The varroa threshold

Timothy the beekeeper answered on my Facebook post about this blog: 'All of my hives are due for a varroa treatment in the next 2-3 weeks. As a beekeeper I try and keep infestation levels below a 1000 varroa threshold that means that I try to never let there be more than 1000 varroa in any hive. Problem is they double in numbers every few weeks. It forces me to have to put chemicals into my beehives. But if I don't my bees will die so it is the best of a bad choice.'The bag with Varroa poison looks a bit like a feedbag and it is also put on top of the frames

Queen Cups

The worker bees had been busy with the succession to the hive’s crown. Apart from the queen cell we also discovered several queen cups. The incumbent queen didn’t lay any eggs in these. A friend told me this morning that her mother, Mrs Feldbrugge from Zuidhorn in Holland, had six beehives in the back of her garden. A beekeeper put them in for her, just like Timothy Stevens did for the Polranny Pirates. But after a while she got very interested, followed a course in beekeeping and from then on took care of them herself. I’m sure I won’t go that far… Unlike Timothy she wasn’t keen on swarming. Too much trouble with the neighbours in the village when they were visited by an unwelcome swarm. She destroyed any queen cup and cell she found on a frame.

The weight of the stores

Timothy the beekeeper is detecting a problem in his hives: the feed stores are low. He checked the stores by weighting the frames in his hands. In Polranny they seem alright for the time being, but it might come to pass here too. I quote freely from his recent entry on Facebook Clew Bay Honey: ‘Most years have a gap in nectar producing plants in the summer. This is called by beekeepers in Ireland "the June gap". Normally bees store enough spring honey to get them over this gap and into the main honey flow. This year it is very possible that I shall have to feed the hives instead. This leads to an interesting problem: making sure there is no feed ending up in the honey that is harvested in August. If I feed too much I risk mixing and if I feed to little the hive dies… ‘ But today the sun broke through the clouds and the bees are in a feeding frenzy. I’m already stung when I went to spy on them. Photo Karin Daan

Drone cells

Timothy the beekeeper was here yesterday to have a look at the hives again. There was a southwesterly gale blowing and the bees were pretty upset. I put on the bee suit to be on the safe side. Indeed the bees were not amused when the hive was openend and they massed around me. The weather has had a negative impact on them. Nevertheless I could see real growth when the lid went off. On this picture the drone cells are clearly visible on the frame. They are the yellow balls. According to Timothy that is a seasonal feature. How he knows that those balls have future Drones inside and not worker bees, I'm sorry to say I didn't ask.

Labeling frames

I could witness the move of the nucleus of one hive to the other from close up thanks to the beekeeper suit I wore. Now I noticed that each of the frames had a sign written with a red marker pen. I asked Timothy the beekeeper what it meant. It was his system for marking the function of the different frames. F stood for Foundation, S for Store and DB for Drone Base. I wasn’t far advanced in the knowledge of the Apiculture in our Apiary to fully understand the meaning, but there is always room for improvement on my part. It was time to take off the beekeeper's suit and go surf the internet.

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.

Looking for the Queen

The swarms in the starter hives were new. The bees were still small in numbers and the queen bee had not yet been identified. That was what happened next. Beekeeper Timothy Stevens took out every single one of the frames that hung inside the hive. He and Amanda studied the bees on them carefully till they recognized the queen. Which one of the thousands of bees was the queen? To me they all looked the same. ‘But the queen has a longer thorax,’ Timothy said. ‘That is how she distinguishes herself from the others.’

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.

Of hexagonal honeycombs and larvae

‘Lets have a look inside the hives,’ Timothy the beekeeper said and took the lid off the starter hives. First there was a shelf with feeder bags. He took that off too. Inside the beehives hung a number of frames. Most screens were filled with honeycombs. Some were empty and others were half filled. ‘The bees make honeycombs with beeswax that they secreted from a gland. The hexagonal combs are little rooms for the larvae to grow in. Some screens have already pre-fixed combs in them.’ Timothy explained. ‘We help them along by putting in screens that are already filled with pre cast combs. The larvae are fed on honey.’