67 A new apiary

My neighbour Annie Masterson had been on to me for more than a year now. Her grandson Alan, who took over the apiary of his Grandfather had no time to come down to Achill to take care of the last hives that were left. Alan had already taken a number of the old hives, restored them and places them with his in-laws in Galway, but the ones left over were suffering. Alan should get in contact with Timothy the beekeeper, but never got around to it. Now Annie Masterson herself was taking action. She told me that when Timothy was again in the Achill area I should bring him around. He had already been up the boreen once and had discovered that the two hives were both dead. Now was his chance to put in a few starter hives and bring the apiary to life again. With his van full of splits put into styrofoam starter hives it should be up and running in no time. Timothy was a bit unsure what his role would be. Would he be managing Alan’s or was it going to be his own? Annie Masterson made no bones about it. She showed him a box full of brand new frames and other beekeeping implements and said. This is your. Do with it whatever you want. I learned something new here: there are two sizes used in beekeeper land: Commercial and National. Apparently Timothy uses National and the apiary at the Masterson is Commercial. But according to him it doesn’t pose a problem. For now the old home made hives are replaced by pink and green painted starter boxes. He will take it up from there. One of the commercial size handmade hives in 1974. (67 hive CM February 1974)

66 Looking for a queen

One hive was split in three. In one of the splits was the queen. Then the two new hives were exchanged with splits from the hives in Belfarset. That left me with three hives. The hives might harbour a queen in every one of them or no queen at all. In the hives without a queen the worker bees had to get busy choosing a larvae to raise as a queen. This larvae then got fed on Royal Jelly to form her into the new queen. To be on the save side the worker bees would feed more than one larvae the Royal Jelly. And Timothy was counting on that when he called again after a week. If there was more than one queen pod in the same hive but on different frames he could split the hive again. In The Secret Garden he had been lucky. He got three splits from four hives. In our apiary the first hive he opened had no queen but several queen pods on one frame only. No possible split there. As soon as the first Virgin Queen would come out of her pod, she would go to check for others. When found she would knock on the pod and if there was a response she would open the pod and kill the rival queen. Then after a couple of days in which she established her position as queen, she would fly out to mate. The second hive Timothy opened had already a queen. He saw that on the first frame he took out. Not the queen herself but as he showed me there were tiny little rice like forms in the combs eggs that had just been laid. He did not want to take a split from this hive, because the split could be too week. On the third and last hive he struck lucky. There were queen pods on different frames. He transferred the frame to a prepared Styrofoam starter hive. Good luck to them! (66 Looking for a queen 03-06-16)

65 Checking on the split hives

Timothy the beekeeper was back. This time he came to check on the hives he split last week. This time he had done the Achill run the other way around. He had first gone to Bull’s Mouth and The Secret Garden. The back of his van was loaded with starter hives. Three of them had colonies in them that he had split from the split hives of last week. They all came from The Secret Garden. In Bull’s Mouth the hives are not doing as well. Maybe it is the wind that is forever changing there. The channel works like a trough. Timothy had brought his bee suit for special occasions with him for me to wear. It was a beautiful clean white suit without any patch up, rents or dirt. I felt privileged! I took a chair and settled at the side of the apiary where I had a good view of the proceedings. And I wanted to catch his face in the sketch. I’m getting used to work in a suit. Even with latex gloves on it doesn’t present any problems. To get the stage set he first had to prop up a fuchsia branch heavy with enormous red flowers that hung over one of the hives and blocked part of my view. I offered that he could cut it, but he said it was lovely and it wasn’t interfering with the bees. Timothy works very fast and I didn’t get much time to do anything else but register the bare essentials. Still I got two sketches done. On this sketch he is about to lift the top of the middle hive to check if this one has a queen, or at least has queen pods ready to produce a queen. Very important: that the colony is strong and growing in size to be able to produce honey for harvesting later on. (65 checking the split hives 04-06-16)

Moving house

Timothy the beekeeper was satisfied with the work the nucleus of bees in the Styrofoam hive had done the past weeks. They had industriously been filling the combs. Now it was time to proceed with the good works in their new abode. When you move house you take all the good stuff with you and transplant it in a new environment: the same with the bees. The frames well cleaned of excess bees wax go in one by one in the same order. And of course the position of the queen bee will be checked.

Anaesthesizing the bees

The Styrofoam starter hive was placed on top of his neighbour to make room for the brand new wooden hive that will be the bees permanent home. Timothy the beekeeper gives every year a different colour to the hives he makes himself. This one should have been a bright pink as he assured me it was this year’s colour. But it had a brown tarnish: ‘Store bought,’ he said. What a pity. I love a bit of the old pink. The lid was off the Styrofoam box but before he was able to move the swarm from the one hive to the next Timothy had to give them a dose of the anaesthesizing smoke from the bellows.

In a beekeeper’s suit

Timothy the beekeeper was going to replace the Styrofoam starter hive with a proper wooden one where more storeys could be added to. It meant an unexpected house move for the bees. It was something that would upset them. To view the procedure from close up I had to be dressed accordingly: in a beekeeper’s suit. To be inside the suit was not as sweaty and claustrophobic as I expected. Highly recommended as alternative to a niqab or burka.photo Karin Daan

Putting up the sheep fence

During the rest of the month of April it was very peaceful around the starter hives. The weather that had been beautiful and summerlike changed for the worse. On the very last day of April Timothy drove up again with Amanda and a very small blue-eyed sheepdog puppy. They had just been to Achill where Timothy had put two starter hives at Achill Secret Garden (not four as I have posted; the Styrofoam hives had not been emptied yet into the wooden hives) where Amanda had been stung on the forehead. They had also inspected a promising site at Saula. Timothy was going to put the sheep wire up and change the Styrofoam hive into a wooden one.

The tools of the trade

By now the bees should be settled into the new environment and it was time to see how they had come out of hibernation and identify the queen. Timothy opened the styrofoam starter hive first. Next he put out the tools of the trade: an old-fashioned pair of rounded nail clippers, a metal ring with spikes and a marker pen. (photo Amanda Stevens)

Substitute for honey

During hibernation bees do not go out to collect honey. Also their food reserves have been taken away when the beekeeper harvested the honey from the hive for his own purposes. That’s why they get sugar as substitute food. ‘To feed them till they have found their way again to the honey source,’ Timothy said. On the photo you can clearly see how the bees enter the bag with feed from the frames in the Styrofoam starter hive. When the hives were finally closed a heavy stone was put on top to keep the whole thing in place. ‘I’ll be back next week to see how they are adjusting to the new environment,’ Timothy the beekeeper promised.

The starter hives

Timothy Stevens the beekeeper also took out of his van a nifty homemade folding bench that he calls a hive stand. It made an open and level platform about a foot off the ground for the two hives to sit on and be secure. Finally he took out the two hives. They were disappointingly small. One was made out of wood and looked the part somehow, but the other looked more like a Styrofoam cool box. ‘They are starter hives with small swarms in them. The swarms will grow in size over the summer,’ Timothy explained. ‘By July they will have reached full force and are ready to produce honey. By then more storeys will have been added to the wooden hive and the Styrofoam box will be replaced by a wooden hive. The population of bees will have grown to sixty thousand.’ I was impressed.