23 February 2016

After a very wet summer with little sunshine I felt very sorry for the bees in the garden. I only came back to Polranny in December. As expected, the two hives didn’t show any activity around them. They looked sad. The green screen had bend any which way in the wind. But today was one of the Seven Summer Days of February. Even the hives in their protected environment caught some sunshine. In front of one of the hives a few bees were keeping an active watch. I take it as a good sign. It was very quiet around the other hive.

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

Timothy about Varroa

After the last entry Timothy the beekeeper mailed me this: 'It's weird to see mites outside the hive. The mite actually drains the blood from the bees just like a tick. The main problem with them is they spread viruses which actually do the killing. Varroa on it's own will only weaken a hive. Varroa and viruses of which there are over 15 will kill the hive. In the hive contaminated material is very rarely exchanged but the mite does this by biting one bee and that then becomes contaminated and then biting another and so on: spreading the viruses.'

The varroa mite

Beekeeper Timothy Stevens has put a new entry on Facebook that I like to copy here. 'Here is a very lucky or even unlucky photo. It shows a bee foraging on bramble. On closer inspection you can see a varroa mite on her. It looks like a purple disk on her side. The mite has wedged it's self in between the plates on the bee. This is the real face of one of the major reasons honey bees are dying and why almost all wild hives are dead. Because of these little mites I have to treat my hives to kill the mites. I have never seen a mite on a bee outside the hive. On a brighter note the weather today has been very good and if this continues I should receive some honey in return for my years toil. I usually remove the excess honey on the 10th of August however with the weather being so cold it has held the blackberry back and put my schedule back as well.'

Message from Timothy about swarms

Timothy wrote this post on FB today. I found it important enough to copy it into the blog for future reference of course.The thing about the trees is interesting. I notice that Tits and other birds also choose cavities in trees to build nests in. OMG so many thing to take into account when managing the garden. Yesterday I preformed a cutout. A cutout is when a established beehive is cut from some existing structure in this case from a flat roof. Beehives will move into any suitable space which a roof of a house represents. Normaly in nature swarms/beehives would move into cavity's in trees and caves. With our modern lives these cavity's are rare and most large trees are felled and certainly the rotten one which are hollow tend to be tidied up. This leaves manmade cavity's for the bees to choose from. This invariably means that the hive becomes a pest. In this case their entrance is directly above a doorway and presents a safety risk. So how does a cut out work. First you have to get access to the combs of the hive. From there I catch the bees using a bee vac which is esentaly a vacume cleaner slightly modified to not harm the bees unduly. As I remove the bees I cut the combs and separate brood(baby's) from honey(sticky mess) from wax. I am constantly on the look out for the queen and when I find her I catch her to unite later with her bees and her young. When all the wax/combs are removed and most of the bees caught I place a few combs back into the cavity to catch the last of the bees. I then come back in the late evening to catch these bees which stay on the comb rather than run into the wall or elsewhere. In the mean time I bring the baby bees/brood to one of my apairys and begin placing this brood in combs in a standard beehive using string wires and rubberbands. Then I unite the bees in the beevac with the brood. The last bees which are caught that evening are united later that evening. If I find the queen I cage her for her safety and will release her in a few days. Its a horrible job. It tends to cause damage to the property in this case minimal but in other cases quite a lot. This is the main reason beekeepers manage their bees against swarming. It is near to impossible to preform a cutout without killing quite a lot of the bees in the process as well which is disheartening for most beekeepers and certainly is for me. Hope this was of some interest. And sorry for the length of it but telling a small part of the story doesn't really do justice to the procedure.

Clew Bay Honey’s First Birthday

Message from Timothy Stevens beekeeper to among many others the Polranny Pirates. ‘Hi everyone. Sorry for such infrequent posts. Things tend to get a bit hectic in the summer with me. So here is a quick update no photos I’m afraid as I scratched the lens on the camera I use. I hope to get that sorted out soon and start getting more pics up. I celebrated my 1st year in business on the 20th of June. The year has truly flown for me. To think last year I was registering for tax and getting my company name sorted. The list of what has been achieved from then to now is massive. I started this with 19 hives and now have over 35 full hives and close to 40 nucs(half hives). I am well on line with meeting and surpassing my own goals for this year for growth. All I need now is 3 good weeks weather in July (a big ask I know) and I will be able to get honey into a few more shops.’ Congratulations to Timothy and hopefully the Polranny Pirate Bees will surpass themselves in supplying Clew Bay Honey! I’m going to Amsterdam now and I’ll be away for a few months. Most likely it will be very quiet on the blog for a while. The bees will be busy making honey and I shall miss all the fun.

Ballycroy National Park

Yesterday I took Maureen and Monika, two friends from the OWLs who are staying in the Folly, for a visit to Ballycroy, the Ballycroy National Park and Visitors Center. There I asked the staff if they were thinking about getting bees. No, but they will have a talk the first half of August by a beekeeper from Westport. When we came back I saw that Timothy the beekeeper had put another storey on one of the hives. A sign that things are going well with the Polranny Pirate Bees! I asked Timothy and he answered this: ‘The bees seem to be growing well. They also have adequate stores which is encouraging as this time of the year is usually an issue. I think clover might be a bit early and sycamore which is all but finished certainly was late. The Visitor Centre is a nice spot. It’s probably Henry Horkan who’ll give the talk. Well worth a listen if you are interested he is quite knowledgeable.’