Pink and Yellow Squares

I've been fuss-potting around for MONTHS planning my Next Significant Move with the bees. Yesterday my plan finally went into action.

I decided last summer that my bees are so successful, they need to go into a larger Brood Box. No longer a Standard British National, but rather a 14x12, which has deeper frames in the brood box to allow the Queen more space to lay and thereby reducing the likelihood of the colony swarming. Also, making the change from a standard-sized box to a larger box early in the season would focus the bees harder on the job of creating honeycomb in the new frames and thereby also decreasing their likelihood of swarming. (However, it is a notable saying of beeks that "bees don't read the same books that we do", so it's all a guess anyway.)

But also, because the bees now rule my heart and my head's gone out the window, a bigger box means less trauma every time I inspect the bees - instead of using a brood-and-a-half and breaking the 2 boxes and all the honeycomb every time I visit, the larger box and larger frames mean only 12 frames to inspect instead of 22.

All winter I bought new supplies - the larger brood box, the paint, the frames, the honeycomb. In the late winter, I spent several very satisfying evenings in front of the telly hammering nails into new frame constructions. Yesterday morning I put the final touches in place by adding the fresh wax foundation sheets.

And I also thought I'd try out a thing I'd seen on other hives - I spray-painted two squares on the front - one pink and one yellow. They say the bees' visual recognition of the shapes and colours aid them in geo-locating their hive entrance. Hmmmm, let's see, shall we?

We had a friend over for lunch yesterday and so it turned out I had an audience to further intimidate me on this all-important manipulation. I was filled with trepidation, in addition to aching all over from a two-hour bike ride the previous day.

No doubt about it, I was nervous all round.

It took a lot of persuading to get My Guy suited up in a beesuit too; he sounded like a very reluctant Tigger and had all sorts of reasons why he couldn't possibly help me move the hive. But eventually - valiantly - he donned the suit and stepped forward to help. I needed to move the double brood box, roof and floor 2 feet to the left and move the entrance 90 degrees off from the original, to confuse the bees.

"Put your hands under here," I said "and commit yourself. Just pick it up and step back smoothly" and that said, I proceeded to tangle myself in a loose piece of barbed wire and stagger all over the place, nearly toppling the hive and scotching all our plans. The audience (standing a goodly 6 feet away) fell about laughing. Not a good start ...

Finally the two of us were set; we lifted the hive (setting off an alarmed BUZZZ from within) and set it down nearby.

That's when I suddenly realised It Was All Finally Happening.

I spent so much time visualising practice runs in my head, all winter. Funnily enough, all of my thoughts had sort of meandered off into mingled dreams of success and holidays in New Zealand, so I hadn't really visualised the entire process through from beginning to end.

A lot also counted on me finding the Queen. Which, of course, I didn't.

She was nowhere to be seen so I just plodded on regardless. I placed the new Pink & Yellow Hive in the original location, onto the lovely heavy hive stand gifted to me by my mentors. I made sure lots of deep frames were standing by, then took a deep breath and opened the Itchy Knee/San-Shi double brood hive.

They were lovely; I'll grant them that - the girls were incredibly forgiving and never stung me once (that I know of. I was suitably layered in about 6 shirts and 3 pants, and sweating like a pig before 5 minutes had lapsed.) I began by identifying, in Itchy Knee, which frames had brood and transferring those. I bumped all the bees gently off their frames into the new hive.

I set that box aside, covered it gently, and began to look through the previously-unchecked San-Shi hive. There were 4 frames of brood, including capped Drone cells. She is well on her way for the Summer, that's for sure!

My silly bleeding heart couldn't cope with the thought of killing too many babies, so I transferred 7 frames full in all. I know that's going to cause trouble later on, I just know it:

• Those original shallower frames will encourage the bees to build wild comb underneath, which they'll join up to the floor - bad when I inspect and have to pull them out :(
• At some stage, I'm going to have to replace them anyway with new, deeper frames. I've just prolonged the inevitable. I am silly.

But - oh well - what's done is done.

At no stage did I see the Queen. I am a bit worried about that, but perhaps less than I should be because, bless them, the bees went across quietly, and they all immediately gathered through the new hive entrance. Plus I know that if I've lost her, they have enough baby brood to begin building Emergency Queen Cells to replace her.

I know too how resilient these bees are; they are doing so well already and they have survived so much, so far, I know they are good.

Once again, they inspire me. It was satisfying to hear the audience suitably "oohing" and "aahing" through the course of the manipulation; My Guy said afterwards "you looked really confident and professional all the way through, Margs, more than ever."

* * *

I went straight in from the hive, stripped off a couple of sweated-through layers and sat down to lunch with Guy and friend. A glass of red wine gulped back with the magnificent meal - it all tasted wondrous. Endorphins enhancing the high, I'm guessing :)

Much later that evening, in the blue glow of twilight, I went back down to the apiary to check on the girls. The old boxes were clear of bees and I removed all the honey frames to the Kitchen lean-to room (hereforward to be known as The Beekeeper's Room) - first honey to process! It was fascinating to see that one entire frame - front and back - was glued solid with a black concrete-like honey. Ivy; the first I've ever seen; honey that granulates and solidifies so fast in the honeycomb that it's useless to the bees, who can't extract it in the winter and often starve to death in a hive filled with the stuff. Most interesting to see, and I wonder if it's still possible for me to extract and taste ... must investigate further!

The bees were still; a few circling in the air above, and dozens crawling all over the white exterior and marching in lines around the Pink and Yellow Squares. I do hope the fresh paint smell doesn't put them off. I fed them, and will feed them again in 48 hours. The sugar water stimulates their wax production glands, and they will be drawing out honeycomb furiously fast. I can't wait to see it!

* * *

I miss being close to my old beek association, and am looking forward keenly to seeing them all again in mid-April at the Secret Bee Hut. Never better than when a whole load of beeks stump into the old hut together and jabber away at top volume,"like a bunch of High Country farmers," says Guy "who've been alone all winter and can't wait to catch up on each other's lives!" :)

Too right, mate!

OW!

The day after we came back from New Zealand was warm - ok, not very sunny - but warm. You've got to be grateful for that, right?

I can't express the intensity of joy I felt at revisiting all my beekeeping stuff. To be pulling on my suit again; digging out my hive tools; even lighting That Blasted Smoker. It was like a trip down Memory Lane, but better, because you know that now summer is really back and you have the whole summer of beekeeping to look forward to again.

Of course, the girls soon reminded me of the more sobering stuff. You know, like stings and all that. :)

I tromped down to the beehive and made ready ...

Now initially, my elaborate plan was to use this visit to make the shift from the brood-and-a-half configuration to the new 14x12 hive. But of course, the girls have been living in a double brood hive during the winter and the two moves.

And as I sat for a while, watching the bees while the smoker fired up, I thought to myself that perhaps it might be better to just make this an Intro Visit - go in there to establish exactly how the colony is doing before I fling them willy-nilly into another hive.

Because of course, the new hive will have no drawn foundation for the Queen to lay; it will have no saved stores. They will have to start again from the beginning. Well, almost. They'll need a couple of drawn frames filled with baby brood and honey stores. But most of the frames will be undrawn foundation.

This is all part of another, hidden agenda as well, you see. If I move them to undrawn foundation, they'll be kept busy. Very busy. Too busy to swarm. Cunning, eh?!

So as I watched the bees buzzing around the entrance I decided to keep this visit to the very basics. Just check they're ok, see if there's signs of Queen-rightness, check on feed levels, see how many frames of stores are left, and how many frames of brood might be starting up.

Then next time will be the crunch-time; the time to do the traumatic move over to 14x12.

I quietly smoked the hive and popped the lid off. The colony is still there, so Check One for the girls - they've survived the bitter winter. But the numbers are noticeably low. Of course it would be so.

Frames 10, 9, 8 and 7 had small quantities of honey stores remaining, in half-moon shapes across the top. Frame 6 had very early brood sign. Ever-so-tiny rice grain eggs. Not a lot, but there they were. Yahooooo! She is there, and She is laying. Long Live the Queen!

Next, Frame 5 - slightly older, fat white juicy larvae. And on the other side of Frame 4 - a small panel of sealed brood.

It was interesting to see how she'd spread out her laying across the three frames. Is that a bad sign? She is not a young Queen, after all. We shall see ...

OW! BUGGER!

First sting - right in the groin. Those little beggars.

Thankfully I was able to keep my movements slow and sure, and wipe off the sting. The next two got me in the same spot though, and I had to drop the frame I was looking at and walk away to bite the bullet. Not very dignified.

(Odd though it sounds, I am actually glad to be stung. It was really noticeable to me that the arthritis in my hands and feet flared up again in the winter, and I'm looking forward to getting relief from it by being stung. Bee venom really does seem to help suppress the symptoms. My hands are noticeably more supple and my knees and feet less achey. As for the hayfever, I still can't verify that honey and venom are helping.)

I went back to finish inspecting the top box; I thought about shifting the top box to inspect the bottom one but decided against it. I'd seen what I had to see and was happy.

I closed it all up, and spent time just sitting and looking at the entrance activity once more.

When I left the apiary I was as high as a kite; happy, happy, happy. Enchanted and relieved and pleased and proud.

I'm so looking forward to summer!

Vive la Reine

Moving along the journey from beginner to novice, we enter new realms of knowledge all the time. Nowadays I spend a lot of time musing about Queens, temper, genetics and selection.

This is the succession of Queens I have experienced so far -

• First, there was the Black Queen, who arrived with the swarm in June 2009 and brought with her a summer of gentleness and getting-to-know-each-other friendliness.
• As my mentors suspected, and I discovered, that was also the summer of Supercedure for, when I next spotted a Queen in the same hive - Itchy Knee - it was early in the summer of 2010 and she wasn't Black, she was Lightly Ginger in colour.
• The early summer progressed companiably until the Prime Swarm of 19 May; which meant Queen Lightly Ginger went into San-Shi, and a new Queen reigned in Itchy Knee.
• the Cast or Secondary Swarm of 22 May, 3 days later, meant a young Virgin Queen was taken away by Patrice and Senpai Scott, together with her little colony.
• The New Queen ruled in Itchy Knee through to late summer, and caused so much grief with her bad temper rife throughout the colony, that we found her and killed her at the end of August 2010. She will forever be known as The Angry Queen.
• If there was a new Queen afterwards, she was sadly killed when I united the two hives, unaware of her existence. My bad!
• San-shi continued on, well-tempered, under the rule of Queen Lightly Ginger.
• When the two hives were merged at the end of Summer 2010, they continued to show good temper.
• So it is Queen Lightly Ginger who will hopefully survive through to the summer of 2011.

What will the Succession will mean for this summer?

Being born sometime in the late summer of 2009, and considering how quickly the colonies have replaced each Queen, it may be that -

• She may begin to reveal signs of aging by developing poor egg-laying traits, or laying only drones (meaning she is running out of sperm stored inside her body and so she can only lay unfertilised or male eggs), and so
• there will be a Supercedure; and/or
• highly likely they will try to Swarm again.

So I begin to think about genetics and temper-traits.

The Black Queen gave birth to Queen Lightly Ginger. Queen Lightly Ginger gave birth to both The Angry Queen and the Virgin Queen. Patrice and Scott have said their bees were gentle.

So when Queen Lightly Ginger gives birth to Queens this summer, it seems I have a 50/50 chance of a good or bad Queen, unless the genetic material has changed. Now let's consider the variables:

• Queens mate with between 10 and 20 drones (it is thought)
• Queens have been seen to lay in "pockets" of eggs; batches of which laid close to one another exhibit all one colouring, and batches laid further away, a different colouring. This reveals the genetic variance of many different fathers. As the sperm comes out of the Queen's body, it comes out in a "batch" left by a single Father; then another "batch" from a different Father, therefore the difference in colouring seen in worker bees born in different parts of the hive.

Are you still with me here?

• Remember female (or fertilised) eggs have a Mother and a Father; male (or drone/unfertilised) eggs have a Mother but no Father.
• Would it then be safe to assume, if I see Queen cells laid far away from each other in the hive, they would have different Fathers? And therefore different temperaments?
• I don't know how far about in the hive Queen Lightly Ginger was born from The Angry Queen. It's safe to assume however - different temperaments = different Fathers.

I wonder if there's any way I can manipulate The Succession this Summer, to ensure a new Queen with a good temper?

And thus avoid any more blasted stings this summer ...

Hmmmmmm.

A funny thing happened on the way to Slough ...

After the craziness of the house move, and the cataract surgery, sanity finally prevailed. I had to acknowledge that keeping the bees in The Secret Garden at Muswell Hill would simply mean too far to commute from Slough. So I decided to move them with me. Besides - selfishly - I miss them at the bottom of my garden.

So Guy and I applied the lessons, so very recently learned from Ron and Mary, and went to move them again. We carefully filled the entrance with a little piece of sponge, gently tied a cable around the entire double brood box, and slowly lifted the hive onto the trolley we'd brought with us.

We wobbled our way down the garden path, looked back for a last glimpse of a garden we'd hoped to grow and cherish, and then wound our way down to the little car. Mighty Mouse is a wee little car but is perfectly configured - once you've folded the back seats down - for fitting a standing hive in the back.

We drove away and off down the North Circular, on our way to Slough.

Now at this stage I must tell you - in five years of living and travelling in England - I have never once been pulled over by the police. So we were not expecting an eventful trip at all. Naturally, I had my bee suit on, but the veil off.

So when the blue siren went on behind us, I don't know who among us was more surprised - Guy, me - or 10,000 rather irritated lady bees.

Oh dear God! What had we done?

Guy pulled the car over, and I surreptitiously slipped on a jacket over my bee suit. I had of course, not bothered to put the statutory "Bees in Transit" notice in my car window, had I.

It turned out that the police thought my car was uninsured, and they fully intended to have the car towed away to a pound. I nearly fainted. I was rather glad at this stage that bees don't understand English. They might've rioted, or something equally scary ...

On top of that, I couldn't get out of the car because the passenger door doesn't work on the Mouse, which wouldn't have looked that good to the coppers.

Perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing, because it meant that I was forcibly confined inside the car - flathering away at Guy, who was meant to have organised the insurance. He spent 20 fraught minutes on the side of the highway, fast-talking the cops and the insurance company on the phone, while I and 10,000 close friends slowly simmered away inside the car.

Eventually it was all sorted out - it turned out that the insurance company had misspelled the registration number. The Old Bill turned away, visibly disappointed at not being able to tow my car, but gleefully listening to me ranting away at Guy about "getting it right the first time and why didn't you tell me and I could've done all this myself better and next time you'll know blah blah rant point finger threaten yell ...."

They left shaking their heads and smiling, and looking rather pityingly at my partner.

Yes, I'm proud of myself. I put on a Good Show for them, and they left none the wiser that they'd been one bee sting away from being assimilated by The Borg.

* * *

Once we arrived at the new house with the bees, we simply disappeared into the depths of the garage in Mighty Mouse and emerged out the other side into the privacy of the garden with the bees. We carefully trollied them all the way down the length of the long, long garden and round the corner behind the back of the shed.

We were in the process of carefully siting and uncabling them when I heard Guy shriek "they're all coming out the back end!" and he scorched off down the garden like a shot rattlesnake.

I popped my head around the edge of the hive and, sure enough, the cable had snagged on the Open Mesh Floor and pulled open a small hole large enough for several hundred extremely agitated bees to exit from.

"Holy Cow," I thought "imagine if that had happened in the car!?"

I must admit, I had a bloody good laugh!

They have settled now, after a few weeks, and seem to be thriving.

* * *

I've joined my local association, the impressively-named Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead Beekeepers' Society. So now I'm a member of two associations (I'd never give up my old one - I love 'em to bits).

To make friends with the new lot, I went on their Beginners' Beekeepers Course - not so much for the course content (although it was a great refresher, and I should be thinking about taking the Basic Beekeeper's Exam), but more to network among the local community of beekeepers. And it was great to do that; and to meet some more knowledgeable people.

It was also wonderfully inspiring, and got me down to the bottom of my garden this afternoon, in the sun.

Sadly, Bee Corner is rather tucked away in a dank and shady spot. I do hope it's not too cold and shady and secluded! They are buzzing, though, which gives me hope. And I spent the afternoon assembling all the new frames for my super-duper large 14 x 12 hive. It was hugely satisfying, banging and hammering and smacking away at things, particularly as I spent most of the time imagining it was Guy's head I was hammering.

Very useful anger management indeed.

Funny thing, beekeeping, isn't it?

The Bee Carol

by Carol Ann Duffy

Silently on Christmas Eve,
the turn of midnight's key;
all the garden locked in ice -
a silver frieze -
except the winter cluster of the bees.

Flightless now and shivering,
around their Queen they cling;
every bee a gift of heat;
she will not freeze
within the winter cluster of the bees.

Bring me for my Christmas gift
a single golden jar;
let me taste the sweetness there,
but honey leave
to feed the winter cluster of the bees.

Come with me on Christmas Eve
to see the silent hive -
trembling stars cloistered above -
and then believe,
bless the winter cluster of the bees.


* * *

Bless you too, Poet Laureate, that brought a tear to my eye!

* * *

















Merry Christmas, bees!

Full Circle in the Sun

In the time since I last wrote, I have split the hives again on the faint chance that a new Queen survived in Itchy Knee. Weeks later, I checked again on Monday and realised that all chance of a Queen was gone.

Not only that, in my eagerness to protect them after a recent very heavy display of varroa, brought about by the lack of Queen to encourage them to groom each other, I poisoned them with Apiguard medicine. I looked in on Monday and there were hundreds of dead and dying bees. I had placed the Apiguard in a too-small space and simply gassed them to death. Very terrible. I took a video of the action of a dying bee to post on a beekeeping forum in the hope that someone more experienced might recognise what was happening and confirm my suspicion about poisoning, and they did.

* * *

Today was a tough day for me. Work started at 4am; and it was the kind of work that bruises the soul - the hard part of my job. But it was a pleasure to be able to leave early and get home at lunch time. I got straight into a beesuit and headed down to the hives, intent on making right what I've been doing wrong all these last few weeks.

When I finally broke down Itchy Knee's configuration I saw that they had moved all the honey from the bottom super into the brood box, just as Ron had said they would. They moved it all so quickly! That said, I'll never do it again - putting a super at the bottom. I'm hoping that by moving to the bigger 14x12 brood box next year I will only ever need supers for the honey crop.

As I worked through the frames in the brood box, it was very clear there was still no Queen. And so - I just knew - this time it would be absolutely the right thing to do to unite the hives - Itchy Knee into San-Shi.

Itchy Knee is weak, but has a lot of honey stores. San-Shi is strong and Queen-right, but has no stores to survive the winter.

So I carefully opened up San-Shi, removed the feed arrangement at the top, and placed a sheet of newspaper down again on the brood box. I heaved Itchy Knee's brood box across (it weighs an absolute ton from all that honey) and placed it ever so carefully, ever so gently on top.

Then placed two packs of candy fondant in an eke/super on top and closed it all up.

It all felt good and right and proper this time, not frantic and fearful and confused like the last few times I've dropped in.

And all the time I worked with the bees today, they were incredibly pleasant and good-natured. Sure, they buzzed about and checked me out, and expressed their grouchiness at being moved about with a few loud buzzes, but in the main they were a joy to be around.

What saddens me is to witness the terrible ongoing War against the Wasps - carnivores, killers, raiders, pirates. I even managed to stomp on a few this time.

On a completely different note, I saw that the perspex crownboard had accumulated a corner of condensation inside it. I will watch that, and change it to a wooden crown board, I think.

That will be one of the last things I do as I bed them down for winter. Insulation is a subject of ongoing interest and research. Wonder what I'll find to use this year?

After my visit today, I sat for a long, long time and just watched the bees, surrounded myself with bees. I watched as gradually the few remaining foragers at the base of the old Itchy Knee site slowly moved across to San-Shi. I watched some wrestling matches between wasps and bees. And I gloried in the blue sky afternoon sun; so rare! I miss it so much. When did I ever think the South African big blue sky was too big and too blue, and the sun too hot? Was I mad!?

Chatting to my housemate tonight, I found myself caught up in a passionate, articulate explanation of how Queen bees are made and how bees are one of the few creatures in nature who - collectively - choose the sex of their children. I could see the wonder in my housemate, and it brought the magic all rushing back.

It has been such a hard year with the bees; it has felt like just another job, just another chore.

But not today.

Don't worry, bee happy

Alright, alright, I'm cheering up. Calm down everyone!