commercial boxes and frames having read a lot about brood and a half and double  brood boxes I've come to the conclusion that a Commercial brood box is probably the way for me to go. When I get bees they'll be in a National nuc. National frames are smaller than Commercial ones, but seriously cable tying some wood to pad out the frames isn't really rocket science is it. Yes, I'm one of those people who's happy to blaze their own trail ignoring the conventions of the nation.

I decided to bin off the Queen excluder I'd got with the hive as although it was a nice wooden framed one I didn't think I had a hope in hell of sterilising it without melting the plastic grille -not with the resources I had to hand anyway. I also needed a couple of new bits of frames to repalce a few that broke during cleaning as  well as the foundation -I also wanted to make up a short frame in the hive to do the sacrificial drone brood varroa control thing, so I decided rather than wait on mail order I'd make a road trip to Thorne to pick up the bits I needed. Postage on anything bee related seems kinda pricey anyway. So off I went to get a plastic queen excluder various bits of Commercial and National frames and foundation for Commercial Deep, Commercial Shallow (for the drones) and National Deep frames.

Thornes shop in Wragby managed to elude my satnav but I found it eventually. It was rather strange actually. It's like a beekeeping supermarket with prettymuch everything in it except customers, and bees. Yep I was the only customer there -well it was a weekday I guess. Anyway I got my gubbins then drove off home to make up the Commercial frames I anticipate needing later.

Incidentally the old comb that I pulled out of the original frames I melted and strained, now I have a half kilo block of beeswax in a plastic bag. I gather I can't let the bees have it in case of disease so at some point I'll hopefully exchange it for foundation.

The Hive

Having read "Bees At The Bottom Of The Garden" by Campion and Hodgson and "Get Started In Beekeeping" by Waring and Waring I decided to take the plunge and buy myself a beehive. On eBay I found some guy selling a load of 'refurbished' beehives -brood boxes, 2 supers, all frames, roof, floor, feeder, crownboard and queen excluder. It took a few weeks to arrive (forever in eBay terms) but eventually I got the postcard to say a courier had tried to deliver it whilst I was out so off I went to pick it up and haul it home.

It was held together with a ratchet strap and wrapped with pallet wrap. First problem was the ratchet strap. I've never used one before so had no idea how to loosen it. A couple of minutes with Google and I had it removed. So here's the hive it it's glory:

Looks pretty good in that picture really. However it was actually in a pretty poor state. The seller's idea of refurbished was closer to what I'd call knackered. The boxes were all pretty loose, plenty of cracks scratches and dents in the wood too. It was  also full some suspiciously dark looking drawn comb, and quite a lot of straw, wood shavings and other random crap from the farm building it'd been stored in -still it was a bargain. I ordered a varroa mesh floor from Fragile Planet and figured I'd better get a second brood box and roof in case I needed it for swarm control later so got them from the same chap in pretty much the same sorry state.

Cleaning up the hive took ages. I pulled out all the frames and cut out the drawn comb with my trusty bolo machette (a must for both the garden and the kitchen) then dissassembled each frame and scraped off the remaining wax, removing bits of wire and nails as I went. Having done that each piece of wood was scorched with a butane torch then boiled in some very strong caustic soda. My housemate wasn't too impressed with the huge pan of caustic soda sat in the kitchen for a week, and by the time I finished I'd got some fairly impressive chemical burns on my arms so she was quite right tobe concerned really. After being allowed to dry the parts were then soaked and scrubbed in a soda crystals solution and rinsed with hot water. The scrubbing was pretty back breaking work but I wasn't really going to take any chances with giving my new bees a hive with disease in it.

Boiling frame parts in caustic soda

To fix up the boxes and roofs I scorched them very thoroughly with the butane torch. I found some large aluminium nails in the back of my local hardware shop where I also picked up some wood filler. After drilling guide holes I banged the nails in to get the boxes good and square, then woodfilled the cracks. I decided I wasn't sure abot the fibreglass roof skins so I pulled them off and scorched underneath then and ordered some metal skins to replace them. Of course the metal skins didn't quite fit so it took a few hours with the lump hammer before I got them on -as well as a tube of no more nails, some short clout nails and a bit of drilling. Must be great living next to me!

I decided to treat the wood but didn't really know what to use. The floor I'd got from Fragile Planet had a nice green treatment on it so I emailed them and asked what it was so I could paint my 2nd hand stuff the same. They replied pretty promptly saying it was a standard fence paint which I could get from B&Q or Home Depot, helpful folks I'll use them again. So off I went for a few litres of green shed and fence paint.

Treating burnt wooden boxes

I gave all the external surfaces two coats of the stuff. I also added a little roof cover across the front of the brood box complete with drip groove as some my neighbours mistakenly believe that leaving a light on all night deters thieves and I figured that'd confuse the bees -as well as make it easy for potential thieves to see what they're up to. Incidentally if I see someone stood outside a house at night with the garden light on I'll think nothing of it, whereas if I see someone stood outside a house in the dark using a torch that really will get my attention. Turn those lights off people -have a look at the International Dark Sky Society website for a few more reasons why you should be doing this anyway. Anyway getting back on topic after adding a landing board to the varroa floor the hive was pretty much finished, just needed to pop foundation in the frames and then get me some bees.

The Start

Last year I decided to do something outside my usual sphere of activity and fairly randomly opted for beekeeping. This blog is the diary of my beekeeping experience so far, my mistakes, successes and well mostly mistakes really -or as I like to call them "learning opportunities."