Roar of the Bees

We had a good spring for honey, but it seems to be a poor summer. The supers are light - very little honey in them. And the colonies are relatively small. It used to be that the bees would overflow when I opened a hive - not so any more. Now I can lift out frames without even having to nudge many bees out of the way.

With autumn on the way, the colonies are shrinking fast. You can tell this by looking at the brood frames even at a single point in time. A brood nest full of eggs and young larvae indicates an expanding colony, whereas a nest that has more capped brood than young larvae indicates that the queen's rate of egg laying is decreasing. In the Pond Hive brood box, almost all the brood is capped - I had to search hard to find eggs and larvae. The current capped brood will emerge as new adult bees that will become autumn foragers, but there will be fewer and fewer young bees coming through after that.

Varroa mites - and the viruses they transmit - may be reducing the strength of the colonies. In the Pond Hive I saw evidence of deformed wing virus, manifested by flightless bees with shrivelled white wings. So, despite the misfortune that befell the Cedar Hive when I last used this treatment, I applied MAQS to both the Pond Hive and the Copper Hive, as an anti-varroa measure.

The formic acid fumes from the MAQS are supposed to be able to get through brood cell cappings and damage mites within the cells as well as those loose in the hive. If you've not smelt formic acid, the closest thing would be to put your nose into a bag of salt 'n' vinegar crips and inhale sharply - it produces the same sort of nasal sting! And the bees clearly hate it. They react as soon as you take the MAQS out of the packet. After I put the MAQS on the Pond Hive brood box and closed up the hive, a loud roar could be heard from the brood box. The sound was probably caused by the workers fanning their wings to try to drive out the fumes - they had turned up their hive air conditioning to maximum.

I took this sound recording, holding the microphone near the hive:

Roar of the Bees I

Queen Katherine's Bees

(As usual, whenever I do a sound recording, someone flies an aircraft overhead.)

Then - brace your ears - I put the microphone under the mesh floor of the hive to hear the bees more clearly:

Roar of the Bees II

Queen Katherine's Bees

Not much chance of hearing aircraft over that.

I hope the treatment does the colonies more good than harm, but I'm sure it doesn't feel that way to them at the moment.

A French Approach to Beekeeping

The French famously have the month of August off as holiday - Les Grandes Vacances. As an English office worker I scowl enviously across the Channel.

Beekeeping tea towel

But in the apiary I am taking the French approach and leaving the colonies undisturbed for the month.

As much as I can, anyway. There are a few things I didn't get round to in July. But in general there is no need to open beehives in August. The bees can be let be. Now, where's my deckchair?

Mini-update on the Disc Hive

I've been visiting the Disc Hive at the farm from time to time. I'm pleased to report that it has not been knocked over by wildebeest. However, Queen Irene's colony are a defensive bunch. The eldest bees in this colony will pre-date Queen Irene, as they will be daughters of the previous queen, Queen Honey. It may be that it is these elder bees who are the defensive ones, in which case the mood of the colony may change over the next few weeks as these workers die off and are replaced by Queen Irene's daughters, if those bees have a mellower temperament. But my hopes are not high. I fear Queen Irene's daughters will be little better.

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I have taken honey from the Disc Hive, and it was similar to the honeys from the hives at the home apiary - unsurprising since most of it would have been made by the bees in their previous location before the move. It will be interesting to see how the honey they are now working on, which will be made from nectar they collect from the surrounding fields, compares with the honey from the hives at home.

As you may be able to see from the photographs above, I have written on the super "CuBA 1". This is done by burning the wood with a pyrography pen. The numbering of the supers is to help me track which super was put on which hive and when, as I can make a note of the super number in my records. It may also be a useful security feature, akin to marking valuables with a post code, as a deterrent to theft and/or to assist recovery. Though the Disc Hive occupants seem quite capable of deterring potential thieves by themselves, with their host of determined guard bees.