What the ....

So last week we trooped off down the garden to see what the results were of the early "Shook Swarming" of my hive, and to continue it with Tom's two hives.  We began by opening my hive.

The minute I took off the roof it was obvious there was no-one home.  They have gone.  Gone, gone, gone!  My glorious Blue Queen and all of her bees - gone.  They clearly did not like the new frames, the new foundation, the new box, and the intrusive nature of the manipulation.  She simply packed Her bags, collected Her entourage, and left the building.

Sob.

After taking a moment to absorb the full impact of the fact that I now have no bees, we closed the box up and carried on to Tom's hives.  They were all doing well, but it was quite astonishing to see so many Queen Cells.  How and where and when did they get those built?  We didn't see anything seven days before this.  Nevertheless there were Queen Cells, and some of them were already sealed up, which means they were at least seven days old.

Tom's hives were Shook Swarmed.  It is an awkward, hard, sweaty job and it disturbs the bees terribly.  I can completely understand the motivation to remove all the brood with its varroa load, but it is awful nevertheless.  However in this instance we took some frames of broods, and all the frames with Queen Cells on, and moved them to my empty box.

A last desperate attempt to recreate a colony for me.

But as I sit here, a week later, I am wondering whether they even had a chance.  It has simply been too cold, and there would've been no active foraging bees in my hive to keep the brood warm.  I am convinced I will go there tomorrow and find everything dead.  Dead from the cold wet spell we have just been through.  And then I have to consider that, perhaps, now is the time for me to quit.

When I first took up beekeeping I was with Guy, and we could afford to share a house with a large garden.  And it was always about having bees at the bottom of my own garden, where I could visit them every day, watch the action at the hive entrance, and inspect when ever I wanted.  I am finding the regimen of visits every Sunday too prescriptive; much as I love them.   

I have taken a hive box and assembled it at the bottom of my own little garden here in Amersham.  It is empty but it gets the neighbours used to seeing a beehive there.  I will ostentatiously parade around every now and then in a beesuit.  And maybe one day, I will have bees again.

But not, I think, today.

As It Should Be

Tom and Liz and me go down to the bees.  We have big plans.  But as in all things to do with beekeeping, they don't quite pan out.  

The plan was to Early Shook Swarm all three hives, replacing Tom's colonies in his new equipment, and putting my hive back into my clean, original old equipment.  Except that my colony is so huge we decided to use some of the brood to build up Tom's hives to full fighting strength before we do Shook Swarms on his.  And so all of Tom's brand new equipment ended up surrounding my bees, with new frames and foundation, and some food.  It's only temporary, till next week, but it did all feel a bit back to front!

There were a few frames of brood left, and it was Tom and Liz's clever idea not to let these go to waste, but to feed them to the chickens.  We lay the frames around on the green grass and let the chickens start to nibble on the honeycomb, dipping in to find juicy fresh larvae.  We began to scrape and clean my old equipment.   Then Tom's heat gun ran out of gas.  So we shrugged, and sweated off the beesuits and sat in the cool fresh afternoon under the magnolia tree and drank tea.

As the afternoon got warmer, the baby bees in the frames on the lawn began to birth.  It was quite heartbreaking to see all those new baby bees come out ... to a hostile environment that was not home in the hive .. destined to die.  I ran back to the hive trying to save some, but really - a silly, bleeding heart gesture.  The chickens will eat them.  And so they should.  

As I left, Tom and Liz gave me a six-pack of eggs.  And it occurred to me this morning, as I chomped through a deliciously soft-boiled egg, that this is the way things should be.  We work the bees, and harvest their honey.  We take the frames of brood that must be disposed of and feed them to the chickens.  And the chickens give us eggs, and we eat them, and gain energy to go back once more to the beehives.  

It makes such perfect sense to me.  In the summer we'll eat the apples off the trees, and we'll harvest apricots for the jam.  And the sun and heat will warm our bees and make honey, and all the local forage will build our immune systems and make us feel well, and then winter will come back again to allow everything to rest and regenerate once more next year.

How could things be any other way?  

I am so grateful to have experienced this natural process, and to be a part of it.  It makes me feel healthy and whole again.

It is all as it should be.

Winter's End

Everyone is reporting losses.  

We gather at the Beekeepers' Hut and make tea.  Someone spills a mug and I take some time to wash up all the cutlery, listening to the gossip in the background.  Guy always used to say we were like a bunch of high country farmers in New Zealand, down in town for the first visit after the snows had gone; talking nineteen to the dozen.  And so we were today; a huge group crowding into the little space, and you could barely hear yourself think above the chatter.

"Alan's lost twenty out of forty hives," said someone.

"I lost two, but four have come through alright," says another.

This is always the way at the end of winter, the beginning of spring.  We gather to count our blessings and mourn our losses.

Tom and I headed down to his orchard after tea, hitched on our suits and went to look at our own hives, concerned by so many devastating losses this year.  It has been an extraordinarily mild but wet winter and the bees have suffered for it.  In the winter warmth the bees have come out to forage and found nothing flowering, and then been trapped without the energy to return home.   Or some have been caught by Nosema, that dreadful tummy bug that forces such indignities on our bees - something that can't be cured and must be endured, and often weakens them to such an extent that the hive dies before the end of winter.

Tom approached in his usual inimitable fashion; organised and practical, with a clear plan of action.  I as always tripped over my suit, squelched a shoe into dog poop, left all my tools behind and couldn't keep my hair out of my eyes.  Never a dull moment but oh, what a pleasure to come to our hives and see only good news.  All of our hives have survived the winter.  100% survival!  

Tom's Mum's hive came first and looked absolutely perfect inside.  Honey, eggs, larvae, sealed brood and lordy, lordy - a Blue Queen.  Then on to Tom's hive; the central one, the little one, the weak one.  The bees must've been worried too because they had literally stuffed 6 frames full of sugar.  What a laugh, I've never seen anything like that before.  But there too we saw brood, food and another glorious Blue Queen.

Now on to Margo's hive.  Astonishing - truly astonishing.  This structure is big - I left it at a brood and a half.  And it's bursting at the seams with bees, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of bees.  It's only the beginning of April.  If I'm not careful we could have a disaster on our hands - there are just too many bees for the box already.  Didn't see my own Blue Queen but there were eggs and larvae everywhere, and signs that already one generation has been bred and born and a second is on its way.  

We whooped and hollered our way through this delightful inspection then we sat down to just watch the bees for a while, and talk about strategy.  This summer we have decided to follow the lead of the Club, and manage the bees the way Tom would prefer.  So we shall do an early season "shook swarm", something I have never done before.

An early "shook swarm" requires us to destroy all the eggs and larvae and sealed brood, and move all our bees and queens onto new wax.  This forces them to start all over again in a rush, working extra hard, but it also destroys all the varroa pests thriving on the bodies of the baby bees.  It will form part of our Integrated Pest Control strategy this year.  It's a dangerous tactic - time it wrong, get bad weather, and you could weaken a colony to the point of no recovery.  Time it just right and the bee girls will go like the clappers and you get a healthy, hard working result.

As we sat and talked it through I realised that I don't have a choice.  My hive is so big, dangerously big this early in the year, that a "shook swarm" has become a necessary intervention.

So be it.  I'm excited, looking forward to another year of learning and adventure.  Roll on, Summer of 2016!