TWO BLOKES BEES @twoblokesbees - Tumblr Blog

Went along to our site today probably last time this year. We've had a couple of checks over the winter mainly if their had been fallen branches. 2 hives had bees flying from them. Took this photo through mouse guard What you see is the bottom of the cluster in the hive. We have put in the varroa trays for treatment of oxalic acid next week. Main reason is to do a before and after count of the mite fall. We will also put a slab of fondant on top of the hive frames just to make sure the bees have enough food. All looks well I think.

Two bees feeding each other.

This is a sample Steven drew up for weekly note taking. As we inspect we take notes hotting down stores, brood etc. We take this home and then feed it into beebase. Its a great discipline to have. One which I can be sometimes not very efficient at.

So this week the colony has had 1 week of the varroa treatment. The mites are the small brown circular looking things. It is quite alarming seeing this many varroa at one time. Usually you are counting about 10 during the summer months. What you are seeing here is about a 2inch square section of the inspection board. Counts on this board was over 100. An untreated colony will eventually die due to varroa. On the up side the bees are building up stores nicely for the winter. The queens are still laying away. Plenty of good healthy brood on the frames.

As well as feeding the bees at this time of year (the photo on the left shows the bees coming up through the central feed hole inside the cup of the English feeder) we also treat for Varroa mite. We've used Apiguard this year, the right hand photo shows the opened tray of Apiguard on the top bars of the frames. This thymol based gel will evaporate over the next two weeks killing the phoretic mites. After two weeks the treatment will be repeated.

Now that we’ve extracted our honey for the season we now have to replace these stores. Honeybees produce honey to use as a food source throughout the winter. Unlike wasps and bumblebees (only the queen overwinters) honeybees take an entire, albeit reduced, colony into the winter. As you can imagine this requires a lot of energy maintaining hive temperature etc. The honey stores built up over summer are consumed over the winter. The bees literally “make honey while the sun shines” and “save up for a rainy day”. As we have removed this winter store we replacement by providing the bees with thick sugar syrup. We make this at a ratio of 2 part sugar to 1 part water. The photo shows different types of feeder: clockwise from top left: English feeder Ashforth feeder Rapid feeder Contact feeder The English, rapid and Ashforth feeders all work on a similar up and over principle giving the bees direct access to the syrup but always being able to reach the sides to prevent mass drownings. Anyone who doesn’t fit the lid correctly on these feeders invariable come back to a feeder full of drowned bees. The contact feeder has a fine gauze on the lid. When inverted a vacuum is created keeping the syrup in the feeder, the bees then access the syrup through the gauze with their proboscis.

Feeding time of the year again. I am just making a batch of sugar syrup to feed to the bees making sure the bees have sufficient amount of stores over the winter. Twice a year bees are fed. In spring with a 1:1 mix to replicate nectar and in autumn a 2:1 mix to replicate honey. Its important to use cane sugar. As far as I know beet sugar gives them dicky tummies. As seen in previous posts we are using 5 litre tray feeders this year just to save us going back every couple of days. A colony needs 18kgs over the winter to get them through. I've made 15 litres so far.

This is willowherb about to go to seed. Its getting pretty scarce out there now. We have decided to feed early this year. We are about a week or two ahead of last year. Plants and blossom showed the same signs this year. Everything was that wee bit early. We will be uniting two colonies over the weekend. We have two queenless colonies at the moment. We have given it quite a while now since we introduced a frame of brood to bring on a queen. The cells hatched but no signs of queen or egg to date. But the queens mating flight can be precarious what with weather and natures predators. Keep watching for some uniting pics and 'two blokes bees' first produce.

Honey harvest

We extracted the last of our honey harvest on Saturday. We got over 32lb from one colony, an ok return but it could have been better! We started the season with two colonies, increasing at one point to six colonies. The desire of the colonies to swarm this year, good weather in April/May and allied to pretty poor conditions in June all affected the crop.

An excellent book for beekeepers interested in the uses of hive products is - The medical aspects of beekeeping by Harry Riches. Harry Riches is a physician and beekeeper. In the book he analyses the properties and uses of the various products that can be harvested from the hive, such as venom, propolis, royal jelly and pollen. He also debunks some misrepresentations of the benefits of some things, going as far as saying that royal jelly is essentially useless to humans. There is a large section on bee venom, allergy, anaphylaxis and it's treatment which I believe is an essential read for all beekeepers. Whilst some aspects of the book are quite scientific and technical it is presented in such a way as to make it easy to read.

Himalyan Balsam is a great plant for bees at this time of year. Bees returning to the hive after foraging on this flower are covered in white pollen. Himalyan Balsam is a non indigenous escapee plant that grows along river banks and water courses. It is considered by many conservationists to be an invasive weed to be ripped out.

Pretty much scrapeing the bottom of the barrel! Got to get those last few ounces that the girls worked so hard to produce.

We’ve kept the wax cappings from the super we extracted. This is the purest beeswax, once cleaned up they can be used to enter a block of wax into various honey shows! Our good friend, Dave Scott, won first prize in the 1lb of run honey novice class at the national honey show last year. We aim to give him a run for his money this year! :-)

Just taking a wee sample home to try. We leave the rest to settle a couple of day before final jarring up. Meanwhile the super frame that is minus its honey is called a 'wet super' this gets placed back on top of a hive to get cleaned and any remaining honey collected by the bees and stored. I went back a couple of days after putting the super back on. The bees had completely cleaned it out and carefully re stored the honey carefully. Hopefully this weekend we should have some more to extract. Btw on first taste of the honey it has very subtle notes of blossom possibly willowherb, ox eye daisy, dandelion but also a very distinct minty taste. Steven tells me it is possibly the lime trees that surround the hives.

This is a great feeling seeing the honey flowing. Never ceases to amaze.

twoblokesbees

Next honey will be strained through three different strain measures to give us a clear and totally natural product.

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