Bees in the Cemetery

[David Young]

Sunday May 8^th

 

Our amateur bee supplier had gone radio silent and we were getting anxious about where this year’s colony was going to come from, when we were rescued with news of a prime swarm in Willesden. I was working all weekend so we decided to house them on Tuesday and I hurried down to the cemetery with the stand, the brood box and a super to house our new tenants. The apiary area had changed beyond recognition since the winter. Knot weed, nettles and cow parsley are vying for space on the ground and the Lime trees are sending out a  low canopy of new leaves. Soon the Lime flowers will bloom, which is a wonderful nectar source for our bees.

[Juan Nicolas Grillo]

Hmm... It looks like i have missed all the "fun", are you still going Sundays 10-11? or other time, I cycled today around that time and see no one. Next Sunday I hope to catch up with you. On my quick look around the hives looked from the outside pretty OK...I think is time to get some gear to do the proper inspection...

 

Nicolas

[David Young]

Thursday August 4th

 

Patience rewarded.

 

A Queen cell takes 16 days to emerge and we were pretty sure that would be around July 10^th,  given when we found the capped Queen cells. When we checked on the 10^th they hadn’t come out yet in either hive, but by the 15^th all signs of the Queen cells were gone: hatched and cleaned up. That day I sat in the apiary and pressed my ear to the cedar wall of North hive and heard a deep rumble: the noise of thousands of bees going about their work. It sounded like the deep throb of a ship’s engine. Not an image I would have reached for where bees are concerned, but it is the one that came to mind.

 

With the Queens emerged it was time to leave them alone. I fed North hive several times but the stores in South hive were ample.

 

When we looked again on August 1st South hive was in a feisty mood. The bees came out to check on what we were doing in large numbers, but the mission was to see if we could spot any eggs. Had the Queen made her mating flight? Was she laying? Most definitely. There was capped worker brood on 4 frames and a lot of visible pupae. We didn’t see eggs, but that’s because the light was poor and my eyesight is poorer, but the evidence of laying is there none the less, along with lots of honey stored for the colony.

 

North hive was calmer. The colony had cleaned out all the comb in the frames at the ends and they were getting low on stores. However, in two frames in the centre we could see uncapped pupae. That means a laying Queen in North hive too. Stephane thought that they were probably about a week behind South hive and that they’d need a little help, so definitely more food for them until we see them building up their reserves. The shorter frames with their wild comb hanging off the bottom had mostly been cleaned out, so we removed them and put in new deep frame foundation at the outside.

 

It looks like we’re back in business – and with new Queens that should mean two productive and healthy colonies.

[David Young]

Thursday September 8^th

 

I was away for the back end of August, but Stephane was at the apiary regularly and the hives seem pretty steady-as-she-goes. South hive is still the stronger one and is starting to build comb and put stores up into the super. North hive has lots of capped pupae, but they haven’t filled their frames in the brood box yet, so Stephane moved the super this week so that they didn’t waste their energy drawing comb up there.

 

When I came back he told me that he’s seen the Queen three weeks in a row in South hive, but is still yet to see the North hive Queen - even though there’s plenty of evidence that she’s there. As it draws to the close of the summer we thought we’d mark the Queens, but even though Simon (another local beekeeper) showed up with the enamel paint and a match stick for dabbing her back – so did the rain. Just as we were about to start looking there was a deluge, so we quickly put some varoa treatment in North hive and Stephane promised to come back when it was dry and do the same to South. He also moved the super beyond reach in North hive, so as to let the bees concentrate on filling out the brood box with stores. Marking the Queens will have to wait for another week.

 

We had a visitor the last Sunday in August, in the shape of Sharon, who’s another local bee keeper. We chatted about swarms and it turns out that she was the one who collected a swarm of Simon’s back in June that had landed at the top of Salusbury Road. Simon was happy to hear someone had got it, and not put out to have lost the bees because it turns out he collected a completely different swarm on the same day. Sharon also co-ordinated varoa treatment with us, so that we all treat over the same period as that’s good practice among bee keepers in the same area. She also told us that she regularly dusts her bees with icing sugar to encourage them to groom each other, and get rid of the varoa mites in the process. I’ve had a note on my desk at home saying ‘buy icing sugar duster’ ever since.

 

When we put the varoa strip inside the hive it stank of camphor and eucalyptus. When I went back to feed them two days later I could smell it from the path about 20m from the hives. You never treat when there’s still honey to collect so it’s a smell that makes me think two things; pity for the bees and disappointment that we didn’t get any honey this year. But as any sports fan will tell you… there’s always next year.

[David Young]

Queens Park Day has rolled around again and we'll be in the Park at the Transition stall this coming Sunday, if any one wants to drop by and say hello, put faces to names and talk bees. We'll be pressing fresh apple juice from locally collected apples and selling tickets to the barn dance. See you there.

[David Young]

Sunday September 18^th

 

It’s the end of the second week of varoa treatment and North hive is responding strangely, so we took all the treatment strips out. This past week the bees have seemed disoriented and about forty of them drowned in the sugar syrup in the rapid feeder for two days running. We had a chat about it during the weekly visit and asked KC’s opinion by e-mail, and we all felt this particular treatment ‘Apilife Var’ was too strong for these bees. North colony had so little varoa to start with that it probably won’t be a problem and we decided to dust them with the icing sugar as a back up method instead. Seeing forty bees drowned in the rapid feeder was a real shock. It made me feel protective and responsible in the same breath and I can only imagine how rough a beekeeper must feel when faced with total colony collapse.

 

Nicholas and Nadezhda were there today and helped Stephane to find and mark the Queen. It was the first time we’ve seen her in North hive. We had wondered if she was so hard to see because she’s small. Not at all. Perhaps now, because all the drones have been expelled for the season, she was easier to find but she certainly wasn’t small. She was clearly larger than all the workers, with a dark tear drop shaped abdomen. We noticed, not for the first time, that some of these workers are yellow and dark, while some are all dark. We waited until she was in a safe spot and trapped the Queen in the queen cage and Stephane put a small dot of white marker paint on her. Then he let her crawl from his hand back into the frames. All in all North hive seemed much stronger than it has done as recently as two weeks ago. There is still plenty of brood and they are building their stores. Outside the hive there are also lots of wasps coming to try and rob them, so we will have to close the entrance a bit, with some sponge and make it easier to defend.

 

South hive was also in good shape and didn’t seem to be reacting badly to the varoa treatment. This colony has always had a bigger problem with varoa and the treatment has killed about 1500 of the mites so far. A lot of bee research in recent years has been devoted to different bees’ relative resistance to varoa and, purely by chance, we may have a resistant type in North hive. Because of the higher mite population in South hive, and the bees comparative robustness regarding the treatment, we decided to carry on treating this colony with a reduced dose. With the autumn settling in and the nectar flow coming to an end we also started feeding South hive to get them ready for the winter.

 

PS. This evening I went back and sat watching the bees and wasps try and out smart each other. The bees have filled up the entrance to the hive with sheer numbers and body mass. It’s a seething closed door. The wasps have laid siege and fly around at ground level. From here they periodically make sneaking diagonal attacks, flying upwards to the entrance. Guard bees then peel off and fly at them with real force, body slamming them back to the ground.

 

It was nerve wracking trying to edge them away from the entrance with a soft brush and then reach in to slide some fairly solid foam to fill the entrance. The idea was to leave a 30mm slot for them to fly in and out. They can defend a small gap of this size with much fewer numbers - like Spartans holding the pass. I had the bee suit on and latex gloves and by easing the foam in very slowly they tolerated it. Having a carpet of guard bees climbing over your hands, when all that separates you and them is a very thin layer of latex is an act of faith, believe me.

[David Young]

Wednesday September 28^th

 

The sun today in the cemetery was beautiful. The pale light goes with the season, but not with the warm temperatures and the warm temperatures have got the bees out and about in numbers. They are still collecting large amounts of pollen and fly back from foraging with great lumps of vibrant yellow stuck to their back legs. This afternoon they were forming a ‘beard’ at the entrance, probably to defend against the ever present wasps. They were hanging off each other in a great string. It looked like those old Victorian photos of a men with beards of bees. We have a Robin who is there regularly. He seems to come when we’re around, but he may simply be there all the time. I think he eats the bees that are too close to the ground, or the weak ones that have fallen from the hive. I’m sure he eats the ones who die fighting off the wasps.

The last Apilife Var treatment went into South hive today and I fed both North and South hives. I also tried dusting the bees with icing sugar, which is a process that Sharon, another local keeper recommended. It makes the bees groom each other and in the process they clean the varoa off. Bewteen the grooming and the treatment we’ve been collecting roughly a thousand dead mites off the base board each week.

 Both hives looked full and active inside and that’s a positive sign before the winter. Because they didn’t make any real quantities of honey this year we’ll have to feed them fondant (candy) come February and March, just to get them through to the first nectar of 2012. That said, they don’t seem weak and in danger of failing to get as far as next spring. We hope so any way, and this extra burst of sun and the extra foraging that comes with it can only be good.

[David Young]

Thursday October 6^th

 

The sunshine over the weekend and into the beginning of this week created a phenomenal amount of activity and the entrances of both hives were choked with workers coming and going. Today, with the temperature drop, there was hardly any activity at all. Some guard bees are inside the entrance and show themselves if a wasp attempts to enter, but other wise it feels like they are battening down for autumn.

I stopped and had a chat with the cemetery grounds man Ken when I saw him driving a steel pole into the ground. He told me he was searching for the voids that mean an old grave is underneath. They have to be a certain depth before it’s possible to put another grave on top, and if they are too shallow then the ground must be built up above them. You can see several sections in the cemetery where this has been done over the years. Seeing him divining graves suddenly reminded me of the ancient story of Aristaeus.

 

Aristaeus was a Greek God. His father was a son of Zeus: Apollo the God of prophecy and divination, of healing and purification, which including shooting his arrows of plague and death fired from his silver bow. The nymph and huntress Kyrene was his mother.

 

Aristaeus was the first keeper of bees. One day all his bees died. He couldn’t understand why and thought the God’s were playing with him for sport. So he went to Proteus, the old man of the sea, to find out if he was right. Proteus told him that he was not being punished lightly for sport, but for making unwanted advances on Eurydice. For chasing her until she ran blindly into the path of a deadly snake that bit her and sent her to the underworld. Aristaeus had no idea his lust had caused Eurydice’s death or Orpheus’ grief stricken journey to the underworld and he asked the old man of the sea what he must do to atone? Proteus explained that he must sacrifice a bull to the Gods. Then after nine days had passed Aristaeus must return and look inside its belly. The God did as he was told and when he came back he saw a swarm of bees fly from the dead bull. They were his bees re-born. So he took them home to his hives and after that people believed that bees had power over death. The kings of Greece made their tombs in the shape of beehives and the ordinary people put honey in their graves and on their corpses.

 

It’s a story that makes the cemetery an even better fit for our bees.

[David Young]

Wednesday October 19^th

 

It’s cold enough now not to be opening the hive any more, so basically that’s it for looking inside until the spring sunshine arrives. The bees have to keep the temperature in the centre of the hive at about 35 degrees C and letting the cold air in means they have several days effort (shivering to create muscle heat) to get it back up to the warmth it should be. My wife went on a Natural Beekeeper’s course this weekend and their BIG bugbear about the rest of us is that we lift the frames and disturb this core heat. Whatever you may think of that in the summer it makes sense not to be doing that while its cold - less than 15 degrees – outside.

On Sunday we fed North hive with syrup for the last time. If we feed either hive again over the winter it will be with candy. They eat candy directly, whereas they store syrup. We also switched the hives from the ‘cold way’ to the ‘warm way.’ The cold way is a summer arrangement where the frames are at right angles to the entrance. This means that bees coming in and out have more choice about which frame to go to because they are looking at them end on. In the winter easy access is less important than keeping warm, so we turn the hives round so that the frames are parallel with the entrance. This means the frames act like curtains between the bees and the door and keep the heat in better. When we were swivelling the hive none of us had our bee suits or gloves on. Basically we’d forgotten we were creating a gap between the hive floor and the brood. Naturally enough a load of bees flew out to see what the hell was going on? The first things they encountered were our hands on the hive as we turned it round. I got stung and Stephane and Nadezhda got chased off. Live and learn…

[David Young]

Sunday December 18^th

 

A few days ago, when it was frosty, I put my ear to the hive walls in the hope of hearing that reassuring hum. It’s a hum that tells you the bees are keeping warm by vibrating in the heart of the colony, rotating around the queen and maintaining the conditions that she needs. I couldn’t hear anything. My son tells me he could, but even so I know it’s not the same low, throbbing rumble I could hear in the autumn. There are two ways to account for this. Either they are warm enough, or they are in trouble.

 

I had already bought some fondant (a sugar candy feed) and some mouse guards, so yesterday I went back to put some fondant in South hive. My son lifted the roof for a moment and I slipped a flat 200g slab onto the crown board.  Now they can crawl up and get it near the holes in the centre. We did it quickly to make sure the heat didn’t escape, but even in that brief moment I could see through the crown board to where two bees were crawling across the top of the frames. One also flew out of the entrance to check up on what was happening.  That was all reassuring.

 

December is a bit late to put mouse guards on, but I did it anyway. It’s a strip of galvanized metal with holes that let the bees through, but holes that are too small to let a mouse crawl into the warm and raid the honey stores. Today I went back and did the same for North hive. This time I put about 1kg of candy under the roof and on top of the crown board. This time I saw no bees through the holes. I guess the best indication of whether they are surviving or not is to see whether they eat the candy. If it’s gone when I look again, I can give them some more. If it’s all still there, that’s probably a bad thing.

 

I’ve heard experienced Beekeepers say that it’s good to give them candy for Christmas. I really hope that I did it in time.

[David Young]

Thursday January 5^th

 

Someone gave me a thin book of poems for Christmas called ‘Pages from a bee journal.’ January 7^th reads

 

Four inches of snow. The hive a hut

Of silence and darkness.

I found a stick and scratched

A small translucent tunnel to the door

Are you in there?

I’ve brought some light and air. No answer

 

That pretty much sums up the mystery of winter and beekeeping. Are you in there? Aylie, who helped us prep the site last year, loaned me a book called ‘Travels in Blood and Honey’ about beekeeping in Kosovo. In that account the author’s mentor raps the side of the hive with his knuckles, in deepest winter, to see if the bees respond. I did that on North hive and definitely got a response. Loud buzzing on the other side of the cedar planks, right behind my ear. It’s a mixed message because they still haven’t really eaten the fondant I put in before Christmas. Are there a few or are there many inside? When I took a peek under the lid a couple of days ago I saw most of the fondant still there and no bees, but there are some tiny black specs in the fondant which is probably bee poo.

 

South hive is another story. When I checked the original 200g of fondant it was all gone. So I put 800g more in. Now both hives have had the same amount and I can compare. I also saw several bees crawling about on the crown board and had to be careful not to squash them as I slid the low, flat container of fondant in there. At the door of South hive there were a group of bees struggling to eject a dead corpse through the holes of the mouse guard. Much harder than simply pushing it off the landing board, but they managed it.

[miko adam-kando]

Brilliant, gripping stuff! (just read whole thread all-in-one)

Hands covered in bees with only thin latex between their stings and your skin!

Thank you so much, can't wait for next instalment :)

[David Young]

Wednesday February 1^st

 

The apiary looks so different in winter. It is partly the cold milky light. Looking at the dry leaves on the ground and the forest of sapling stalks that surround us, it is hard to believe this area is almost invisible in summer, concealed by abundant greenery.

 

The recent wind has brought down a lot of small and medium branches from the Lime trees. I spent ten minutes clearing them away and tidying the site a little by pulling up the nettle stalks while they have no leaves on them. The first signs of new nettle growth are now beginning to show, with tiny bright leaves at ground level.

 

No bees outside. It is too cold. However, I can hear them inside when I press my ear to the cedar walls of the hive. South hive have helped themselves to more fondant. They have eaten a neat slice from the sugary slab, where it lies closest to the opening in the crown board. North hive, on the other hand, remain disinterested in these extra supplies. They have investigated the fondant, because I can see droppings on its surface, but no signs of really eating in. When I looked at the base board there are lots of signs of good house keeping in North hive; debris, a few dead bees and even some sugar shavings, so perhaps they have no need for the fondant. The best thing is probably to keep an eye on whether they are eating it or not and if they eat it all, to give them some more.